Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has repeatedly announced that wages will go up, but page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1 confirms that real wages will be cut. How is it possible that after eight long years of this government the Prime Minister can rack up a trillion dollars of Liberal debt and Australians get their real wages cut?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget that the Treasurer handed down last night was a plan to secure Australia's recovery. First and foremost, that means getting Australians back into work and getting Australians back into jobs. I'll hand over to the Treasurer in just one moment to address the specific issue that the Leader of the Opposition has raised. As we know, over the course of the current financial year and through the pandemic period many initiatives were undertaken by the government which have had an impact on how the inflation rate has been impacted as a result of those measures—whether it was through child care—and that has provided timing differences in relation to how these matters are measured technically.

What I do know is that the economic recovery plan that is set out in the budget that the Treasurer handed down last night is going to mean more jobs, more investment, more support for Australians in work, lower taxes, better infrastructure—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, it was a very specific question. It did not go to the cuts they have got to infrastructure over the next four years or anything else. It went to page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the House on the point of order.

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, that is nothing more than a stunt. The Leader of the Opposition has been warned about it before. There is no point of order. Holding up books for the cameras does not substitute for some sort of substantive point. The Prime Minister was perfectly in order. The Leader of the Opposition shouldn't waste time.

Honourable members interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Members on both sides will cease interjecting. I'll address this in two parts, as delicately as I can. It is right that members shouldn't use props; they're undesirable. But holding up the budget paper—

An honourable member interjecting—

No, if I stop every time someone interrupts me this might take till 10 past three. The Leader of the Opposition did raise, I think, a legitimate point of order. The Prime Minister was certainly in order up until the fact he broadened out into a number of other issues. He needs to relate his material obviously to the question. Also, to the Leader of the House, in terms of the point of order, I am not sure that he necessarily heard all of the question when it was asked. The Treasurer.

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

Real wages obviously take inflation into account. We have seen modest inflation, so real wages are at their 10-year average. The Leader of the Opposition specifically refers to the fact that we will see mid this year, according to the budget papers, inflation at around 3½ per cent. That is because we saw inflation go negative in the year prior, for the first time in 60 years, as we put in place emergency measures like free child care. What the Leader of the Opposition fails to acknowledge is that the best way to drive up wages, real or nominal, is to blow up the unemployment rate. It is under this government, this coalition, that the unemployment rate today is lower than when we came to government. At 5.6 per cent, the unemployment rate is lower than when we came to government, even after the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression.

In last night's budget we indicated that we are seeking to drive the unemployment rate down even further, from 5.6 per cent down to 5.1 per cent—before the pandemic hit—and even lower. As the RBA and Treasury have said, in order to drive an acceleration in wages you need to have an unemployment rate with a four in front of it. In last night's budget papers, Treasury printed a forecast for the unemployment rate to go under five by the end of next year. Our policies are for more investment in skills, more investment in infrastructure and more investment through tax relief while helping to drive more Australians into jobs. That is our record and that is what we will defend every day of the week.

Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House of how the Morrison government's budget is a plan to secure the next stage of Australia's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for her question. She will know—like I think many in this House, particularly the government members—that last night, as the Treasurer handed down the budget, the response from so many was to welcome so many of those measures. But, most importantly, I note the comments by Chris Richardson, the esteemed economist, who said: 'It is absolutely the right budget for the times. The fight against COVID has become the fight against unemployment.' He is right, and that is exactly what this budget is designed to do as we secure the Australian recovery and we take up that fight against unemployment through the measures that were handed down in this budget.

But, importantly, what this recognises is that we understand the times that we are in right now. Those times are that we have a global pandemic that is not better but worse than it was a year ago—a global pandemic that has raged through the developed world and is now raging through the developing world as we speak. It also comes at a time when we know that the economic impact on the global economy means that this pandemic recession is 30 times worse than what we saw in the global financial crisis. So it is a significant and very difficult time in which we are putting together this recovery plan.

Our actions as a government over the course of the past 18 months have backed Australians in through the course of this pandemic to support the decisions that they are making to get them, their families, their businesses and their employees through what has been such a difficult time, and to manage the health impacts. If Australia had had the average mortality rate of the OECD nations, there would have been 30,000 more fatalities as a result of COVID in this country over the course of this pandemic to this time. In addition, there are more people employed today than before the pandemic began.

Australia has made great advances in this fight against unemployment and the fight against the COVID-19 virus, but we cannot put those gains at risk. That is why securing Australia's recovery is what this budget is all about. It is a plan to secure that recovery, which will ensure that the gains that have been hard won will not be lost but embedded—the jobs that have been taken back, those million Australians finding their way back into the workforce and the employers who have made it possible and the bravery of those Australians getting that job done. That's what this budget is about: a plan for securing Australia's recovery.

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

My question is to the Treasurer. According to page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1, workers who have been lucky enough to hang onto their jobs through the pandemic will now have their real wages cut. What is the point of an eight-year-old government racking up $1 trillion of Liberal debt when workers' wages are not keeping up with their bills?

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

It is surprising to get a question from the member for Rankin on the issue of real wages, when real wages to the December quarter were higher than when Labor left office—higher than when Labor left office!

The reality is that the key to driving higher wages is a tighter labour market with more people in work. This is an inconvenient truth for the member for Rankin, who always seeks to make politics in this chamber rather than acknowledging the national interest. But half a million jobs have been created since the last budget. In the MYEFO in December last year, Treasury were forecasting an unemployment rate of 7½ per cent in the March quarter, and today it is 5.6 per cent.

We announced in last night's budget significant measures to invest more in infrastructure, more in skills, tax relief for families, business investment incentives and childcare reforms to drive greater workforce participation. They are all designed to make our economy stronger. The measures of the Morrison government have been targeted and designed to get more people in work. We knew that we had to transition in last night's budget off emergency support measures like JobKeeper. You know that the member for Rankin was begging us to continue spending more than $2 billion per month on JobKeeper, but we held firm. The good news for the House is that, since JobKeeper ended, around 120,000 Australians have come off income support, which is a direct pointer to the resilience and the strength of the labour market.

The member for Rankin described what Australia went through last year as the deepest, most damaging recession for almost 100 years. The fact that Australia is now recovering strongly, ahead of the global pack, is something that we can all know that the Australian people have helped achieve. It's not the result of luck, because Australians make their own luck.

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Will the Treasurer outline to the House how last night's budget is a plan to secure our recovery and how it maintains the Morrison government's ongoing commitment to generating jobs and lowering taxes for Australian families so they can keep more of their hard earned money?

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

I thank the member for Fisher, who in a previous life was an apprentice carpenter and is somebody who understands the importance of apprenticeships. That's something that was backed in last night's budget. But, importantly for the member for Fisher, more than 63,000 taxpayers in his electorate got a tax cut last night and more than 7,000 businesses in his electorate will be able to access business tax incentives as a result of measures in last night's budget.

At the height of this pandemic, Australia was staring into the economic abyss. Treasury feared that unemployment could reach as high as 15 per cent and that GDP growth could fall by more than 20 per cent. The Morrison government responded with an unprecedented amount of economic support—now $291 billion—with programs like JobKeeper, which helped support 3.8 million Australians in a job; JobSeeker, which helped support 1½ million Australians who were out of work; and the cash flow boost, which supported 800,000 businesses and not-for-profits. As a result of those measures we have seen Australia become the first of the major advanced economies to have employment rise above the prepandemic levels with, today, 75,000 more Australians in work since the beginning of the pandemic.

In last night's budget, we announced further investment in skills, with $2.7 billion for more apprenticeships. We announced more money for the JobTrainer program so we can support 450,000 training places. We supported new measures to incentivise employers to take on the long-term unemployed. There's investment in foundational skills: maths, English and computer literacy. We announced in last night's budget $15 billion of new infrastructure spending to keep our 10-year pipeline going. And, of course, in last night's budget we announced significant tax relief which will support more than 10 million Australians, low- and middle-income earners, get up to $1,080 in their pocket as a result of measures supported on this side of the House. This side of the House believes in lower taxes, this side of the House believes in a stronger economy and this side of the House believes in creating more jobs. That's what last night's budget will deliver.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister confirm this fact: that page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1 shows a cut to real wages?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The budget papers are tabled, and they're there for all members to be able to note. I refer the member to the Treasurer's response to this matter when it was raised earlier. We came off a year last year where inflation was negative, and we've moved into a year where we've seen prices adjust in the following year, so it's not surprising, if those opposite think that inflation is going to be running at over three per cent, then they would be expecting interest rates to rise as well. We all know from the Governor of the Reserve Bank that that is not what he has got planned in his public statements.

Mr Albanese interjecting—

The Leader of the Opposition may seek to delve into these things, but what he doesn't appreciate and doesn't understand—for a Leader of the Opposition to have spent so much time in this parliament, so much time here, and to have so little experience in understanding—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will resume his seat.

Mr Burke interjecting—

The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat.

Government members interjecting—

Members on my right! I say to the Prime Minister that he shouldn't refer in that way to the Leader of the Opposition, because he didn't ask the question. The question was asked by the Manager of Opposition Business. I do think that up until that point the Prime Minister was in order, given the nature of the question. I will call the Prime Minister and listen.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was responding to the interjections of the Leader of the Opposition.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, but it's not a good practice, Prime Minister.

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's fairly regular, Mr Speaker. Securing Australia's economic recovery is what this budget is all about. The budget supports jobs. It drives unemployment down, which supports wages—

Mr Burke interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business? The Prime Minister has concluded.