SABRA LANE:
The Treasurer is Josh Frydenberg. Mr Frydenberg, good morning. We’ll get to the Intergenerational Report shortly. First, you’re on the National Security Committee of Cabinet. It’s meeting today to discuss COVID. What can it do?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, the Prime Minister has not just called a meeting of the National Security, Sabra, but he’s also called a meeting of the National Cabinet, and that will be an important opportunity to bring the states and the territory leaders together to talk about the latest outbreak, to align responses and to ensure there’s consistency.
SABRA LANE:
Sure, but what can the National Security Committee of Cabinet do?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we get briefed by the head of the AHPPC, namely, the chief medical officer. We get informed about what the latest developments are with the virus, and that’s important in terms of our response because we’re making vaccines available across the country, we’re -
SABRA LANE:
Sure, but what can you do? We’ve heard that in previous weeks. What can you do? Given that herd immunity happens through vaccination and that’s the best way to stop these kinds of crises, can you get more vaccines right now?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we’ve recently got an extra 50,000 vaccines into New South Wales. But when you talk about herd immunity, you’ve also got to bear in mind we’re dealing with a much more contagious variant in the Delta strain. And this is quite a critical time. If you look at the United Kingdom, they had 18,000 new cases just yesterday, yet 80 per cent of their population has received a first dose and 60 per cent of their population has received a second dose. We’re rolling out the vaccine as fast as possible, Sabra. More than 7.3 million doses have been delivered across Australia, more than 28 per cent of eligible Australians have had their first dose and, importantly, we’ve focused on the most vulnerable cohorts. The over 50s, more than 50 per cent have received their first doze, around 60 per cent of the over 60s and 70 per cent of the over 70s.
SABRA LANE:
Still, Mr Frydenberg, you haven’t told me what the National Security Committee of Cabinet can do. It sounds like by telling us what we already know there aren’t many options.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, again, it’s about aligning responses. As you’ve seen, there’s been state border closures, there’s been health restrictions put in place. So, bringing the leaders together and hearing the most up-to-date information is important to align the responses. The Prime Minister is also talking to the state and territory leaders about the importance of ensuring that workers in some of these facilities where the vulnerable cohorts are, are vaccinated as well.
SABRA LANE:
Let’s turn to the Intergenerational Report. It shows the population growing older and not as fast and key programs costing much, much more, like Medicare and the NDIS. People will be nervous about the Government wanting to slash them. What guarantees can you give?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, what this fifth Intergenerational Report does show is that the Australian economy continues to grow, that we have debt increasing but it remains sustainable and low by international standards, but that we do have a major challenge ahead of us. Namely, the ageing of the population, the longer-term impacts of COVID and the need for Australia to boost productivity. We’ve always said that we’ll continue to fully fund the NDIS, that we have seen health spending on our watch and education spending on our watch reach a record level. But that’s not to say that Australia doesn’t continue to make important reforms to grow our economy. That’s the key for our prosperity, and that’s underlined in this report.
SABRA LANE:
We haven’t had the benefit of seeing all the report yet, but what you will be arguing is that Australia now has no alternative other than to pursue economic reform “much of which is hard and contested.” What do you mean?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, we have pursued important reforms and passed them through the Parliament. Only just last week we reduced the red tape to ensure that workers can move more freely across the country with mutual recognition of occupational licensing. That’s an important micro economic reform. We made significant changes to superannuation. That’s an important reform. Again, both were contested, and both were opposed by our political opponents. We’ve passed through the Parliament important changes to our tax system, abolishing a whole tax bracket. Again, that was opposed. We want to continue to pursue reforms that encourage more investment by business, that improve the provision of skills across the country and also ensure more flexible workplaces. And, as you know, some of our industrial relations reforms were prevented from going through the Parliament and there are elements of that package that we would like to revisit, for example, enterprise agreements being extended for greenfield sites, which is really important to secure further business investment in our country.
SABRA LANE:
According to the document the Federal Budget never reaches a surplus to 2060. Income tax via workers will become the main source of income for the Federal Government. How acceptable is that?
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
Well, obviously income tax is the main form and source of revenue for the Federal Government right now. But we do have a tax-to-GDP cap of 23.9 per cent. What this Intergenerational Report does show is that we meet that cap at a longer period, a longer time frame, and that is because of the impact that COVID has had, not just in requiring extra expenditure but also hitting our revenue as companies and businesses become less profitable and people have been out of work. So the impact of COVID can be seen in the numbers in this document as having quite a significant effect not just on the budget but also on our population size because the expectation now is that Australia’s population will not reach the numbers that were previously thought, and that’s because we’ve had the period of closed borders and population growth has been the lowest in a hundred years.
SABRA LANE:
Treasurer, thanks for your time this morning.
JOSH FRYDENBERG:
My pleasure.