Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

As my colleagues point out—why is the shadow Treasurer smiling at the fact that it is important we roll out the vaccine as quickly as possible? More than 400,000 people received the vaccine over the course of the last week. There is a key assumption in the budget about the vaccine rollout. It is in Budget Paper No. 1 on page 36, where it states:

It is assumed that a population-wide vaccination program is likely to be in place by the end of 2021.

It's based on those assumptions, including around border closures, including about how we deal with and manage outbreaks when they occur, that we have made some of the other forecasts across the economy. But the key to Australia's economic recovery, as the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasury maintain, is our ability to suppress those outbreaks when they occur. This is first and foremost a health crisis, and our ability to suppress the virus will determine the speed of the economic recovery, which is now well underway.

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