Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer explain to the House how the Morrison government is securing Australia's future by building the road to economic recovery as we come out the other side of the coronavirus pandemic?

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

I thank the member for Higgins for her question and acknowledge her experience before coming to this place as a professor of paediatrics and as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I hear lots of interjections from those opposite; they only wish they had the qualifications the member for Higgins does.

The reality is that COVID-19 has been an economic shock to Australia like no other. It has been an economic shock on both the supply and the demand side. When we came to government, unemployment was at 5.7 per cent. In February we got it down to 5.1 per cent, but it is the expectation that unemployment will reach around 10 per cent by the end of the year. The Morrison government's response has been swift and substantial, with a JobKeeper program which is today supporting more than 3½ million workers and around one million businesses. It's a 'remarkable program', in the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank.

Businesses like The Gables, a wedding venue in the member's electorate, run by Jessica, has 10 people in the JobKeeper program. She has said that the income has stopped but the bills keep coming in. Without JobKeeper, she would be fearing for the future of her business, which she has been in possession of for the last 25 years. It's not only JobKeeper; it's also the cash flow boost, which is providing support of up to $100,000 to small and medium-sized businesses to assist with working capital. It's also been the $750 payments that we've provided to millions of Australians, including pensioners, who are on income support. These programs are working, because, of the 1.3 million Australians who either lost their job or saw their working hours reduced to zero since the start of this crisis, around 700,000 are now back in work. In the last two months 340,000 jobs were created, and 58 per cent of those jobs went to women and 44 per cent of those jobs went to young people. That is a positive sign of the programs that the Morrison government has undertaken.

Our JobMaker plan continues to help businesses remain in business and Australians remain in jobs—for example, the work we are doing on industrial relations around casuals, around greenfield sites and around award simplification and infrastructure, bringing forward up to $10 billion worth of spending. When it comes to red tape, we are harmonising the occupational licensing laws around this country—the first time that that would have been done after years of debate. On skills: there are 340,000 new places, training positions, to help equip people for the jobs of the future. And, of course, there is tax, with incentives like the instant asset write-off. This is the Morrison government getting on with creating and delivering jobs.