Interview with Sabra Lane, ABC AM
17 July 2020
SABRA LANE: Welcome back to the program.
PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON: G'day, Sabra.
LANE: Just on that report we heard, Australian scientists, they're at the forefront of COVID vaccine research as well, are spies targeting their work?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I don't typically go into these things, as our cyber attributions have a pretty high standard that you apply to them but we're aware of a lot of cyber intrusions that are occurring across Australia at the moment. I made reference to that some time ago. Some of those are by State actors, others are by criminal syndicates and that's why it's important that right across the board that we continue to strengthen what we're doing in the cyberspace. We've made a $470 million investment to expand our cyber security workforce. We just announced the $1.35 billion over the next decade and this builds on the work that we announced going back from 2016. So our cyber strategy continues to strengthen in response to what are real and genuine threats.
LANE: To the mini-budget, you've stopped using the "snap back" language but many people are quite worried the Government will suddenly reduce they've got JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments, what is the Government thinking?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the reference you made was to something that was said months and months ago, Sabra, and a lot has changed since then. I don't think anyone has a crystal ball here when it relates to the pandemic and circumstances change and the Government has changed with those. I mean our support for JobKeeper and JobSeeker is unprecedented in Australia. $70 billion of support and I've made it clear now for some time that there would be a further phase of income support that would extend beyond where we are with JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We'll have more to say about that next week. It will be targeted, it will be a national program, it will address those businesses in most need wherever they are.
But I would expect that that would particularly be the case, because of what's occurred in Victoria and around Melbourne. But also those parts of the country like in North Queensland and parts of the Gold Coast and others which have also been very affected by the downturn in international tourism.
LANE: Yesterday you said we've not been locked into thinking of the past or constrained in any way. Could you just sort of flesh that out. What do you mean?
PRIME MINISTER: I mean practical problems require practical solutions. They're not driven by ideology or anything like that. We're doing what's needed. Whether it's the incredible support that's been going in, not just from the Commonwealth Government but all States and Territories, to help Victoria right now to give them everything they need to get on top of this and we've got Commodore Hill down there now down in Victoria as part of that leadership effort to ensure we can get on top of the situation in Victoria or it's, you know, the announcement we made yesterday,
$2 billion to support apprentices and skills training. It's the $250 million we put into supporting the entertainment sector, the $400 million I’ll announce later today for getting more screen productions in Australia and the 8,000 jobs that will produce, the HomeBuilder program, which is getting a great response and has proved to be a very effective stimulus or, indeed, the $750 payments that went out again this week to pensioners in particular and other welfare recipients to ensure that money goes back into the economy to support businesses, particularly as they're opening up in seven States and Territories and look forward to a time where that can happen in Victoria, too.
LANE: The youth unemployment rate, it is now at 16.4 per cent. You asked Australians to keep their heads up yesterday but many are finding it tough. A recent Headspace survey found 51 per cent of young people say their mental health has declined since March. How should they keep their heads up, especially if they don't have work or not many hours?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this is why we've just put half a billion dollars, matched by the states, 340,000 training places, 180,000 apprenticeship places. I mean the jobs figures yesterday, and the effective rate of unemployment, I've heard in your introduction that it's much higher than what the headline rate is, you're right, it was at 13.9 per cent in May and it's fallen to 11.3 per cent in June and there's 210,000 jobs that were created in June that came back into the economy. That's the biggest number ever in recorded economic history in Australia, and that shows that as the economy opens up, half of those jobs went to young people and so those most affected by the downturn are those who are most getting jobs back into the economy we’ve seen in those most recent numbers. And that's welcome.
It's got a long way to go, don't get me wrong, we've still got a long way to go and things are very tough out there but it shows that as we open things up, we're on top of it and that means the jobs come back and they come back particularly for those who have been most impacted which are young people and women.
LANE: Those jobs, unfortunately most of them were part-time, at least it was work but they were part-time, they weren't full-time jobs.
PRIME MINISTER: That doesn't surprise me in this economy. I mean the hours, the underemployment rate also fell from 13.1 to 11.7 per cent and the hours worked went up. But because of the benefit of the flexible industrial arrangements we have at the moment, it means that people are keeping jobs. They may not have as many hours as they had before but in this economy, in this COVID-19 recession, being in a job comes at a premium and I welcome the fact that businesses are choosing to keep more people on and sharing those hours around a bit and that's going to be necessary into the future.
I mean a big part of the JobKeeper program has been the industrial relations flexibility that's attached to those businesses and even for those that are doing much better now, that will continue to be very important for them, otherwise people will lose jobs.
LANE: Just on the JobTrainer package yesterday, employers did welcome the wage subsidy program saying it's good support rather than an incentive and AI Group's Innes Willox says if the economy continues to decline, new measures will be required to encourage employers to take on school leavers. Is the Government open to that?
PRIME MINISTER: We're always open to how we're going to do better to create jobs and this is what I was referring before, where there's practical problems we need to fix, we will be there to fix them with the States and Territories and we've demonstrated that at every turn, Sabra. At every single turn, when it comes to creating jobs, supporting people with income support from those who are beneficiary recipients, all the way through, the young people coming out of school looking for training places, people in their 50s who are going to have to change jobs, the support we put into the aviation sector, the home building sector, the entertainment sector, I mean we are looking at all the areas where we can get Australia through this and we're having relatively good results compared to developed economies around the world.
I mean our economy has not fallen as much in places like New Zealand, for example, who had a much heavier lockdown and have paid a much heavier economic price for that. We've been steering a more middle course on this and that's been benefiting our economy and where there's outbreaks like we have in Victoria we've got to get on top of them and that's what we're working to achieve right now. But an outbreak from quarantine could easily occur in New Zealand as it could in Australia.
LANE: To Victoria, Premier Andrews has signalled that all options are on the table and he's mentioned stage 4 restrictions meaning that office work might be banned. How bad do you think it might get?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think it's still a bit premature, as the premier has said, for those options and we still, yet, wouldn't expect to see in the numbers the impacts of the lockdown yet. So I said earlier in the week that I was expecting to see the sort of numbers that we've been seeing, I thought over 300, that was concerning. But I wasn't expecting to see those numbers falling in the immediate term. But we will be watching those closely and that's why it's so important to get those extra Defence Force personnel down there on the ground, supporting in all the tasks, whether they're out there helping paramedics, they're out there supporting the lockdown, they're getting supplies to people, supporting the testing clinics and importantly the leadership through our One-star Commodore who is down there ensuring that we're getting greater tasking of the tracing work that needs to be done, not just in Victoria but New South Wales is helping there, I understand I think Queensland is helping as well. There's a big national effort to help Victoria and I thank all those premiers and chief ministers for the support they're giving to Victoria and I know Dan feels the same way.
LANE: Given the national effort, there are no answers yet on what caused the spikes there, why there were shortfalls in contact tracing, no results on the genomic testing have been made public to show how infection is spreading. The Premier says the inquiry in September will deliver those answers but given the national effort and the lessons that everyone could take from those answers, should those results be out now?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we're working closely with Victorians on all of those issues and as you probably would have noted last Friday we agreed at National Cabinet to do a full review of quarantine arrangements all around the country and that was being done out of caution and good practice and Jane Holton is doing that review and she's getting underway now with all of that. Because if you have those problems in quarantine in Queensland or Western Australia, you know, you can't hide behind borders on that.
I mean we can't think that borders and restrictions are the defence against the virus. The defence against the virus is strong contact tracing. It's stronger testing regimes, it's the CovidSafe app, all it's all of these things working together, that's the defence you need, that's what's been borne out in New South Wales right now. They've had a shock, too, with the Crossroads incident and the transmission there that came out of Victoria, and they have moved very quickly, and I commend them for the great job they've done.
LANE: Restrictions are about saving lives but there are some voices out there who say the restrictions are too onerous and that COVID is mild in most cases. What do you say to that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the death rate for coronavirus is at least five times higher than for the flu. I mean for those most vulnerable, it is a fatal disease - infection, potentially. So you can't just dismiss it. I mean just look around the world. I mean in New York they were digging mass graves for goodness sake and so I think to dismiss this it would be a mistake. But equally, it is true that the vast majority of people who contract coronavirus have a mild illness. That's true. But for most of those, particularly those who are younger, they can spread the virus very, very quickly.
The real issue with this coronavirus is just how fast it spreads and the way it spreads and transmits which presents a real challenge. And if it gets a head of steam up then it can disable your entire economy, and so that's why it's important. We've done a lot of work with the States and Territories and funded significant resources to get our health systems able to withstand an outbreak and so issues like ICU beds and respirators, all of that, PPE equipment, we've done enormous work on there to ensure Australia is well placed to deal with that. I mean we've released 5 million masks into the aged care sector in Victoria and it's mandatory to have those masks in place in all of those facilities. We've learnt the lessons from earlier things in the aged care sectors, things like Newmarch and so on and those lessons are now being applied.
This is unchartered territory so we've all got to keep learning with every incident that occurs and the National Cabinet's been a good forum for that learning to come to that table and the premiers and the chief ministers and I have been very candid with each other in talking through the issues and understanding the lessons and I thank Premier Andrews for the way he's been candid with his colleagues about this.
LANE: Prime Minister, thanks for joining the program this morning.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks a lot, Sabra.
