Gladys Liu (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on the unprecedented scale of the economic support the Morrison government continues to deliver and our commitment to provide more and more jobs for Australian families and businesses? Is the Treasurer aware of any alternative policies?

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

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question and acknowledge her experience in small business before coming to this place. Just last week, we did a tele town hall with thousands of people across the electorate of Chisholm and talked about our plan out of this crisis.

Last week, we got the jobs data for the month of July. Unemployment fell from 4.9 to 4.6 per cent. There were 2,200 jobs created across the national economy, and the unemployment rate fell to a 12-year low. Normally that would be a cause for celebration, but not now, not with millions of our fellow Australians in lockdown. Those numbers were very much a tale of two cities—Melbourne and Sydney. In Sydney, we saw the impact of lockdowns, with the number of hours worked falling by seven per cent, whereas in Melbourne—because, at the time the survey was taken, Melbourne was coming out of lockdown—we saw an increase in hours worked of 9.7 per cent, showing how resilient the Australian economy is and showing its ability to bounce back.

It also shows how our economic support, both business support and income support, is targeted at those who need it most, particularly for those who've lost hours of work, with payments of $750 a week. Around $4 billion to 1.6 million people is now already out the door, and we have reached agreement with every state and territory about bilateral business support on a fifty-fifty basis. This is helping to support the economy at this time of need.

But there's also a light at the end of the tunnel for those millions of Australians who are doing it tough, and that light at the end of the tunnel is our plan that was agreed to at national cabinet. Australians can't live in lockdown for ever. Indeed, we must learn to live with COVID. And the Australian people have to be prepared for what that means: there will be more cases, there will be serious illness and, indeed, there may be tragic deaths. But at the same time, our plan agreed to by national cabinet is the pathway out, and that is for vaccination rates of 70 per cent and 80 per cent, because in that report it says that at those levels we will see these stringent lockdowns become unlikely. And this is our pathway out of the crisis: vaccination rates at 70 per cent and 80 per cent. And we have seen in the last week alone 1.8 million doses of the vaccine being delivered.

So there are some difficult times ahead, and our economic support is being delivered right across Australia. But we stand with Australians and we seek to implement the plan agreed by national cabinet that all states and territories need to adhere to.