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

[by video link] My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer inform the House how the Morrison government is working in partnership with state governments to provide further economic support for businesses and individuals impacted by the most recent COVID lockdown?

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 experience as a psychologist in small business before coming to this place. I had the opportunity to visit the member for Reid's electorate prior to this most recent lockdown. We visited a business called Papa's Patisserie. They used JobKeeper to keep their staff in work and now they are using the payments and the support that the Morrison government, combined with the Berejiklian government, has provided businesses across New South Wales.

Our economic support, including our COVID disaster payments, have been made available to people across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia in recent weeks. As we heard from the minister, over a billion dollars has already been processed in claims across those states. If somebody has lost 20 hours or more of work, they are entitled to $750 a week, if they're in those hotspot areas. If they've lost between eight and 19 hours of work, they are entitled to $450. And, if someone is receiving income support and has lost eight or more hours of work, they're entitled to $200. This income support that we are providing to households and to families is on top of the business support that we are providing, including in the state of New South Wales where we reached a 50-50 agreement that, if a business has a turnover of between $75,000 and $250 million and their turnover has fallen by 30 per cent or more as a result of the lockdowns, those businesses can be entitled to between $1,500 and $100,000 a week. That is significant business support which will help them get through this crisis. Again, it's a 50-50 split that we have reached with the New South Wales government.

Our economic support and our health support totals more than $300 billion, and it has helped cushion the blow of this once-in-a-century pandemic and it has helped see the Australian economy be bigger today than when we went into the pandemic. On the last jobs data we saw 160,000 more Australians in work than prior to this pandemic, and our economic recovery had been stronger and faster than any other advanced economy. So these may be inconvenient truths for those opposite, but the reality is that our economy is resilient, it will continue to grow and it will rebound after we get through this recent crisis.