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

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer remind the House of the significant level of income support the Morrison government is providing to help business and families get through the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in my home state of Victoria?

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

I thank the honourable member for her question and acknowledge her deep experience as a medical researcher par excellence and at the Royal Children's Hospital. She knows, like we know on this side of the House, that the economic recovery is now underway. In the last four months, 446,000 jobs have been created. We saw consumer confidence up seven weeks in a row, recovering around 95 per cent of its falls. We saw consumer sentiment up by 11.9 per cent, the largest single increase in a budget month since the series first began back in 1974. And recently we saw our AAA credit rating reaffirmed.

Unfortunately, in Victoria there's been a very high economic and health price paid by the second lockdown. Victoria now represents half—or 52 per cent—of the decline in employment nationally since March. Jobs have fallen by 73 per cent in the last two months in Victoria alone—around 1,200 jobs per day have been lost—compared to an increase of 172,000 jobs across the rest of the country, or more than 2,000 jobs being created each day. Female employment has fallen by 24,000 in Victoria since May. This compares to 300,000 jobs created for women across all other states. Three-quarters of the fall in employment over the last year for those aged 15 to 24 is in Victoria. Between July and September, the number of effectively unemployed people has increased by 127,000 people in Victoria, or more than 2,000 a day. That paints a very painful picture of what has occurred. That's why it was with real surprise that there wasn't an announcement yesterday about the reopening in Victoria, with the Australian Industry Group saying:

Today’s reversal is a shock and undermines any remaining confidence that the Victorian Government knows what it is doing to open the state’s economy.

The BCA, COSBOA and the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry were equally critical.

We, the Morrison government, will continue to support the Victorian people. We are continuing to provide around $200 million a day to Victorian families and businesses. We know that over the forward estimates the expectation is that around $75 billion will go from the Commonwealth to Victorians. So it's really important today that the Premier of Victoria seizes this opportunity with the reduction in the number of cases to open businesses in a COVID-safe way to allow Victorian to get back to work. (Time expired)