Fiona Martin (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline to the House the economic support the Morrison government is providing to support Australian jobs, businesses and households while the coronavirus pandemic unfolds?

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

I thank the member for Reid for her question and acknowledge her background in small business, her time as a practising psychologist and her commitment to serving her constituents. Australia has approached the global pandemic with the coronavirus from a position of economic strength. We have got the books back in order by delivering the first balanced budget in 11 years. This has given us the financial firepower to respond with these unprecedented measures that we have announced. But we've stuck to our principles in relation to all the measures that we've announced. Our principles are ensuring that our measures are targeted, proportionate, temporary and scalable.

We've announced three separate packages. The first package was a stimulus package, at $17.6 billion, with accelerated depreciation allowances, an instant asset write-off and $750 payments to 6½ million Australians, and I can inform the House that some six million payments have already been made, totalling around $4½ billion making its way to pensioners, carers and those on other income support. We announced a $1 billion relief and recovery fund and we announced a significant cash-flow boost for small businesses.

The second package, on 22 March, at $66 billion, was different in both scale and scope. It involved an effective doubling of the safety net, with our $550 coronavirus jobseeker supplement, another $750 payment, changes to the deeming rates and the drawdown rates, giving people early access to their superannuation, as well as strengthening further the cash-flow boost for small business, and changes to the insolvency and bankruptcy laws to provide a regulatory shield. On top of that, we now have our $130 billion JobKeeper package.

I'm pleased to inform the House that, today, Standard & Poor's reaffirmed Australia's AAA credit rating. In doing so, they said, 'Australia's strong fiscal performance remains a credit strength,' and that the measures that the Morrison government have put in place—and these are their words—'won't structurally weaken Australia's financial position'. That's a very significant endorsement of the necessary measures that we've had to take, the unprecedented measures that we've had to take. Those measures have been designed to keep Australians in jobs and Australian businesses in business.