Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

We, as a government, have given unprecedented support to our economy over the last 12 months. These were unchartered waters. No-one really knew what the pandemic was going to do to the global economy. No-one knew what it was going to do to the local economy. We have given unprecedented assistance to businesses and employees across our country, and it has worked. That $250 billion has worked. Firstly, on the health front—and I will agree with the member for Rankin on this—we need to thank the Australian people for what they've done with hand hygiene, social distancing et cetera. On the health front, we have done very well during the pandemic. We just need to look at comparative figures from other countries to see how well we've done.

The member for Rankin prefaced the views of the RBA and a few other people. Economically, we are coming out of this COVID-led recession faster than they predicted. Business confidence, consumer confidence and the growth in our economy, as we saw in the December quarter figures that came out, are fast surpassing what even the RBA and most economists were predicting. The biggest issue we have in a lot of regions—I'm hearing about this anecdotally, and it is shown in figures as well—is staff shortages. The shortage is not only in the agriculture sector; it's across the whole gamut—trades, retail and hospitality. The biggest issue that business has raised with me is that they cannot find enough staff. That's well documented around many regions in our economy.

I know the member for Rankin focused on one thing, JobKeeper. I will speak about JobKeeper, but I'll also be speaking about a lot of ongoing support that isn't going anywhere. That support is going to be locked in, especially for areas and industries that still aren't operating as they can and should, like airlines and other related areas. JobKeeper was initially brought in for six months. At the start, we didn't know how this was going to play out. We brought JobKeeper in because we wanted the employee to keep a relationship with their employer. We brought it in for six months; it was going to end last September. Obviously, back then we weren't ready. So what did we, as a government, do? We extended it. Now, given how well we have grown out of this, given what the economic statistics have shown about our growth and confidence, and given the staff shortages that everyone tells us they have, we think that, with other ongoing support, the economy can cope with this.

One of the major things we are doing as a further boost to this support is cutting income tax. People talk about there being no wage increases. An income tax cut is a wage increase. That's flowing through, and there'll be more of that to come. In the past, we have also brought in small-business tax cuts. We realise that the private sector is the major job creator in this country. Just about everything we do, including what we announced in the budget last year and a lot of the other assistance measures we do, is about giving private businesses the confidence to invest in their business, their staff and their capital equipment. That's been shown, as I said, in consumer and business confidence and the growth that we have seen in our economy. I'm going to list a few of these, beginning with the JobMaker Hiring Credit scheme, which we announced in the budget last year. This was about what we saw and what we all worried about when went into the COVID-led recession. In past recessions, the people who suffered the most were our youth. The youth unemployment rate was the slowest to recover, because young people hadn't been trained or they didn't have a job to build a skill level through a really important stage in their life. So we brought in the JobMaker hiring credit, which gave $200 a week to employers who hire anyone between 18 and 30. That has been a major success.

The other thing that I mention nearly every time I get up here is the instant asset write-off, which we did a few years ago but we have now put on steroids. I think it's one of the best policies that we've ever initiated. This is where businesses can go away and make a capital purchase for their business. What does that do? It's a great initiative that encourages people to invest in their business. A lot of small businesses in my region love that policy. They keep talking about it. In the budget last year, we put it on steroids and lifted the amount you could buy and write off. We did that because we want people to keep their jobs. We want business to invest in their capital and their staff, and that has worked.

Another thing in the budget last year—the money is still flowing for this—was the $2 billion investment in R&D. What we've seen in this country, which the global pandemic showed us, is that we have to be as self-reliant as we can be, and R&D is a very important part of that. We brought in a $1.3 billion manufacturing plan, too, across six areas: defence, space, medicine, food, resources, technology and recycling and clean energy. Again, we're investing in this at a really important time, to make sure that people's jobs are as secure and safe as we can make them.

There's the apprenticeship scheme. What a great scheme this is. This filled up more quickly than we thought. Again, this is a subsidy; we will subsidise an apprentice's wage up to $7,000 a quarter. A hundred thousand places filled up like that! And we announced the extension of that just a number of weeks ago. So there isn't a vacuum going on here. Things are happening with JobKeeper and things are happening in other areas. There isn't a vacuum, in the sense that there's a lot of ongoing support happening in a lot of other regions to support jobs growth—for example, the apprenticeship scheme. It's a wonderful scheme. I saw the minister stand up earlier in question time. There's the HomeBuilder scheme. Again, builders were facing very uncertain times—as were all the apprenticeships and jobs around that—and the HomeBuilder scheme has been very important to that.

Then there are the infrastructure programs. Whether it be BBRF, whether it be skills packages, whether it be roads projects—these are happening across my region; they're happening across all regions throughout this country. With our local governments and local community organisations and some of the state governments, we're stimulating economic activity.

What has this all done? This hasn't happened by accident. I, too, thank the Australian people for what we've done on the health front—for what we did with hand hygiene, social distancing and everything else. We are seeing record consumer confidence. We are seeing great business confidence. In the Australian economy, we are seeing one of the highest levels of growth in the world right now—thank you to the Australian businesses who are doing this—because of the stimulus packages and the things that we're putting out there to encourage them to do that.

We aren't out of the woods yet, though. I understand that. There are certain areas and sectors that are still under threat. As mentioned earlier, a big one is, obviously, international travel. We are looking forward to the vaccine rollout not just in Australia but across the globe because, once that rolls out and there are enough critical numbers on that, we'll be able to travel and open up international borders.

Again, there's no vacuum here. There is ongoing assistance being provided. Just in the last week or so there was a further $1.2 billion for our aviation sector and the tourism sector related to that. Again, this was targeted at sections of our economy and sections of our country that are missing out, that were more focused and targeted towards international tourists. Again, that was announced just last week.

We had a fund at the height of COVID that we were using to target areas that were highly affected. I've got a list here. I won't read them all out because I'll run out of time. But, to give you some idea, there was RANS, which you'll be aware of, Deputy Speaker—the Regional Airline Network Support. Just last week we extended that program. What is that program? That's for the airlines deeply affected, especially in regional Australia. We knew we needed to keep our regional airlines operating. There were frontline workers and critical staff who had to be flown in to regional areas all around the country, and the airlines simply didn't have enough capability or capacity or demand to keep up. So the Regional Airline Network Support was a really important thing across regional Australia. Just last week that got extended, and that was really important. There was additional funding for the Export Market Development Grant Scheme, for aquariums, for shows and ag fields—we all remember that none of our field shows were held last year, so there was targeted assistance given to them as well. Our travel agents are doing it tough. Obviously they can't take international bookings. Just this week we announced a package to help them out. So there's a lot going on. We've done well so far but we do have more to do.

See this speech in context