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

I thank the member for Moore for his question and acknowledge his experience in local government as well as in the private sector. Today more than six million of my fellow Victorians are doing it very tough. They are enduring their fourth lockdown with kids that are not in school, families that are apart, businesses that have been closed. It's a painful reminder that the pandemic is not over, but neither is the Morrison government's economic support. More than $45 billion has already been delivered to Victorian families and businesses by the Morrison government, around three times the amount that's been delivered by the state government, and today we announced a new COVID payment to support those in need who have been in lockdown. In the budget just over two weeks ago we anticipated that there would be further outbreaks across the country, and this is why we put in the budget an extra $41 billion of COVID related economic support, including tax relief for more than 10 million Australians, an expansion of the immediate expensing to boost investment across the economy, infrastructure programs, skills programs—all intended to create more jobs and to boost economic activity.

The budget measures, together with what has been previously announced, come to $291 billion in direct economic support provided by this government to help Australians to get to the other side of this virus. This $291 billion and the measures that we have announced are helping to create jobs. Yesterday we saw the product of the hard work of more than 25 million Australians and the direct economic support from this government, with the national account numbers showing that the economy in the March quarter grew by 1.8 per cent. While the economies of France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom all contracted in the March quarter, the Australian economy expanded, and the Australian economy today is bigger than it was going into the pandemic. There are more Australians in work today than at the start of the pandemic. We have done this ahead of any major advanced economy around the world. So we will continue to support Victorians, we will continue to support Australians, we will continue to create jobs, we will continue to lower taxes, and we will continue to drive the Australian economy forward.

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