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

I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question and acknowledge her experience in small business before coming to this place. Indeed, there are lots of businesses in the honourable member's electorate that are doing it very tough right now, particularly in the tourism sector. That is why the Morrison government joined with the Queensland state government in a $600 million support package for small businesses across her electorate and indeed across the wider state of Queensland.

The last 18 months have been very difficult for Australians. Businesses have closed, people have been working from home, and kids haven't been able to join their classmates in the classroom. We have responded to this crisis with an unprecedented amount of economic and health support. Most recently, that economic support has taken the form of a COVID disaster payment of up to $750 a week for people who have lost hours of work—$4 billion out the door to 1.6 million Australians. With every state and territory, we have reached an agreement to provide business support on a fifty-fifty funding split. That economic support is absolutely vital in the immediate short term in enabling those businesses to survive and those families to get through the crisis.

But government support is not a sustainable long-term solution. The only sustainable long-term solution to this crisis is that we stick to the plan agreed at national cabinet. That means 70 and 80 per cent vaccination rates, which are now in sight. The Australian people are keeping their end of the bargain. They are rolling up their sleeves in record numbers to get the jabs—215 jabs a minute across the country. It's up to the state premiers and chief ministers, together with the Prime Minister, to stick to the plan that was agreed at national cabinet, because that plan is a pathway out of this crisis.

We heard today from the world-leading Doherty institute that, whether you start with 30 cases or 800 cases, you can open up safely. That is what the Doherty institute said today. The Doherty institute also said that zero-COVID forever is unrealistic. That's the conversation that the Australian people need to hear: it's a fallacy that you can eliminate COVID; you must learn to live with it, just as other countries are doing right now and just as we in Australia have done so with other infectious diseases.

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