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

by leave—Australia finds itself at war against a faceless and flagless enemy. The coronavirus has created a one-in-100-year event—a health and economic shock the likes of which the world has never seen.

So many of our fellow Australians, through no fault of their own, are struggling and doing it tough—be they battling the virus, separated from friends and family or worried about their job security and economic future.

Tragically, 97 Australians have lost their lives, with many more people, including in this parliament, directly affected. Our thoughts are with the member for Cooper and all the other families across the country who have lost loved ones.

Many of the things we take for granted—visiting grandparents, taking the kids to weekend sport or having a beer—have been disrupted. The Australian way of life has been put on hold.

But, once again, Australia and its people are showing remarkable resilience and character. Having withstood fire, flood and drought, there is a unity of purpose that should make us all proud.

Through strong and decisive action led by the Prime Minister, together with state premiers and chief ministers, Australia has avoided the fate of many other nations.

Globally, more than four million people have contracted the virus. More than 280,000 have died, and much of the world has gone into lockdown. In the United States, 80,000 have died. In the United Kingdom, over 31,000 have died, with Italy, Spain and France not far behind.

In contrast, Australia's mortality rate is one of the lowest in the OECD. Early border restrictions, comprehensive and coordinated action by the National Cabinet and a world-class health system and health professionals have contributed to this result.

The pandemic is not just an enormous health challenge but an economic one as well. The IMF is forecasting the world economy to contract by three per cent this year. In contrast, during the GFC the global economy shrank by just 0.1 per cent in 2009. China's GDP fell in the March quarter by 9.8 per cent, their first quarterly fall on record. Italy, France and Spain all experienced their largest quarterly falls on record. In the United States, 33 million jobless claims have been made in the last seven weeks, with the unemployment rate rising to 14.7 per cent.

In Australia, Treasury is forecasting GDP to fall by over 10 per cent in the June quarter, which would represent our biggest fall on record. At $50 billion, this is a loss equivalent to the total combined quarterly production of South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the ACT. Treasury is forecasting the unemployment rate to reach around 10 per cent, or 1.4 million unemployed, in the June quarter. The five-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate is expected to occur over three months, compared with the three years it took the unemployment rate to rise by the same amount in that devastating period of the early 1990s.

Household consumption and business and dwelling investment are all forecast by Treasury to fall sharply in the June quarter. The combination of social distancing, lower incomes and increased uncertainty are weighing heavily on aggregate demand and flowing through to reduced cash flow. Household consumption is expected to be around 16 per cent lower. Business investment is expected to be around 18 per cent lower, with falls concentrated in the non-mining sector. Dwelling investment is also expected to be around 18 per cent lower. Over the same period, household savings are expected to increase as a result of the restrictions that have been imposed and an understandably cautious approach by households to discretionary spending.

Overall, the economic data has been sobering. In March, business and consumer confidence saw the largest declines on record. The ASX 200 lost more than a third of its value in just over four weeks. In April, surveys showed that job ads halved, and activity in the construction, manufacturing and services sectors had their largest-ever monthly falls. New motor vehicle sales fell by 48 per cent through the year, their largest-ever fall. House sales fell by 40 per cent. Domestic and international air travel is down by more than 97 per cent, with nearly 40,000 passengers moving through Brisbane airport on Easter Sunday last year, compared with just 31 passengers this year.

Against this backdrop, between 14 March and 18 April the number of jobs decreased by 7½ per cent and the wages bill paid by businesses decreased by 8.2 per cent. During this period, accommodation and food services saw the largest fall in jobs at 33.4 per cent, followed by the arts and recreation sector at 27 per cent.

The scale of the economic shock is hitting the budget bottom line. The monthly financial statements for March provide the most recent report on the budget position. To the end of March, the underlying cash deficit was $22.4 billion, $9.9 billion higher than forecast in MYEFO. Tax receipts were $11.3 billion lower than forecast in MYEFO.

While payments to the end of March were still $1.4 billion lower than in the MYEFO profile, this will change from the next statement onwards as the measures we have implemented continue to ramp up. Since MYEFO, the total face value of Australian Government Securities on issue has increased by more than $50 billion from $560 billion to $618 billion as of 8 May 2020. An updated economic and fiscal outlook will be provided in June, following the release of the March quarter national accounts, with the budget to be delivered in October.

In accordance with the requirements of the Charter of Budget Honesty I am tabling this ministerial statement to set out the reason for the increase in borrowings.

The unprecedented scale and speed of the government's economic response has driven a rapid increase in borrowings. While there will be a significant increase in government debt, which will take many years to repay, our measures have been designed in a way that protect the structural integrity of the budget.

Australians know there is no money tree. What we borrow today, we must repay in the future. Temporary and targeted, the new spending measures were not designed to go forever but to build a bridge to the recovery phase. As Standard & Poor's stated less than four weeks ago, while the government's fiscal measures will 'weigh heavily on public finances in the immediate future, they won't structurally weaken Australia's fiscal position.'

With $320 billion, or 16.4 per cent of GDP, in financial support, our focus is getting the country through the crisis and positioning the economy to recover on the other side. This has only been possible because of the strength of our economic position when we entered the crisis. Growth had risen from 1.8 to 2.2 per cent in the December quarter, and the IMF was forecasting the Australian economy to grow faster than the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Germany in both 2020 and 2021. The unemployment rate fell in February to 5.1 per cent, with the participation rate at near record highs against the backdrop of 1½ million new jobs being created over the last six years.

After inheriting a budget deficit of $48½ billion, the budget was back in balance for the first time in eleven years, and, despite the adverse economic impacts from the global trade tensions, fires, floods and drought, we were on track for the first surplus in 12 years. Our ability to handle this crisis has once again reminded Australians of the importance of a strong and stable financial position which must always be a primary responsibility of government.

The proven path for paying back debt is not through higher taxes, which curtail aspiration and investment, but by growing the economy through productivity-enhancing reforms. Our focus will be on practical solutions to the most significant challenges which will be front and centre in the post-coronavirus world: reskilling and upskilling the workforce; maintaining our $100 billion, 10-year infrastructure pipeline; cutting red tape to reduce the cost burden on businesses and the economy; and tax and industrial relations reform as a means of increasing our competitiveness.

The values and the principles that have guided coalition reforms in the past must guide us again in the future: encouraging personal responsibility; maximising personal choice; rewarding effort and risk taking whilst ensuring a safety net which is underpinned by a sense of decency and fairness.

Unleashing the power of dynamic, innovative, and open markets must be central to the recovery, with the private sector leading job creation, not government. We know that a strong economy is the foundation for everything else, and only with a strong economy can you provide the health, education, and essential services that Australians rely on.

The economic response to the crisis

Conscious of the extraordinary health and economic shock created by the coronavirus, the government was determined to act quickly and decisively. We were in a race against time to replenish our personal protective equipment stocks, increase the capacity of our intensive care units and secure a sufficient number of ventilators to deal with the expected surge in demand.

We provided additional funding to our scientists and medical researchers who are participating in a global mission to find a vaccine. We entered into an equal cost-sharing arrangement with the states and territories to meet the extra burden on hospitals. Non-urgent elective surgeries were suspended, and we guaranteed the viability of private and not-for-profit hospitals to ensure that over 30,000 beds and 105,000 healthcare professionals were available. We allocated more than $850 million to the aged-care sector to provide additional support and services at this difficult time.

On the economic front, in less than a three-week period we announced three separate support packages, each complementary and each building on the other. Combined, they represent the largest fiscal response in Australia's history. Over $25 billion of support has already flowed to households and businesses in recent weeks, with more than $30 billion to flow in the next month. This is the largest and fastest injection of economic support Australia has ever seen. Our economic measures fall into three categories: support for households; support for business and employment; and support for the financial system.

For households, our actions are designed to cushion the blow from the income shock and to support consumption across the economy. Given the level of uncertainty, our economic measures provide more than financial relief. They provide a psychological boost as well. There are so many stories from across the nation about how our measures have provided an economic lifeline to people in their hour of need. Luke, the owner of a local restaurant and bar in Chapel Hill, Brisbane, said JobKeeper 'saved our bacon'. Sorry and excuse my coughing, Mr Speaker—I need some water. It's too long a speech! Adrian, the owner of an auto business in Moonah, Hobart, said JobKeeper has turned out to be a 'saviour'.

We effectively doubled unemployment benefits with the introduction of a temporary $550 coronavirus supplement for JobKeeper. We waived the waiting period, adjusted mutual obligation for clients and expanded the partner income test to ensure it reached those in need. With over 1.4 million Australians now receiving the payment, it is providing critical support. We announced two $750 cash payments. The first payment, totalling $5.2 billion, went out from 31 March to more than seven million income support recipients, including pensioners, carers, veterans, those receiving family tax benefits and Commonwealth seniors health card holders.

We provided tax-free, early access to superannuation of up to $10,000 this financial year and up to $10,000 next financial year. To date, nearly 1.3 million early release of super applications have been released by the ATO, equating to about $10.6 billion, with an average withdrawal of around $8,000. We reduced the pension deeming rates, both the lower and upper levels, to 0.25 per cent and 2.25 per cent at a cost of $876 million. We reduced the superannuation minimum draw down rates by 50 per cent for 2019-20 and 2021 to give those in retirement more control over their savings.

We worked with the banks and the prudential regulator to ensure households could get much needed temporary relief from loan repayments. With repayments on $200 billion of loans deferred, the majority of which are residential mortgages, the financial pressure on many households has been lowered.

An early childhood and education relief package of over $1.6 billion, will see over one million families receive free child care. This has allowed our childcare sector to remain open to support working families and vulnerable children through the pandemic.

The second set of economic measures has been directed at business and employment. The motivation has been to encourage investment; boost cash flow; maintain the connection between employer and employee; and provide a regulatory shield and more workplace flexibility, while preserving as much capacity across the economy, as we build a bridge to the recovery phase.

At $130 billion, the JobKeeper program provides for a fortnightly $1,500 payment to part-time and full-time employees, long-term casuals, sole traders and those working in the not-for-profit sector. The payment is equivalent to 70 per cent of the median wage and is close to a replacement wage for many working in those sectors most affected, like hospitality and retail. Payments began last week for the period beginning 30 March, which was the date the program was announced. There are now more than 835,000 businesses employing more than 5.5 million workers who are now formally enrolled in the program. This is an addition to the temporary cashflow support to help small and medium-sized businesses keep operating, pay their bills and retain their staff.

Over 450,000 small and medium-sized businesses have now received over $8 billion under our cashflow boost program. Linked to the size of the payroll, this program will provide between $20,000 and $100,000 to SMEs to help them retain staff and meet their fixed costs. This measure uses the existing payroll systems so that no new forms need to be filled in, businesses do not need to apply and payments are made automatically in the most efficient way possible. We also introduced a separate 50 per cent wage subsidy for 117,000 apprentices, helping to keep the local apprentice baker and hairdresser in work.

In addition to the financial support we have provided businesses, we have amended the bankruptcy insolvency laws to provide temporary protection for distressed businesses during this period. In the first package, we announced two measures to support business investment—an extended instant asset write-off of up to $150,000 which can be used any number of times for any eligible asset; and a 50 per cent accelerated depreciation allowance for businesses up to $500 million in turnover. Other measures included a $500 million loan facility to support exporters, recapturing market share, and a $1 billion relief and recovery fund with over $500 million has already been committed. This fund is supporting regional airlines and airports; air freight for essential agriculture; levy relief for Commonwealth fisheries; supporting tourism businesses and Commonwealth national parks; a funding boost for Australia's zoos and aquariums; and support for Indigenous and regional arts programs.

To assist commercial tenants with rent relief during this difficult period, we work with the states and territories on a mandatory code of conduct to govern their relationships with landlords. In total there have been more than 80 regulatory changes that the federal government has made to provide greater flexibility and support to those affected by the crisis. This includes significant temporary industrial relations changes to allow employees and employers to vary work arrangements in order to keep people employed.

A great strength of the Australian economy during this crisis has been the resilience of our financial system which has benefited from many reforms under this government, commencing with the financial systems inquiry which led to our banks being required to hold more capital so as to be unquestionably strong. Global and domestic markets have experienced significant stress during this period, and the government moved quickly to inject liquidity into the system. The Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Office of Financial Management have made $105 billion available to support lending to businesses from both bank and non-bank lenders. The government has also partnered with the banks in a $40 billion SME loan guarantee scheme which to date has already seen over $1 billion in loans approved to more than 11,000 businesses. Regulatory relief has included the clarification of responsible lending laws to help credit flow faster to SMEs as well as changes made to facilitate the rapid recapitalisation of ASX-listed companies.

In recognition of the unprecedented and volatile market environment, the government has also temporarily reduced the FIRB assessment thresholds to zero to safeguard the national interest and ensure confidence in the foreign investment framework is maintained. It has been encouraging that through the combination of our economic measures and flattening the curve we have seen gradual signs of improvement in sentiment. Consumer confidence has risen for six consecutive weeks, and key sectors like mining, agriculture and manufacturing have continued to be resilient and contributed to a record trade surplus of $10.6 billion in the month of March. Significant product innovation, market diversification strategies and the accelerated uptake of digital transformation opportunities have also been pursued by many businesses in their effort to adapt to the difficult circumstances they are in. This innovation will assist these businesses on the other side.

Last week the Prime Minister summarised the government's five-point plan in response to this crisis. First, we made real progress in fighting the virus, buying time to increase our health capacity. Second, we put in place our economic response to cushion the blow and build a bridge to recovery. Third, we have begun lifting restrictions with a clear plan and framework mapping out the road ahead. Fourth, with restrictions starting to lift, it will be paramount to build confidence and momentum to consolidate these gains. And, fifth, continuing to grow the economy, create more jobs, guarantee the essential services Australians rely on and keep Australians safe.

Last Friday was a significant point on our pathway back, with national cabinet agreeing to a three-step framework to achieve a COVID-safe Australia and the lifting of restrictions by July. Treasury estimates that, with the restrictions lifted under the three separate stages, 850,000 people will be back at work. More than half of those workers will come from three sectors with 338,000 jobs in accommodation and food services; 76,000 jobs in arts and recreation; and 71,000 jobs in transport, postal and warehousing. Construction with 45,000 jobs and manufacturing with 20,000 jobs will also be significant contributories.

Treasury estimate that, as a result of easing the restrictions in line with stages 1, 2 and 3, GDP will increase by $9.4 billion each month. The lifting of restrictions will see Australians move around more freely. Of the $9.4 billion, increasing demand, including in retail, will contribute $2.9 billion. The opening of cafes, pubs, clubs, entertainment venues and health and fitness gymnasiums will contribute $2.4 billion while the opening of schools will contribute nearly $2.2 billion and other industry sectors like local government, museums and parks a further billion. The relaxation of travel restrictions is expected to contribute around $700 million.

The speed at which restrictions are lifted may differ in each state and so too the impact on jobs and GDP from the implementation of each stage. Treasury estimate that the benefits of just stage 1 being lifted will lead to more than 250,000 people going back to work and more than $3 billion in additional GDP. This includes 83,000 jobs and $1 billion a month in New South Wales, 64,000 jobs and over $715 million in Victoria, 51,000 jobs and $610 million in Queensland, 25,000 jobs and $435 million in Western Australia, 17,000 jobs and $178 million in South Australia, 5,000 jobs and $50 million in Tasmania, 4,000 jobs and $60 million in the ACT, and 3,000 jobs and $40 million in the Northern Territory.

However, these improvements in the economy depend on us continuing to follow the health advice. Failing to do so could see restrictions reimposed at a loss of more than $4 billion a week to the economy. If our largest state, New South Wales, had to reimpose restrictions equivalent to those in place before the 8 May national cabinet meeting, it would cost its economy around $1.4 billion per week. For Victoria, the cost would be around $1 billion, in Queensland $800 million, in Western Australia $500 million, in South Australia $200 million, in Tasmania $100 million, in the ACT $100 million and in the Northern Territory $40 million per week. This is the economic cost we will all have to bear if we fail to act.

Before concluding, I would like to thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the health minister and my good friend and colleague in the other place the Minister for Finance for their leadership throughout this period, and the many agencies of government that have worked so tirelessly behind the scenes.

Australians know that, as a consequence of the actions we have taken, we are better placed than most, but there is still a long way to go. There will be more coronavirus cases and it is vital we remain vigilant. The economic benefits from lifting the restrictions will only be realised if Australians continue to follow the health advice and download the COVIDSafe app.

On the economic front, we have put in place a comprehensive range of measures designed to keep people in jobs and businesses in business, and to build a bridge to recovery. Our measures are working, protecting lives and livelihoods. We can be confident about our future. The virus will not defeat us. We must stay strong. We must stay together. We must maintain our resolve. The fighting Australian spirit will see us get through this and be stronger than ever. I commend this statement to the House.

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope the Treasurer is okay. In normal times, today would be budget day. Those opposite had already printed the mugs, they'd already filmed the ads, they'd already rehearsed the slogans. But the economy was already weaker than they wanted us to believe. Even before the fires, even before this coronavirus, wages and living standards were already stagnant, work was already too precarious and too insecure for too many people for too long, growth was already below average and investment was weak. And then the coronavirus broke out.

So now we gather, in very different circumstances, to deal with a diabolical pandemic with devastating economic consequences: long lines at Centrelink; the prospect of double-digit unemployment, a fifth of hours worked and a 10th of economic output vanishing in a matter of weeks; synchronised carnage in the global economy, the worst in 90 years; and a long shadow and a patchy recovery. Yet all we got today was a cut and paste of what the government has already said and what Australians already knew. If only the Treasurer had coughed up some detail or a plan. This was a missed opportunity for the government to bring people into its confidence about where things are going and what the government intends to do about it—not just to remind us of all of the sacrifices that the Australian people are making but to remind us of why those sacrifices matter, what people can look forward to on the other side, and why we can do better as a nation than to snap back to all of the economic weakness and ideological obsession which governed the years leading up to now.

I'm reminded of the late Denis Healey, who once said, 'I don't come from the Treasury; I come from the battlefront,' because we come to Canberra today from the economic battlefront, from the suburbs where the jobs are being lost and the people need a plan, where people are terrified of being left out and left behind. Let me give you just one example. On Monday night I was at home in Logan City. The kids had gone to sleep at last and I was answering emails. Up popped a note from a mum. She wanted to share with me her son's story. This young man is a ground worker at one of our international airports. This is part of what she wrote to me about her son: 'Since the federal government's shutdown of almost all aviation operations over the last couple of months, his company has had no choice but to stand him down. They did so under the understanding that they could collect JobKeeper payments for their employees so they didn't join the Centrelink queues. Now my son has been told to join Centrelink queues, knowing that his job and thousands of his co-workers' jobs are in jeopardy because of a loophole excluding dnata from the scheme.

To my understanding, the JobKeeper payments were put in place to help workers stay employed in this unknown time. Yet my son and thousands of his co-workers are now to be left helpless and abandoned by the Australian government. As his mother and a fellow citizen of this country, I can't understand why some citizens are looked after and others are being forgotten, and made to feel unimportant like this. I beg you to fight on his behalf, so he is not put in this position—please. Please help him keep his job.'

This side of the House says to that mum that Labor will fight on his behalf, and for many who are caught in this situation. Our principle during this crisis has been to be constructive, supportive and responsible—to put the people before the politics. We do recognise that this isn't business as usual in the economy, and that it can't be business as usual in here as well. When the government has adopted a good idea, we've all said so. When they rejected our amendments to the JobKeeper legislation we didn't hold up that legislation. But bipartisanship doesn't mean parliamentary groupthink or empty acquiescence. Being constructive doesn't mean being silent. Acting responsibly doesn't mean meekly following along. That might be the Labor Party the government wants, but it's not the opposition that the nation needs.

It's not the opposition that the workers at dnata and their families, and hundreds of thousands of other workers, need either. We have a responsibility as the party of working people to stand up for all of the wage earners of Australia—permanent and casual. We have a duty, as the architects of the Fair Work Act, to protect the rights and conditions of every worker. We have obligations as the party of the social safety net to help ensure that it is stitched strongly enough to respond to crises like this one. We have the ability, as the party who ensured that the Australian economy actually grew during the last global recession to make our voices heard, and, as the party of the future, to think ahead.

A thoughtful and constructive opposition has great value. After all, it was Labor that who called for the wage subsidies in the first place, just as we made constructive suggestions about unemployment benefits, the partner income test, mutual obligation, supporting students, relief from evictions, child care, telehealth, charities, access to broadband and the aviation sector. Just as we cautioned against the government's risky and rushed plan for early access to superannuation, and just as we warned about the faults in the design of the JobKeeper scheme. It gives us no joy whatsoever to say that the super scheme is a mess and that wage subsidies are a very good idea being very badly implemented.

The Treasurer has just conceded again today that the Morrison government has undershot its own JobKeeper enrolment targets by hundreds of thousands of Australian workers. This is a stunning admission of failure. This is not a saving to be celebrated; it is hundreds of thousands more breadwinners heading off to Centrelink instead. It made obvious what we already suspected: that this Treasurer and this government are fumbling the implementation of this crucial program. Too many Australians are left out and left behind—some accidentally, but many deliberately.

In recent weeks, thousands of businesses have expressed confusion about their eligibility, they're uncertain about their obligations to their employees and they have struggled to access vital bridging finance, made necessary by the scheme's design and its late rollout. Many of them have given up as a consequence. That's why, when unemployment spikes even higher than necessary, this Treasurer's fingerprints will be all over it. The fewer people he signs up to JobKeeper now, the longer the unemployment queues will be and the harder the recovery. The jobless will pay the highest price, but the whole community will suffer as a consequence. We know from the bitter experience of previous recessions just how hard it is for people who lose their jobs in times like these to find another one down the track, and many of them are excluded from the labour market for far too long. There is human wreckage and wasted lives, and sometimes that cascades down the generations. This needs to be avoided at all costs. We can agree that this crisis has brought out some of the best in our country. There is a spirit of cooperation—an adaptability that we will need to build on. We do acknowledge the hard calls that all governments have had to make as they try to support an economy at the same time as they shut most of it down. We don't pretend that this government has got everything wrong—they haven't—but nor should they pretend that they've got everything exactly right.

Last Friday, the Prime Minister gave one of those long press conferences in the prime ministerial courtyard. He said that the last few months have done two things: they've given us a reminder of some things and they've given us a lesson on some other things. That's true enough, I guess. But we need to be clear: this side of the House didn't need to be reminded how important public health is—of course it is. We didn't need to be reminded that every job matters—we've believed that all along as well—or that Australians at their best can focus on something bigger than just ourselves. That's what being Australian is all about. Those opposite might need reminding of all of this, but these are things that Labor has never forgotten. So what have the people really been reminded of during this crisis? Well, we've been reminded of this: the Australian economy wasn't strong enough before and it wasn't working well enough for ordinary Australians. Maybe the long tail years of the long growth decades really did obscure this truth, but it's very plain to us all now. Thankfully, we're not America. Thankfully, we're not Spain or Italy. But, thankfully, that's not the standard that we set for ourselves. Thankfully, we can aspire to something much, much better.

How did we get to this point in 2020 where, after a generation of growth, our economic cupboard is so bare and our defences are so thin? The short story is this: seven years, three Treasurers and one big gamble. They punted that ordinary Australians could keep calm and carry the economy while a Liberal government in Canberra could get away with indulging their usual ideological obsessions. They bet that ordinary people would just keep working, spending, saving, raising kids, settling in Australia and starting and growing business while they kept undermining super, attacking trade unions, cutting penalty rates, cutting essential services and redistributing wealth in the wrong direction.

When Mr Hockey became Treasurer, the Australian economy was strengthening. When he handed it over to Mr Morrison, the Australian economy was weaker but still relatively resilient. By the time Mr Morrison handed it over to Mr Frydenberg, the Australian economy was fragile indeed. They were three different Liberal Treasurers, but they all took the same risk. They all took the risk that the economy would take care of itself while they took care of their mates in marginal seats.

So by the end of last year what did we have? We had slowing quarterly growth, below-trend annual growth and an economy growing barely faster than population. We had: record high underemployment, an unemployment rate higher than the US, UK or New Zealand and almost two million Australians looking for work or more work; the worst run of wages growth on record, missing almost every budget and midyear update forecast; multifactor productivity declining for the first time in eight years and annual labour productivity negative for the first time on record; business investment in decline and at its lowest level since the nineties recession; the private domestic economy going backwards; record household debt; the slowest annual consumption growth since the GFC; childcare costs up more than 30 per cent; and a budget already heaving with a debt that had more than doubled already under those opposite.

Don't forget that the record deficits forecast by Deloitte this week wouldn't be the first, second or third deficits recorded by this government but the seventh, eighth and ninth.

These are the facts that the Treasurer failed to mention in his ministerial statement. So this is not just about the last seven weeks; this is also about the last seven years.

To understand where we're going, we do need to understand where we've been. Be clear: the pandemic may have arrived without warning but weakness in the economy certainly did not. The Reserve Bank had already downgraded Australia's growth forecasts three times. The IMF had already downgraded Australia's forecast by more than global growth, by four times as much as the other advanced economies. The OECD had also slashed its expectations for Australian growth before the crisis by twice as much as the G20 economies as a whole.

Be clear about this, too: when our country woke up on New Year's Day 2020, we had a literal burning platform for change. No summer has ever shown more that what Australia needs is leaders who listen and have empathy and compassion, governments which cooperate, scientists who are heard, businesses that invest and workers who have the skills that they need to turn aspiration into opportunity. But our summer of ashes couldn't teach the Liberals what modern Australia's economy needs, and it looks like our autumn of isolation and anxiety hasn't either. If there is a plan from those opposite, it risks being the same approach that got us into this mess in the first place. Going by the statement that we just heard, they intend to double-down on trickle down.

Just last Friday, the Prime Minister in his courtyard read out a focus group report about how every Australian matters. On the same day we learned that his plan for super, his smash-and-grab raid on the future, has been hacked and compromised in predictable and predicted ways, that making Australians spend their retirement savings now has left the door open for fraudsters to rob ordinary people. He talks about 'Team Australia', but what he really wants is a team separated into two separate dressing rooms: one where a few make all the decisions and one filled with the rest, the players who have to take all the wickets and score all the runs.

They say that we are all in this together, but not if you work at dnata, not if you're a casual worker moving from one company to another and not if you work in hospitality or entertainment or at councils or universities or as a relief teacher in our schools. They say every job matters, but they don't think every job is a keeper. 'We are all in this together' is more than a matter of saying, 'We are all at risk from this coronavirus,' or 'We all have a responsibility to follow the rules.' We are and we do. As the Labor leader pointed out yesterday, 'we are all in this together' is also about what happens next. It's about the Australia we want to live in when life is normal again.

But, unfortunately, instead of the vision that the Labor leader displayed yesterday, we get budget day without a budget. Delaying a budget is forgivable, but delaying a plan is not. The Treasurer had a big opportunity today and he missed it. When Australians wanted a policy program or a detailed economic outlook, all he gave them was a speech cobbled together from old press releases. But when the IMF, the Reserve Bank and the private sector forecasters have released expectations for the economy, the Treasurer has no excuse whatsoever. In the past week alone, the Reserve Bank and Deloitte Access Economics have provided detailed economic and budget forecasts that span several years. The Reserve Bank went even further than usual to describe three potential scenarios, giving definition to the uncertainty which confronts us all. And we should expect no less from the government. Dribbling out a number here or there to one newspaper or another is no substitute for the sort of information that Australians had a right to expect from the Treasurer today.

At a time of acute uncertainty, clarity around the government's expectations and assumptions is more important than ever, because decisions made in the coming weeks, months and beyond will have life-altering consequences for many Australians. We're not out of the woods when the restrictions ease. The government's economic choices will remain as crucial as they were during the worst days of this crisis, and every Australian needs them to get it right.

This is where 'snapback' comes into it. We all want the economy to recover as quickly as possible and for people to go back to work as soon as it's safe—but hoping for the best is not a strategy, especially when the Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Deloitte Access Economics all expect higher unemployment for longer. Every informed commentator expects that the recovery will be patchy and long and that different industries will come back slower than others, yet we get this commentary from the Prime Minister about snapback. The Treasurer couldn't have been clearer about it when he told Paul Kelly this:

The Prime Minister was very strong on how there would be a snap back. They were his words. The economy would 'snap back' and we wanted the economy to bounce back stronger.

Now we read today that the government want to walk away from the language of snapback at the same time as they contemplate pulling some of this welcome support out of the economy. This is not actually about the slogans the Prime Minister abandons; it's about the workers he abandons if he withdraws this support too soon or without factoring in the long tail of this recovery.

Australia needs an economic plan, a plan for when the economy doesn't snapback on the Prime Minister's political timetable, a plan that doesn't withdraw support from the economy too early or too suddenly in a way that cruels the recovery, a plan that doesn't just learn the lessons of 2009 but 2014 as well, a plan that doesn't ask the most vulnerable people to pay the heaviest price for the money that's been borrowed here. Australia needs a plan for jobs and wages and living standards, for investment and productivity and for cleaner and cheaper energy, a plan that deals with the most pressing aspects of this crisis while we plan for the new Australia which comes after. We got none of that today from the Treasurer. We've seen none of that from this government. We didn't get a budget. We didn't get a plan. We got a mug. Australians have sacrificed so much to combat this virus. They've work together and they've stayed apart, but all they got today for their efforts was a speech from the Treasurer. If they are to get through this crisis and get back to work, they need and deserve much better than that.