Media Releases
Morrison Government Invests $190 Million in Transport Infrastructure to Boost NT Economic Recovery
5 October 2020
Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Infrastructure Transport and Regional Development, Treasurer, Minister for Population Cities and Urban Infrastructure, Senator for the Northern Territory
The Northern Territory economy will be boosted, roads will be safer and thousands of jobs created, with a $190 million investment into transport infrastructure from the Federal Coalition as part of our COVID-19 economic recovery plan.
The latest funding injection builds on a series of territory-wide infrastructure investments from the Commonwealth in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic which now total more than $244 million.
Key investments for the Northern Territory include $120 million to upgrade the Carpentaria Highway and $47 million for National Network Highway Upgrades.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Tuesday’s Federal Budget would deliver funding for infrastructure which supports the Government’s JobMaker plan and help the Northern Territory recover from COVID-19.
“We have been working closely with state and territory governments to invest in the infrastructure that is ready to go and can help rebuild our economy and create more jobs,” the Prime Minister said.
"These projects will keep commuters safe on the road, get people home to their loved ones sooner and provide better transport links for urban and regional communities.”
“As part of the COVID-19 economic recovery plan we have invested an additional $244 million focused on shovel-ready projects across the Northern Territory.
“This latest investment will provide another boost to the local economy and is part of our plan to support an estimated 1,050 direct and indirect jobs across the state.”
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development Michael McCormack said the Government is focused on delivering priorities and boosting local jobs as part of Australia’s road to recovery.
“We will draw on local businesses to stimulate local economies through these projects,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.
“Infrastructure means jobs, it means livelihoods, it means stronger local communities and it means building a better and more secure future for our nation.”
Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge said the Government is driving the delivery of major infrastructure projects to map the economic road back from the pandemic, building the economy and providing certainty for business over the long term.
“Key investments across the Territory include $120 million for upgrades to the Carpentaria Highway and $23 million to upgrade the Stuart Highway at Coolalinga,” Minister Tudge said.
“The Australian Government will continue to invest in the Territory economy in the coming years, including through new commitments such as $47 million for priority upgrades to the national highway network.”
Senator for the Northern Territory Sam McMahon said these investments will deliver on the Government’s economic plan for a stronger and more resilient Australia, boosting the economy, meeting our national freight challenge and getting Australians home sooner and safer.
“The Government’s commitment to infrastructure of critical importance continues across the Territory, supporting local jobs and businesses at the time it is needed most,” Senator McMahon said.
Since being elected in 2013 the Liberal and Nationals Government have committed more than $2.7 billion for infrastructure in the Northern Territory.
Safe Travel Zone with New Zealand
2 October 2020
Prime Minister, Minister for Infrastructure Transport and Regional Development, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Women, Minister for Health, Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Trade Tourism and Investment
The Australian Government is establishing a Safe Travel Zone with New Zealand.
This is the next step for a COVID-safe Australia that will reunite families and friends, offer opportunities for businesses looking for workers, and back the communities that depend on tourism.
Australia and New Zealand have worked closely together since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
We are committed to opening up both domestic travel within Australia and travel with New Zealand, as well as other low risk countries as soon as the health advice says it is safe to do so.
The Australian Government’s Department of Health has undertaken a public health risk assessment of COVID-19 in New Zealand, which indicated that New Zealand posed a low risk of COVID-19 transmission to Australia.
Passengers from New Zealand will be able to travel to Australia, quarantine-free, from Friday, 16 October, provided they have not been in an area designated as a COVID-19 hotspot in New Zealand in the preceding 14 days.
As has been announced already, the Australian Government is defining a hotspot using a three-day rolling average of three locally acquired cases per day.
There are currently no COVID-19 hotspots in New Zealand. The last locally acquired case with an unidentified epidemiological source occurred on 21 August 2020. We are working closely with New Zealand authorities to ensure we are notified promptly of any outbreaks there.
Any state or territory that imposes travel restrictions consistent with the Australian Government-defined hotspot, as advised by the acting Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, will be able to participate in the Safe Travel Zone.
After offering these arrangements at the latest National Cabinet, we have reached agreement for this first stage of quarantine-free travel with New South Wales and the Northern Territory. We welcome those jurisdictions’ commitment to reopening Australia to the world.
Normal visa requirements will apply and travellers returning to New Zealand from Australia will be required to comply with New Zealand’s travel requirements.
The Australian Government will provide increased Australian Border Force support at airports to support the establishment of green lanes of travel for New Zealanders and collecting information on arrivals to assist with contact tracing if required.
We expect the establishment of quarantine-free travel to Australia from New Zealand will also free up space for around an additional 325 passengers a week to enter quarantine in Sydney.
More information will be available at www.smartraveller.gov.au
Q&A, National Press Club
1 October 2020
Sabra Lane: Thank you. You touched on industrial relations a couple of times in your speech and in fact the last time that you were here, as you acknowledge, you launched JobMaker, where you talked about the need for change on industrial relations and you voiced a time-bound approach with September as the deadline with a number of round-table groups, where you also appealed to people to put down their tribal - traditional tribal allegiances to one side. September's come and gone. Can you tell us where that process is at? Is IR reform still part of your agenda? And will it be announced in the weeks ahead?
Prime Minister: It certainly, certainly definitely is. I want to thank all of those who have participated in what has been a fairly feverish paced possess and there has been a lot of good faith and goodwill. There have been a few disagreements along the way, not to be unexpected. But at the same time, people have remained at the table. And the Attorney-General and I have been very grateful for that, as has the Treasurer. And we have finished that round of the process, and that is being distilled by the Attorney-General, as Minister for Industrial Relations, and he is now fashioning a plan that will come forward to the Cabinet. We've already had a number of discussions about where that would take us. I think we have been able to make some good progress and the government will make further decisions about how much further we would go beyond what has been discussed because ensuring that we have an industrial relations system that can employ more people, particularly now, is so critical. We can't have the rather militant response and approach that we're currently seeing out there in Port Botany. I mean, we're talking about a dispute here where they are seeking to reduce automation technology at our waterfront. To resist the improvements in productivity that will support farmers get their products to international markets. I mean, the process has to be, surely, about making the enterprises that employ people work better for everybody. Our ports are a critical link in our economic chain with the world. And we can't do industrial relations that way. My hope is that that is an outlier, that that is an aberration, that that is not a position that is more broadly shared amongst those in the industrial relations area. And so I hope some commonsense will prevail there and the interests of Australians right across the country, from the paddock to the cities, will be respected in resolving that as quickly as possible.
Lane: Reminder to my colleagues, please, one question per person. David Crowe.
David Crowe: Thank you Sabra. David Crowe from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Thanks for your speech, Prime Minister. You mentioned research and development several times during your speech. Before the Senate at the moment, the government has a bill that changes taxation on R&D, saves money. One of the critics of that bill is a company called ResMed, which of course has made a big contribution this year by making ventilators.
Prime Minister: True.
Crowe: At the moment, you seem to be spending $1.5 billion on manufacturing, at the same time you save $1. 8 billion on R&D tax concessions. Does that make sense? Are you open to rethinking the R&D tax changes so that you can actually encourage more research and development?
Prime Minister: We certainly want to encourage more research and development. And our answer to that question will be delivered by the Treasurer next Tuesday night.
Crowe: So there will be more in the Budget?
Prime Minister: His answer will be to that question in the Budget next Tuesday night.
Crowe: Can I have a third question?
Lane: That is very cheeky.
Crowe: Can you offer any more guidance as to what kind of changes you are thinking about?
Lane: Goodness gracious.
Prime Minister: The Budget speech starts soon after 7:00pm.
Lane: Thank, David. Rosie Lewis. From The Australian.
Rosie Lewis: Rosie Lewis from The Australian. Treasury's best case assumptions in the July budget were quickly derailed.
Prime Minister: Sorry, can you start that again Rosie?
Lewis: Treasury's best case assumptions in the July budget update were quickly derailed. We had Victoria's lockdown extended and new border closures come into play. How confident can you be in next week's Budget assumptions as the country reopens again and how vital is it that once states do open they stay open?
Prime Minister: On the last point, I mean absolutely important. That is why we have to be patient about the process we're currently engaged in. We do not want to see a third wave in Victoria or a second wave anywhere else in the country. So that's why getting it right and making sure the testing, tracing and the outbreak containment measures are totally up to the mark and to ensure that we contain any outbreaks that may occur and it wouldn't be surprising to see other cases occur as states and territories open up. But as New South Wales has demonstrated, you can do that and keep your economy open. I think New South Wales, as I've said on many occasions, provides the gold standard about how you actually achieve this. In relation to the Budget numbers themselves, Australia is in as good a position, if not better than most, to be able to assess where our finances will go and how our economy will perform. But we are living in the most uncertain times any of us have seen in trying to get an understanding of what these numbers will be. I think what we've seen over the last four or five months, backed up the wisdom of having the Budget now, not in May. It would have been a very different budget in May. I am sure Mathias would agree to what we are now handing down next week. And it was wise to be patient, to not rush, to ensure we better understood what was happening with COVID-19 and our capacity to deal with it. Now, Australia has been able to balance both the health and the economic objectives better than almost every other country in the world today. Certainly every other developed country. As I said, only Norway, economies like Taiwan, then countries like South Korea and Finland as well, I could probably add to that list, have been able to combine these dual objectives as well as Australia has. But that said, we're in the same global economy as everyone else. Australia's economy, we can do everything we can to boost it here in Australia, through the measures that will be in next week's Budget and the JobMaker plan over the next five years. But we will also be vulnerable to the global economy. 4.5 per cent fall this year, 45 times worse than the GFC. That is something to reflect on. So, in that environment, I think Treasury's task, and the Reserve Bank's task for that matter, the OECD and others, their task is very, very difficult. And so that's what we will know next week. If circumstances change again in the future, as you've seen the government do, we've quickly come together, considered any changes that are necessary, and we've acted. And that's what you have seen for the last six months. That's what Australians will continue to see.
Lane: Phil Coorey.
Phil Coorey: Hi, PM. Phil Coorey from the AFR. Just on your comments on sovereign manufacturing capability plans, you said the crisis is not an excuse for protectionist policies to subsidise inefficient firms to make things here locally. Do you consider government procurement protectionist? In other words, a state or federal government agreeing to effectively underwrite the manufacture of critical products here by agreeing to by them. Do you see that as protectionist or otherwise?
Prime Minister: On those issues, we will always abide by the World Trade Organisation rules and they are always a key consideration in how we frame our procurement policies. And we cast them as being Mathias's responsibility as Finance Minister for setting those. You have to balance your ambitions as an open, trading nation and you do that by respecting those rules and playing your part in upholding those rules, and modernising those rules, which we're doing. But at the same time, understanding that we have a great opportunity through how we procure as a country, whether it is in defence or anywhere else. I mean, I was advised today that 95.7 per cent by volume and 91.6 by value of the contracts awarded by the Australian government in 2018-19 were to businesses with an Australian address. I think Mathias has done a pretty good job on that. That has been assisting, supporting, modernising, energising Australian small and medium-sized businesses all around the country. So, Phil, you abide by the rules, and that's what the rules are designed to protect against - that is against protectionism. And if you are complying with those rules, well, I think you're in the right spot. That is where we find ourselves.
Lane: Andrew Probyn.
Andrew Probyn: Prime Minister, Andrew Probyn from the ABC. In recent weeks and months, you and the Treasurer and perhaps Mathias Cormann as well have been talking about aggregate demand. And for those people who haven’t studied economics, it is basically getting a lot of consumption, whether it is through government spending, business investment or through household investment. My question is about households. Given that we can probably expect some tax cuts next week, how, what are the methods by which you can get households to consume and spend in the stimulatory way that the Budget requires?
Prime Minister: You're right to point to aggregate demand. And I set out there were three components to the Budget. The first one was to cushion the blow. The second one was to recover what was lost. And the third to build for the future. Now, the JobMaker plan, of which the manufacturing strategy forms an important part, is very much part of that five-year to 10-year plan around boosting the productivity and performance of the Australian economy. So, as we shock absorb the blow of COVID and we recover what was lost, then we can grow into a more productive economy domestically. But the second point around recovery and cushioning that blow goes very much to aggregate demand. And with aggregate demand, those measures have included JobKeeper, it included JobSeeker, it included cashflow support, it also included the boost to the instant asset write-off. It's already had in place, I mean, the wisdom of getting in place personal income tax cuts two years out from when this occurred. So right here, right now, Australians have more money from what they have earned in their pocket in a time when they have needed it more than at any other time. That was something worth fighting for. It was something worth fighting for at the last election and Australians were right to endorse it and we were right to legislate it. And we had our opponents. We had those who tried to stop us. We had those who actually ran against us at the last election not wanting those income tax to come into place. They are important contributors to aggregate demand. There have been support payments that have been made through the welfare system, to welfare beneficiaries and particularly to pensioners and those on the disability pension and other benefits. All of these combine together to support the volume of activity in our economy. And that's why they do play an important part in our demand.
Probyn: But you don't want them to save it. You want them to spend it.
Prime Minister: That is what aggregate demand is.
Probyn: I know. My question was about how do you encourage people to spend it rather than save it?
Prime Minister: Well, point 1 - I never tell people what to do with their own money. Ever. Because you know why? It's theirs. And particularly when you are talking about income tax cuts, they're just getting to keep more of what they earn. Now, in these times, we have seen, particularly when it comes to retail and particularly on household items, we have seen, I think, quite extraordinarily an increase in the response in those areas, and that has responded to the aggregate demand stimulus we have put into the economy. So I would argue, Andrew, that the measures that we have put in place have done exactly what you are suggesting should be done. And measures like that will continue to get those outcomes and they will be important and they're an important part of the Budget.
Lane: Katharine Murphy.
Prime Minister: But I'm not going to get into giving an edict to Australians about how they should spend their money. There are plenty of people out there who like to tell people how to spend their money. The Liberal and National parties are not two of those organisations.
Lane: Katharine Murphy.
Prime Minister: Andrew, Katharine. As always. I am sure you guys set this up. You’ve had a meeting, said that should be the process.
Katherine Murphy: Almost like someone set it up. Hello, Prime Minister. Katharine Murphy from the Guardian. You have been critical of Labor in the past for failing to quantify the costs of their climate and energy policies. So, in that vein, has the government quantified the cost to taxpayers of your gas-led recovery? Obviously, you have telegraphed $53 million in the Budget next week. But you have also foreshadowed opening a number of new gas basins, you have foreshadowed potential underwriting of infrastructure and common sense tells us that some of these projects may require taxpayer indemnities. So, what is the total cost? Has the government modelled the impact of these initiatives on your own government's climate policies? And also, where do your employment estimates come from, given the Grattan Institute in a forthcoming report indicates that only 1 per cent of manufacturing workers work in gas-intensive manufacturing?
Prime Minister: 40 per cent of their costs, as Andrew Liveris tells us, is in gas. I mean, the thing about gas that I think has been misunderstood - gas is both a way of supporting renewable investment, renewable energy sources to firm it. Because when you look at the costed per unit cost of electricity that comes from all the various sources, whether it's solar, or wind or gas or others, you need to compare it on a reliability measure. And to make the record investment that we've had in renewables work better for the system, it needs the firming capacity. Now, we know that batteries are not at that scale yet. They're not at that scale yet. That is understood. And gas is, as I said, it selects itself because there is not another resource that can so quickly peak to support the renewables, to ensure that it has that reliability to support heavy industries. So, I would contest the assumptions that have been made that you have referred to, because gas not only provides the energy support, but it provides the feed stock. I mean, you can't make plastic with wind. You can't make plastic with solar. You make it with gas. You can make it with hydrogen as well. But gas is both a feed stock to support industry and manufacturing sectors, and it is also a source of power that supports households. Now, the interventions that we may undertake are interventions that we would prefer to be done in the market sector, and, in particular, whether it is the gas peaking plan, as Angus and I have been talking about up in the Hunter, we would prefer if AGL did that. And they’re going through their estimates at the moment. If we were to do it, well it wouldn’t be so much central government that would be doing it, it would be Snowy Hydro that would do it. They would do it on a commercial basis. That would be part of their business plans. In terms of what investment may be made in areas of the distribution networks, again, I think there are very strong commercial arguments for how that infrastructure can be expanded. But at this point, the gaps in that and the costs of that are yet to be determined and so we will consider that at the time. When it comes to our investment in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA, we have set those costs out in terms of where we are going to be investing. Those investments in both of those initiatives, their purpose is to lower emissions, and that's why we believe both ARENA and the CEFC require a broader remit. Because if the purpose is to lower emissions, why would you leave out things that lower emissions? We actually know to achieve, whether it is our 2030 target or those that get set for beyond that, then you need to be investing in the technology that achieves that more than 10 years from now. And so that's why we want to expand the remit of the CEFC, that’s why we want to extend the remit of ARENA and we have set out what those costs are. So at present time, there is a clear direction of government policy. We want to see actually the private sector invest in these areas. Where the private sector, for whatever reason, because sometimes that's the way oligopolies work, sometimes oligopolies like supply to be constrained so prices can be higher. We don't share that view. We know that if we don't increase the supply, whether it's of gas or otherwise into the system, for energy prices after Liddell goes, that electricity prices will go up. That's not an outcome we're prepared to countenance. So, I don't think these are easy assessments. There will be plenty of models that make all sorts of punts at this but those models will struggle, I think, in the current environment to make a lot of sense of this. But the direction that we have set, I think, is very clear. Gas is the transition fuel. It is what enables us to move from the energy economy we have now to an energy economy that's going to be there in the future. And importantly, as a feed stock, and through no less an advisor than Andrew Liveris, who knows a bit about this, he made it pretty clear - if you don't fix gas, you can't fix manufacturing. It is in vain.
Murphy: And just a quick one...
Lane: No. I'm sorry, Katharine, everybody else has got to get a crack. Mark Riley. And one question.
Mark Riley: One question, one question.
Prime Minister: You had about 30 on the weekend, Mark.
Riley: I know, I have had plenty, thanks, PM. Mark Riley from the Seven Network. Prime Minister, we are talking today about developing the manufacturing industries of the future. I want to ask you about an apparent deep problem with the manufacturing industries of the present. COVID aside, the data from the website today for the Department of Employment and Skills, which is just pre-COVID, shows serious skills shortages in areas like sheet metal workers, fitters, mechanics, panel beaters, bricklayers, carpenters and joiners, glaziers, plasterers, plumbers, electricians, refrigeration mechanics - it goes on and on and on. We are going to have a record pool of young potential employees and record skills shortages. What will you do to match those two issues?
Prime Minister: That is why many, many months ago I came here and said we needed a JobTrainer fund. That is why we put $1 billion, together with the states and territories, to create 340,000 new training places for exactly those sorts of things this year. This very year. And that commitment of an additional half a billion dollars by the federal government, which I brought to the Premiers and Chief Ministers through our National Cabinet process, and I said you match this. But I don't want you to just match it for this year, we need to move to a whole different way in which we run skills investment in this country. It is run with a rear vision mirror. It is run trying to train people for jobs that were needed five years ago. We need to turn that around. That is why we set up the National Skills Commission, which is now operational. Adam Boynton, the Skills Commissioner, has already briefed the National Cabinet and Federal Cabinet on where those future opportunities are, and how we have to redirect resources into those sectors, particularly those sectors that will be supporting the skills sectors, the sorts of industries I talked about today. By setting priorities, which is what we are doing here, people talked about picking winners. No. We are setting priorities. All manufacturing businesses will be winners from dealing with industrial relations, from getting energy costs down, from getting their taxes lower, by getting the skills areas that we're now talking about, Mark. To be able to support that. They will all win from that. Then we focus on priorities and particular priorities in the roadmaps in each of the sectors, which Karen has been assiduously working on, is to ensure there are training plans and skills development plans in the skill areas they are going to support. Whether it is in aerospace, or whether it is in plastics manufacture and composites to support robust armoured vehicles. That is where we need the people. In the past, I have been an immigration minister and I was furiously frustrated at the way skills were being identified that were actually informing the skills list for immigration. It was terribly outdated. And these were things that were fed up from the ground and were so outdated by the time they hit a list, it just created great frustration. We've turned that on its head with the establishment of the National Skills Commission and now the National Skills Commission is identifying where the future opportunities are. That gets plugged into these plans. That gets plugged into where the billion dollars is spent. That is what the National Cabinet ministers - premiers, I should say - and chief ministers, together with myself, have agreed to with a whole new skills agreement that has already signed a heads of agreement that I referred to earlier. So, Mark, it is a massive part of the manufacturing plan. That's why skills I have been focusing on every single day in this job.
Lane: Prime Minister, we're almost at time. But given your speech went over, are you happy to take some more questions?
Prime Minister: As always, Sabra.
Lane: Excellent. Chris Uhlmann
Chris Uhlmann: Prime Minister, Chris Uhlmann Nine News. More than 90 per cent of Australian's pharmaceuticals are manufactured offshore. You have set a priority focus on medical products. Does that include pharmaceuticals? And should perhaps that industry given the circumstances we have recently seen, be geared up a little bit more quickly, with a little bit more government money?
Prime Minister: The short answer to that question is yes. And that is why medical is a key - one of the priority sectors we have identified for exactly that purpose. We are going to see that pretty soon, should we get the vaccine, go through its trials. $1.7 billion on its way to have two vaccines produced here in Australia. And not just for Australians - every Australian would get a vaccine, but that would also extend to countries in the Pacific and hopefully also to support in South-East Asia as well. Yes.
Lane: Kieran Gilbert.
Kieran Gilbert: Kieran Gilbert, Sky News. PM, thanks for the address. You mentioned a few times that up to 40 per cent of costs for industries - their cost structures are gas. Is there scope - are you willing to enforce retailers to reduce their price closer to the wholesale price? For those industries?
Prime Minister: Yep. Well, the netback price, I think, is what you're referring to. There are three things we are doing in gas. I outlined this up in the Hunter a few weeks ago. The first one is we need to unlock more of the gas. So I welcome the decision in New South Wales on Narrabri. I think it is great. We are talking about massive investment here, thousands of jobs, both in construction and ongoing. The boost into that, as Michael McCormack will know, into that region of New South Wales will be tremendous. With a lot more rain recently, the Narrabri is looking a lot brighter than it has looked for some time. I think that is to be welcomed. So you have got to get more access to the gas. You have to increase the supply of gas to actually get the price down. The second thing you have got to do is ensure the distribution networks through the grid are not serving the interests of gas companies but serving the interests of customers. And that in particular includes not just household customers, but business customers as well. That's why we are taking a similar approach to a gas grid and gas hub. Modelled in part on what occurs with the Henry hub in the United States. Because a distribution and hub system gives you greater certainty about the - both the supply and the forward pricing of gas, which means people can make judgements about where they are investing in their future lines and what the price of gas might be. There is too much volatility, there’s too much uncertainty, but more certain distribution and through a hub arrangement actually deals with that. Then there are market reforms that come on top of that. That's what the National Cabinet is working on, has been tasked with through the energy subcommittee that Angus Taylor leads. And the market reforms there, combined with the work that is being done with the exporters of gas on ensuring that we don't send offshore what we need here in Australia. There is work being done around a reservation system to that end. So, there's all of those things working together. There is no-one thing that does it. You have got to do all of it. That is why we announced such a comprehensive plan to reset, in particular, the east coast gas market, which Angus is leading.
Lane: Stela Todorovic.
Stela Todorovic: Thank you. Stela Todorovic, Network Ten. Thanks for your address, Prime Minister. With this particular announcement you're looking at hopefully creating some 80,000 direct jobs, even more indirect jobs. If you were to combine your announcements to date since the start of the year, how many realistically- how many job seeking Australians will be in these roles and employed by Christmas time?
Prime Minister: We have already seen, as I said, some 760,000 jobs come back into Australia. That isn't just jobs - that, what you called measured employment. But these are jobs that were reduced to zero hours. And when the pandemic hit, I was pretty up-front with everyone. Even though the measured unemployment rate - you know, was not above 10 per cent, I said the true story is far worse than that. It got up to almost 15 per cent in what we call the effective rate of unemployment. Now, that takes into account jobs that have been reduced to zero hours, people who have left the labour force. Now, that has been reduced down to 9.3 [per cent]. And that has seen 760,000 jobs already come back. Now, that - we lost 1.3 million, by the way. So there is still - still a long way to come back. Now, I would hope to see by Christmas, particularly as we see Victoria open up, and we see the restrictions around the borders ease, the opening, I hope very soon to see New Zealanders coming and holidaying in Australia. I can't tell you when Australians will be able to holiday in New Zealand, but that's their problem. I'm happy for the Kiwi tourists to come here and spend money in New South Wales and South Australia. They're very, very welcome. And I hope we can do that very soon. The more we have shown in the past, particularly as we led up to June. The more you open up, the more you get back on the front foot, the more you will see these jobs come back. That is potentially in the hundreds of thousands. As we have already seen, with the record jobs recovery that we have seen in the months up until now. Now many of the things I have talked about today aren't just about jobs over the next three months. They're about jobs over the next five years, over the next 10 years, and I was - and to give you an idea of how it goes even longer than that. I was down at the Osborne shipyards in Adelaide on Saturday now, that is now the most - with Mathias Cormann - the most modern technologically advanced shipyard in the world. It is going to build 9 frigates. $45 billion dollars. I met the young apprentices who were just coming on board there. Their children will work at that shipyard. So, it's not just jobs for now, it is jobs for tomorrow and it is jobs for the future.
Todorovic: Thank you.
Lane: But you can't put a number on it before Christmas?
Prime Minister: Look, no, I don't think - in this environment and the uncertainties that exist today, I think making those sorts of punts would be, could be very misleading.
Lane: Brett Mason.
Brett Mason: Thanks PM. One of the big impacts on the economic growth for the next financial year will be the migration mix. We know that permanent migration will fall probably to one of its lowest levels. Are there mechanisms where refugees who are in Australia on temporary protection visas can help fill that void, given we know these are remarkably resilient taxpayers, often highly skilled, highly motivated that want to make a contribution to the Australian economy?
Prime Minister: Yes. And there already are. We already have visas that enable people in particular who are afternoon temporary protection visas to go out and work and live in regional areas. I was the Minister that introduced it. And I would encourage them to take it up. Because there are more jobs out there and I would encourage them to go get them. Because they work hard and will find themselves with a lot of opportunity. And under the [inaudible] process, if you are there for three year, then you can actually establish a pathway. And so those arrangements are already in place.
Mason: New mechanisms was the crucial word - new, in this Budget?
Prime Minister: You don't need to fix something that's not broken. There is already a mechanism there to provide for that.
Lane: Michelle Grattan.
Michelle Grattan: Michelle Grattan from The Conversation. Prime Minister, you've had the income - retirement incomes review since July. There is a big debate going on about the future of the superannuation contribution and you will make a decision in a few months. Why don't you release that fact-based report immediately so the debate can be better informed.
Prime Minister: Right now, Michelle, we are very focused on the Budget. And the Budget measures that relate to areas of superannuation - they will be announced next week. As I said to Mark in the interview we did on the weekend, the Superannuation Guarantee levy rise is not scheduled to take place until July of next year. We've always been quite cautious through the course of this pandemic to try and make decisions at a time when the information is at its best. And we're not at that point, when it comes to making a number of those decisions. And so we would seek to make that before July of next year, and so there will be plenty of opportunity, I think, to work through those issues between now and then, but for now we will focus on the Budget and when it comes to the release of that review we will make further announcements after the Budget.
Lane: Lanai Scarr.
Lanai Scarr: Lanai Scarr from The Western Australia. Thank you for your speech. Prime Minister, we know the pandemic has had a hugely detrimental impact on the mental health of Australians. Kids Helpline this week released data that showed there'd been a 39 per cent increase between March and August of duty of care interventions. So that is where an ambulance or police had to be sent out to a child's house. So, the government is yet to respond to the Productivity Commission review into mental health. It's hard to see how Australians can get back to work in the way that we need them to when they're struggling with their mental health. What is the government going to do about this? And are we going to see some significant funding in the Budget on mental health?
Prime Minister: I'm glad you asked me that question. As you know, there are two initiatives - the Productivity Commission on mental health and there is also the report I will be receiving later this year from Christine Morgan, who is my national advisor on suicide prevention. There is also the Royal Commission in Victoria, which is dealing with the same set of issues. You will recall in last year's Budget, three-quarters of a billion dollars in additional investment was put into mental health resources. That included around half a billion dollar packages on suicide prevention. Now, since then, there has been hundreds of millions of additional that has been put through in the course of the COVID crisis, particularly into mental health. The telehealth initiative alone, which I think is now seeing almost 50 per cent or thereabouts of consultations that are happening in mental health, are actually happening through a telehealth provider. That has been a significant investment of resources to support mental health. In addition to that, there's been further resources provided, whether it's to lifeline, or headspace or other many of the other providers. That's been incredibly important. 15 walk-in mental health centres in Melbourne have been established and are operating right now for the very reasons you have outlined. At the moment and over these last few months, we have been very focused on, if you like, the acute needs of dealing with the crisis on the ground and the many places which have been affected. We have not held back a cent. Not a dollar. Not an effort when it has come to addressing the mental health needs of people going through this terrible crisis. And in the areas where it's been felt most severely, and that has been in Melbourne. I mean, the stories of stress and distress that have been on families, they have been dealing with loss of employment or being kept at home for long periods of time, young children, also trying to homeschool at the same time as do your own job, this has put enormous stress on people. That is why we put the resources in. Now, we will provide a comprehensive response to the Productivity Commission, to the report provided to me by Christine Morgan and also working with the Victorian government on the Royal Commission as well. And that will be substantively in next year's Budget. But we will continue to invest heavily in mental health resources right here and right now and that will continue on and we haven't had to wait for budgets to make those announcements. We have poured the resources into mental health. I talked to Pat McGorry actually quite regularly. We have a Deputy Chief Medical Officer Ruth Vine who has been appointed specifically to focus on the issues of mental health. I speak to Ruth, along with Christine, several times a week. And where there is need for additional resources, it flows. So, you won't have to wait till next week. You haven't had to wait until next week. It's been flowing each and every day. Where there's a need, we have been rising to the occasion to meet it. The longer term structural, well, there was the first instalment of that in last year’s Budget, three-quarters of a billion dollars into those resources. I said it was a national priority and it is and the budgets that have happened under my stewardship have all reflected that and will continue too.
Lane: Everybody, please join me in thanking the Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
A Modern Manufacturing Strategy for Australia National Press Club, ACT
1 October 2020
Prime Minister: Thank you very much, Sabra. It's good to be back here again at the Press Club and this all-important week leading up to next year’s- next week's I should say, Budget.
And it's great to be joined by so many of my colleagues here today. The Deputy Prime Minister, of course, Michael McCormack, and I commend him on his tremendous speech he gave yesterday. The new Richard Mercer of Australian politics with his calls for Australians to go to bush and support with the harvest, I strongly endorse his comments yesterday. It's good to have the Leader of the Government in the Senate, Mathias Cormann, and Mathias will be leaving us at the end of this year. They'll be very big shoes to fill in our Government, and this will be his last Budget and I want to thank you, Mathias for the tremendous work you’ve done. Not just on this Budget, but the six prior to it. It has been a herculean effort. Today the Treasurer is still back there with a sharpened pencil as he works through the time touches of the Budget for next week. I also want to thank the Treasurer for the tremendous job he's been doing together with Mathias Cormann to bring forward what will be a very important Budget next week. To Karen Andrews who joins us here today - what I'm presenting to you today is absolutely the product of her labours over not just many weeks, but over many, many months, and I'm looking forward to presenting that today. Karen, and I thank you for your leadership in this area in particular. We're joined by other ministers, of course, as well. We have Keith Pitt in resources and energy and Angus Taylor - sorry, resources and Northern Australia, I haven't made any changes, Angus, don't worry, or Keith. You'll be pleased to know, nor do I intend to. They're both doing a tremendous job in all of those portfolios. They share a department together and they’ve got it absolutely cranking on all cylinders. And tomorrow you'll hear in Sydney from the assistant minister Ben Morton who’ll be speaking more about the Government’s deregulation agenda.
Can I begin - can I also acknowledge Nev Power, I’ve just seen him here, as the chair of the National COVID Commission. And Nev, thank you for the great work you have been doing with the Commission. As you know, together with Andrew Liveris, what we have been speaking about today has been importantly informed by the great work that you and your team have been doing in its previous and now its new form.
Can I begin today by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people of course, their elders - past, present and emerging for the future.
Can I also, as is my custom, to acknowledge and pay my respects to any veterans or serving members of the Australian defence forces who are here with us today or joining us from outside this place and simply say on behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your service to our country.
The 2020-2021 Budget, to be delivered by the Treasurer next [Tuesday], will be arguably one of the most important, if not the most important since the end of the Second World War.
This year, the global economy is forecast to contract by around four and a half per cent. The world economy during the GFC declined by 0.1 per cent. So in simple terms, the economic contraction we’re expecting this year in the global economy is 45 times greater than the GFC.
The scale of what is occurring today is incredibly sobering.
Never before have we experienced a global recession of this magnitude in a truly modern, interconnected world and global economy, no longer insulated by geography and old technology. Global recessions now occur in real time.
So this Budget will be necessarily different in scale to those we have seen in many generations. It will respond responsibly to the challenge of our time and consistent with the principles that we laid down at the outset of the pandemic back in March.
The Budget will confirm the strong plan we have to recover from the COVID-19 recession and to build our economy for the future.
To cushion the blow of the pandemic recession.
To recover what’s been lost - the jobs, the livelihoods, the hours, the incomes, the customers, the clients.
But importantly to take new ground by rebuilding our economy for the future.
And we’ll do this, importantly, while honouring our guarantee to the essential services that Australians rely on - the schools, hospitals, Medicare, aged care, disability services.
And we’ll do it while keeping Australians safe. And we’ll do it without increasing taxes.
That's what the 2020-21 Budget is all about.
The work though, is already underway. Unemployment was falling. More Australians were in jobs than ever before, the female participation rate at an all time high. More working age people were off welfare and into jobs. Our AAA Credit Rating had been secured. And our Budget was back in balance.
This meant that, as the pandemic hit, we could act quickly and confidently to cushion the blow.
Treasury advises that some 700,000 additional jobs would have been lost in measured unemployment were it not for the measures the government undertook - JobKeeper, JobSeeker, cashflow support and many, many more.
We are also working to recover what has been lost. 760,000 jobs that were either lost or reduced to zero hours as the COVID crisis hit, have already come back into our economy. This is a great tribute to the resilience of Australians and the Australian economy, its fighting spirit, the Australians who make our economy work each and every day.
Our effective unemployment rate has fallen from 14.9 per cent, as the crisis hit, back to 9.3 per cent. But that’s not good enough. there are further risks, there are further challenges ahead, there are further unknowns.
We are not through this yet not by a long shot. And there is still much more to be done.
We are rebuilding our economy for the future through our JobMaker economic plan that I first spoke of right here at this platform.
Our plan for affordable and reliable energy will secure our liquid fuel reserves and lower emissions. It will get the gas we need for manufacturing to succeed, for households to have more money in their pockets, to firm up the reliability of renewables, like solar and wind, and to transition our energy economy into the future.
This transition will be guided by our comprehensive technology investment roadmap, released by Angus Taylor recently. To deliver reliable, scalable, lower cost, lower emissions technologies to underwrite our economy over the next 30 years and beyond. A plan not driven by taxes but by technology.
We’re delivering lower taxes for businesses and individuals. Australians are already benefiting from the tax cuts made in the last two budgets. Just this year alone, in the billions. The small and medium-sized businesses tax rate has been cut to 26 per cent and the instant asset write off extended and expanded to investments of up to $150,000.
Australians are keeping more of what they earn, as we promised they would. But there is still more to be done and there will be more next week.
Major changes have been introduced to how we do skills training. Our $1 billion JobTrainer program with the states and territories is boosting the number of training places in this year alone by 340,000 places, that’s good news for school leavers and those who are looking for those training places, coming out of jobs.
We have secured a new heads of agreement on skills reform, as I said we would do, with the States and Territories through the National Cabinet to ensure Australians acquire the skills they need for the jobs that businesses need them to be able to do. The National Skills Commission and Commissioner has been established to guide these investments, not just by the Commonwealth but by the States and Territories also.
The Government has committed $2.8 billion to keep up to 180,000 apprentices in this country on the tools at some 90,000 small and medium-sized businesses through to the end of March next year. And yesterday, the Education Minister Dan Tehan announced an extra 12,000 places for students going to university next year to help them upskill and get job ready.
We are working to fix the problems in our industrial relations system so we can employ more people.
The Attorney-General Christian Porter has brought unions and employer groups together in search of common ground to boost employment, to grow our economy. One thing is very clear from this process, and particularly recent events out at Port Botany, that we cannot afford “business as usual” in industrial relations. It keeps people out of jobs.
We continue to bring forward record investments in infrastructure in our three key infrastructure grids, as the Deputy Prime Minister well knows and leads that work - our transport grid, our water grid and of course our energy grid.
Major projects like Inland Rail, Western Sydney Airport, the North South Connector in Adelaide, Stage 3A of Gold Coast Light Rail in Queensland, the Bunbury Outer Ring Road in Western Australia.
The $484 million Dungowan Dam project, where we’re committing half those funds. In NSW that will increase storage capacity from 6.3 gigalitres to 22.5 gigalitres. Design, geotech and environmental assessments that are underway at the site. Then there’s the Emu Swamp Dam, a 12 megalitre irrigation dam and water supply scheme on the Severn River in Queensland. It is under construction, boots and utes on the ground.
We are working with the states to accelerate the critical energy infrastructure identified in the AEMO Integrated System Plan. We are bringing forward projects like Marinus Link, VNI West and Project Energy Connect by at least 12 months, it’s creating over 4,000 jobs and helping ensure reliable, affordable energy for families and for businesses to create jobs.
We’re making it easier for business to do business, cutting red tape, streamlining approvals, particularly for major projects, including our new single touch approvals reform under the EPBC Act.
Our Digital Plan I announced with the Treasurer earlier this week will upgrade the circuit boards of our economy, making it safer and easier to get paid, to make payments, to connect with customers and deal with government. It will drive uptake of digital technologies across businesses, that will in turn boost productivity and innovation, especially vital for our manufacturing sector which is our topic today.
That plan brings together some $7 billion of investments in cyber-security, NBN, 5G applications, digital skills capability, RegTech, FinTech, open banking, consumer data right, many things I suspect people looking on today would not be familiar with, but they’re going to make a big difference to how businesses operates in this country in this new age.
Assistant Minister Morton, as I said, will be outlining more changes tomorrow, a further update on the work of our Deregulation TaskForce he leads on my behalf.
We are continuing to prise open new markets for Australian business overseas, that work hasn’t stopped. More than 70 per cent of all our two way trade is now covered by export agreements, that compares to just 26 per cent when we came to government, giving Australian companies preferential access to more overseas markets. And we are not just stopping there.
Second round market access discussions as part of the UK FTA negotiations are underway this week. Our EU FTA negotiations are continuing. Our landmark deal with Indonesia has come into force in July and we’ve set a new benchmark for digital economy agreements with our high-quality deal with Singapore.
More affordable and reliable energy. More effective and better resourced skills training and development. Lower taxes. Boosting infrastructure investment in our water, energy and transport grids. Cutting red tape and making it easier to do business. Fixing problems in our industrial relations system to get more people into jobs. Opening up access to more overseas markets for Australian exporters.
That’s our plan.
Our economic response has meant that, despite the hardships that Australians have suffered, Australia is still one of just a handful of economies, along with South Korea, Taiwan and Norway, leading the world in both the economic and the health response to the pandemic.
Our June quarter contraction of 7 per cent, which hit hard, we must remember compares to falls of more than 20 per cent in the UK, falls of more than 10 per cent in Canada, New Zealand, Italy and France, and falls of almost 10 per cent in Japan, the US, Germany and the OECD on average as a whole.
Today, I want to talk about our JobMaker plan for the future of manufacturing in Australia.
We make things in Australia. We make them well, we do it well. We need to keep making things in Australia. And under our plan we will.
Manufacturing employs some 860,000 Australians, and prior to the pandemic it generated more than $100 billion in value for our economy each year and over $50 billion in exports.
It is also a large driver of research and development. Manufacturing contributes around a quarter of total R&D investment in Australia, roughly four times its share of the economy.
Manufacturing is particularly important to regional economies, in places like the Hunter, north and central Queensland, Tasmania, regional Victoria.
Over recent decades, in time, our manufacturers have largely moved on from the mass production of standardised goods. Long gone are the days of trying to compete with labour-intensive, low-cost manufacturing economies.
Gone too are any pretensions of protectionism as a viable strategy for domestic manufacturing.
That’s not where our future is. Manufacturing in Australia has been transformed and will continue to transform, today it is more agile, more dynamic and less monolithic.
Today’s advanced manufacturing enterprise stretches from the labs doing the research and development, the skilled workers doing the design and engineering, through to sales, marketing and after-sale services.
Increasingly, this is where most of the value is created - around half of the jobs in manufacturing are actually in these parts of the manufacturing process.
Even the assembly line is changing through the increased use of intelligent robotics and 3D printing.
We need a deeper appreciation that advanced manufacturing is not just about what we make – it’s about how we make it, how we sell our products domestically and internationally. So what is to be done?
Now an accomplished engineer before she entered Parliament, Karen Andrews, our Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, has taken up this question with gusto, providing the leadership for the strategy I am outlining today. And I thank her for her work. I also thank and recognise the role of the National COVID Coordination Commission’s Manufacturing Taskforce led by Andrew Liveris. Under Andrew’s guidance, the taskforce has consulted widely and provided practical advice to inform our work, including valuable insights from best-practice overseas where he has had great involvement.
So to our modern manufacturing strategy. The objective is to build scale and capture income in high-value areas of manufacturing where Australia either has established competitive strength or emerging priorities.
This will require our manufacturing sector to be even more productive and highly-skilled. To be more collaborative, at the leading edge of R&D, commercialisation and technology adoption. To be more outward-looking in searching relentlessly for footholds in global markets.
At a government level, we must first understand that a successful manufacturing sector will depend on broader economic policies that support greater productivity.
Again, affordable and reliable energy. Lower taxes. Industrial relations changes. Training and skills development. Cutting red tape. Infrastructure investment. All of this supports manufacturing and there is more.
Too often in the past industry policy has ignored these foundational elements in the vain hope that isolated programs, subsidies and work-arounds could make up for the broader deficiencies in economic settings.
We also need to get more targeted and apply greater discipline to how we invest in these sectors as a government. It must be part of a longer term planning.
Our Government is determined to set a ten-year time horizon under this strategy where all parties - industry, workforce including unions, governments at all levels, capital including superannuation funds and our scientific and research community - are pulling together in the one direction.
Our practical strategy has three components.
Firstly, create a business environment where our manufacturers can be more competitive. Secondly to align resources to build scale in areas of competitive strength. And thirdly to secure sovereign capability in areas of national interest.
That’s our plan. And we will be investing an additional $1.5 billion in specific industry measures, over and above what we’ll be doing in tax, energy, infrastructure and the like, to back our plan in next week’s Budget.
Now, firstly, creating a business environment in Australia where our manufacturers can be more competitive. That is foundational, as I have said.
You can invest all the resources you like in industry programmes, but if taxes are too high, if industrial relations systems are too complicated, the adoption of digital technology is patchy, if energy is too expensive, if approvals take too long and are too costly, if the roads are clogged, and employees do not have the right skills, and you are shut out of overseas markets, then you are wasting your time. That’s why all those things - correcting all those things is important.
For manufacturing to be successful in Australia, all manufacturers, we must become a more competitive place for manufacturers to do business. Whether it be aluminium smelting in Gladstone, steel processing in Port Kembla and Whyalla, ethanol production at Shoalhaven Heads down on the south coast, fertiliser production in Mount Isa, aerospace at Fishermans Bend for Boeing or ships at Port Adelaide and Henderson in Western Australia. And that is what our JobMaker plan is all about - creating the right incentives and enablers for businesses to compete so they can create more jobs and keep more Australians employed.
Our broader JobMaker plan is the foundation of our manufacturing strategy, benefitting all manufacturers, especially when it comes to tax incentives for investment, energy, skills, R&D and technology.
Now the Treasurer will have more to say about those particular issues next week, especially when it comes to investment and R&D incentives, so I will not touch on those issues today.
In a manufacturing context, it is especially important to highlight the necessity of our efforts to create a competitive domestic gas market.
The NCCC advised us that gas is up to 40 per cent of many industries' cost structures in manufacturing. Combined with higher electricity costs, the NCCC said that has moved many firms into a ‘doom loop’ where they are living ‘turnaround to turnaround’, making existential decisions about their operations at each point of the next major maintenance decision, rather than decisions, that they’d prefer to be making, in technology and much-needed productivity improvements to remain competitive in the future. This needs to change.
That is why, as part of our gas-fired recovery plan, we have committed to resetting our east coast gas markets, unlocking gas supplies, establishing a new gas hub and improving our gas grid distribution systems. If you’re not for gas, you’re not for manufacturing and heavy industries and the jobs that they support. For many manufacturers, gas is half the problem that they confront and that is why reforming that sector is so foundational to that achievements we hope for in the manufacturing sector.
Now the second component is to align resources to build scale in areas of competitive strength. The reality is we cannot and should not seek to reach global scale in a large number of sectors, we can’t be all things to all. This is an important lesson from other small and I’d say medium-sized high income economies like ours, which have leveraged home-grown manufacturing into global success, this has happened in Singapore, the UK, Germany and Canada. all circumstances and areas that we have looked at.
A lesson is don’t try to do everything. It’s all about alignment, across different levels of government, with industry and with the research and education sectors and siloed programs don’t work.
Against that backdrop, the Government has identified six National Manufacturing Priorities in areas of established strength and emerging priority. They are:
The resources technology and critical minerals processing
Food and beverage manufacturing
Medical products
Clean energy and recycling
Defence industry, and
The space industry.
As the world’s leading mining economy, Australia can capture min-tech and critical minerals processing based on our natural resource endowment. Our high-skilled workforce and world-class technological capability. And I particularly welcome the announcements made today by BHP to that end. They have set, I think, a leading standard.
Australia’s Mining Equipment, Technology and Services sector, the METS sector, already plays a key role in adding value beyond resource extraction in the mining supply chain. At the same time, we know demand is increasing for critical minerals that are inputs to batteries, and renewable technologies and other manufactured materials - from partners like Japan, the US and Europe providing us with opportunities to just move up that value chain.
Food and beverage manufacturing, like Bickford’s down there in South Australia, one of the fastest growing parts of our manufacturing sector in recent years and the largest employer in our manufacturing sector. It is the second area of focus as part of this strategy. Australia’s status as a leading agricultural producer with a premium reputation for safe, clean produce gives us a real edge here, a vital edge.
Thirdly, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted our gold standard health and medical research and manufacturing capability. This provides a key platform for commercialising new medicine and medical product breakthroughs right here in Australia. Firms such as Cochlear, CSL, ResMed have shown what can be achieved when you combine high-quality manufacturing, major investment in commercialising great ideas and a global outlook, supported critically by world-class primary research and a stringent regulatory framework to support it. All of those things, particularly CSL playing such a critical role as we respond to COVID.
Then there is clean energy and recycling, an important part of the government’s broader challenge. Something we believe we can make a major contribution to.
As Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor highlighted last week, Australia has a great opportunity to make a global contribution in areas like battery storage and hydrogen technology in particular.
So too the fast growing waste and recycling sector offers Australian firms great potential and global scale underpinned by research strengths in the circular economy in places like the University of Sydney’s Waste Transformation Research Hub and the UNSW’s Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology. When I was in New York about this time last year, Sims metal does all the recycling for New York. An Australian company, doing a big job on a global scale. We know how to do this stuff.
Our defence sector provides Australian manufacturers with the opportunity to provide sophisticated defence equipment and supplies to the Australian Defence Force, but not just them, but also as well as for export markets and part of global supply chains as we’ve seen with the Joint Strike Fighter project.
The Defence Sovereign Industrial Capability Priorities are about targeting investment to build national capability and capacity through manufacturing, and it’s backed by the National Naval Shipbuilding Plan, the Defence Export Strategy, and the $1 billion Defence Innovation Hub and the $1.3 billion Next Generation Technologies Fund.
Space opens up a further area of emerging sovereign capability where Australia is in a position to leverage close alignment between governments, the research community and industry - all under the umbrella of the Australian Space Agency, which Minister Andrews has already established down in South Australia.
The space sector is estimated to reach some $1 trillion globally by 2040. And we want to be a part of that.
Achieving scale in these areas and all of these areas I have spoken about will be a multi-year project which is why we are taking a ten-year perspective. Immediate action will be taken though, with additional investment, a refocusing of existing programs and deeper alignment across all parts of the manufacturing innovation system.
Firstly, we will commit $52.8 million in additional funding to a second round of the successful Manufacturing Modernisation Fund, focusing on larger projects. The Fund will provide grants of between $100,000 and $1 million on a three-to-one funding basis to support transformational investment in technologies and processes. This new round is expected to support around 150 businesses in our priority areas.
The centrepiece of our strategy though, is a $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative (MMI) it will provide a new investment vehicle geared to overcoming barriers to scale. We’ve got to get the scale. The MMI will leverage co-investment with states and territories, industry and research institutions across three streams of activity.
Firstly, collaboration – investment of around $80 million each on average to foster long-term, large-scale production or R&D facilities involving consortia of businesses and other organisations, including physical clusters – like at the Western Sydney aerotropolis
Secondly, translation – investments of around $4 million on average for industry-led projects translating research and bringing new products to the market.
And thirdly, integration – investments also of around $4 million connecting local firms with global value chains, giving businesses the tools they need to access export markets and create economies of scale.
Now through this initiative we will both target priority areas and invest in the cross-cutting technologies and processes that enhance production efficiency - such as automation, digitisation, data analytics, artificial intelligence and other enabling technologies, which make everything else work.
Additional investment will occur in tandem with a comprehensive review of existing programs in the Industry, Science and Technology portfolio to better align them with the strategy. As part of this, we’re providing an additional $50 million to the Industry Growth Centres initiative to support projects in the priority areas out until the end of June of 2022.
Now having established those six priority areas, the next phase will involve partnering with industry to co-design roadmaps geared to build scale in each area.
These industry-led roadmaps will identify growth opportunities, barriers to scale and required actions along the entire value chain in each of our priority sectors. They will guide future investment and action from both government and industry, getting that alignment.
Now these will be finalised by April next year before the Budget. The roadmaps will set clear goals and performance indicators - so how many more jobs, what level of R&D and how much more investment - so we can track it over the next two, five and 10 years. Where appropriate, they will draw on the previous Industry Growth Centre Sector Competitiveness Plans and the lessons learnt from those efforts.
To aid this effort, Minister Andrews will enlist a refocused and refreshed Industry, Innovation and Science Australia Board in a key advisory role.
That will occur under the continued leadership of Andrew Stevens, the former head of the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre, and the new IISA Board will provide expert advice to the Minister. And Minister Andrews will have more to say on the governance arrangements and new appointments to that board over the coming weeks.
Now, the third imperative of our Modern Manufacturing Strategy is to build national resilience by securing sovereign capability in areas of national interest.
We cannot ignore the obvious. The efficiency benefits of hyper-globalisation and highly fragmented supply chains can evaporate very quickly in the event of a major global shock like the COVID-19 pandemic as we have seen.
Armed with this experience, it is only sensible that Australia consider, as so many other countries are, more options to guard against supply chain vulnerability for critical necessities and to secure us against future shocks.
To this end, a whole-of-government review of Australia’s supply chain vulnerabilities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is underway. And for the most part, Australia has performed very well, with limited disruptions to critical supplies of manufactured products through this pandemic.
This achievement can be attributed in no small measure to the agility and adaptability of our domestic manufacturing industry. But equally it would be irresponsible for any Australian Government to not consider new mechanisms to support local capability for critical materials, equipment and services in the wake of this shock.
So that is what we are doing.
The Government will invest $107 million in a new Supply Chain Resilience Initiative. This will support Australian manufacturers investing in capabilities to address areas of identified acute vulnerability domestically, and to ensure they are in a position to contribute to the supply chains of trusted partners and like-minded countries.
Sovereign Manufacturing Capability Plans will be developed in key areas and a range of policy options will be considered, including procurement and long-term contracting arrangements, as well as actions to promote better information sharing and collaboration between government and industry.
It is not to overcome each and every source of vulnerability based on domestic production alone. The current crisis is not an excuse for protectionist policies that subsidise inefficient firms and industries.
Hence we are complementing our actions to boost domestic sovereign capability through greater collaboration with like-minded countries. Already, this has been an area of fruitful discussion with other world leaders as part of the Smart COVID-19 Management Group convened by the Austrian Chancellor.
So in conclusion, Australian manufacturing will play a key role in our economic recovery from COVID-19, creating and supporting jobs in cities, in towns and regional communities and rural areas right across Australia. It’s a plan for all of Australia and all Australians.
Our efforts to grow Australia’s manufacturing sector begin by creating a stable and competitive business environment, through our JobMaker plan, but it does not end there. Our Modern Manufacturing Strategy will open a new chapter based on:
Building scale in areas of competitive strength
In driving collaboration and better aligning resources across governments, industry and the research community
Enlisting expertise to set clear goals for global success
Making science and technology work for industry and for Australians
And finally, strengthening sovereign resilience in areas of strategic importance.
That is how you create jobs. That is how you recover from the COVID 19 recession. That is how you build your economy back for the future, which is what our Budget will be all about. That’s our plan.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Interview with Leon Byner, FiveAA
1 October 2020
Leon Byner: Prime Minister, good to talk to you.
Prime Minister: G’day, Leon. It was great to be back in Adelaide the other day. It was a beautiful day.
Byner: Yes, it was. And we're getting the same weather today. Look, I want to ask you about your $1.5 billion in revitalising manufacturing. What have you got in mind to manufacture in SA?
Prime Minister: Well, there's already a lot being made in South Australia. Of course, there's the defence shipbuilding programs, which I was down there seeing at Osborne the other day. I've been out to Bickford's also down there. I mean, they're out there are very important food and beverage manufacturer and food and beverages is one of the key sectors that we've identified as a priority. There's the space industry. The National Space Agency is based there and in South Australia. And then you've got, you know, we all know the great success of Clipsal in South Australia. But then you've got companies like Supashock who are an Adelaide based design and manufacturing firm, focusing on suspension systems. And that delivers unprecedented levels of performance and safety and reliability for vehicles in those sorts of environments. So they are very technologically based manufacturers. So Australia not only makes things, but makes things that are very tricky to produce and require a lot of skill, a lot of high-end design and engineering and this is where our advanced manufacturing capabilities can really move forward. But we have to achieve scale. But you can't achieve this unless you're getting the fundamentals right and the fundamentals right are things like affordable and reliable energy. It's about having the right industrial relations systems. It's ensuring that you're cutting red tape for approvals processes and all those sorts of things. You've got to get the right skills training in place. It was exciting to be with Premier Marshall on the weekend, and we were talking about just how many more people were getting into training in South Australia and training that is giving them the skills that these manufacturers and businesses will need. So you've got to get all that right and then you've got to get the scale and then you've got to deal with areas of what we call as a sovereign supply chain viability. And that's in critical areas that we've learnt during COVID that supply chains, if they get disrupted, there are still things we have to very much do here.
Byner: Are we going to be able to sort out this industrial problem we've got on the wharf? We've got a whole lot of ships holding stock that is causing a few issues. I know that you've suggested that unless an agreement is reached, you might call in the ADF. What's the latest?
Prime Minister: Well, a) I haven't said that. I mean, others have suggested that I've been keeping my own counsel on those things with the Attorney, but I certainly want to see it resolved and it's not resolved yet. And the clock is ticking on this because it is holding back important supplies to Australia. I mean, I think the average wage of those working on the wharf support body is about $175,000 or thereabouts and for those in other jobs, it's a bit less than that. I mean, they were looking for six per cent increases year on year. We're in the middle of a recession, a COVID recession, and to slow down work on the wharves to delay, we've got 38 ships out there off the Australian coast, about 90,000 containers. There'll be others on ports and other parts around the world with medical supplies and other things that are looking to get into that queue. So it does need to be resolved. We've made that very clear. My first step is to see it resolved through the parties. But I…they need to get a wriggle on.
Byner: I want to ask about incentives to get people to work because we've got this really odd situation where there are likely to be about a million people or more looking for work or unemployed. And yet a lot of bosses can't fill jobs that are good paying jobs.
Prime Minister: That's true. We've heard the same thing. I mean, the JobSeeker arrangements have been changed basically as of this week, towards the end of last week. And that means that people can now earn $300 a fortnight and that won't affect their payments under JobSeeker. Their JobSeeker payments, the COVID supplement has been reduced by that $300 amount. And so that means people can go out and work in the horticultural industry or other places which are particularly desperate for workers at the moment and that won't affect otherwise what they would be receiving. And that's a positive thing. We're also extending out what we're doing with the seasonal labour programme to support those horticultural agricultural sectors. I mean, finally, in parts of the country, we've had some rain and they're having a much better season this year than they've had in many years. We don't want to see that spoiled by not being able to get people on the farm to be able to do the work.
Byner: Do you see that we're going to open up more borders shortly? Because I know there's been a lot of discussion about a travel bubble between New Zealand and Australia. What's the latest on this?
Prime Minister: I think we'll be able to move on that very soon. It's more likely in the first instance to be a one way bubble i.e. New Zealanders being able to travel to Australia. That's good for Australian tourism. I would see South Australia, along with New South Wales, in the front end of that arrangement because they've taken their borders down. And what that will do is not only bring much needed tourism dollars into both of those states but because there'd be no requirement to quarantine because New Zealand's COVID performance is as strong as what it is in South Australia and indeed in New South Wales. And so that would take a lot of pressure off at the airports for hotel quarantine, which frees up more places for Australians to come home. Now, for states that still have borders up and are insisting on quarantine for, say, people from Sydney to travel to Brisbane or to other places, then we can't have, you know, more New Zealand tourists coming and taking up those quarantine places in those states. We need those for Australians coming home. So South Australia and New South Wales will be the first to benefit from that arrangement and it's not too far away.
Byner: Now, you will no doubt be aware that in South Australia we've had a memo sent out from the health bureaucracy that public hospital surgeons should say no to old patients and those with multiple medical conditions. What do you think of that?
Prime Minister: Well, I hope it is a very carelessly worded memo. That's what I hope it is. I've actually sort of had a touch base with the Premier this morning, and I'm sure that's his view as well. I mean, of course, clinicians have to exercise their duty of care regardless of a person's age or their circumstances or anything like that. And I have no doubt, Leon, that that's what clinicians would do. So my hope that is just a poorly worded memo and because that would, I'm sure, if that was what it was trying to say, that would be very much, I think, opposed by the medical profession itself, rightly, as clinicians. And it doesn't matter where you are in Australia, what age you are, you deserve the best possible medical care and treatment and every single life is precious.
Byner: Would you not agree that the people who should make those clinical decisions are the clinicians, not public servants?
Prime Minister: Of course. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Byner: I just wanted to get a clarification because I'll give you an example. Bob Parr OAM says ‘I am old with multiple issues. Thankfully, the medical profession have given me several chances to still be here and contribute to society.’
Prime Minister: Yeah and that's great. And look, I know from the contact I've had with Premier Marshall this morning that he has that same view. This is a decision for clinicians. Your doctor, your specialist.
Byner: Now, I want to ask you quickly about, I know you're not going to drop the Budget on us this morning, but in SA, though, we've got a special issue where our unemployment rate is even above Victoria that's virtually been shut down in terms of jobs. So is there anything that we might look forward to in the Budget soon that will help us in that space?
Prime Minister: Well, look, I'll leave those announcements to Budget night, Leon. But what I can say is that in South Australia, since the COVID crisis has hit, I think it's 69 per cent of the jobs that were lost have come back. That is a great credit, I think, to the economic plan and strategy being followed by the South Australian Government and that's tremendous to see. There's still more work to be done there. But we've already got the big infrastructure projects underway. You know, the north-south interconnector, six lanes there, just going out to Osborne and seeing, that has been done in just two years, what's been achieved at Osborne. It is now the most modern, technologically advanced shipyard in the world and it's about to get going now and building those nine frigates, $45 billion worth into the future. And to meet the young apprentices and trainees who are out there on the weekend. I mean, they are looking at jobs for decades. Their kids are going to have jobs at that shipyard and that's a tremendous thing. So there is a huge investment going into South Australia, but not just that. In the tourism sector as well. Simon Birmingham made those announcements on the weekend. It was good to be down there at the Adelaide Zoo. My daughter loves quokkas and she got to cuddle a quokka. She is still over the moon about that. So thanks, everyone, down at the Adelaide Zoo.
Byner: What's your favourite?
Prime Minister: Mine? Look, I am a big fan of koalas, I've got to say. I love koalas. And I like it that they get a bit, get the irritates a bit too. I find that quite funny.
Byner: Gives you an excuse not to have to pick them up.
Prime Minister: Yeah, I think that's true.
BYNER: Prime Minister, thank you for coming on this morning. And we'll certainly keep well in touch.
Interview with Ben Fordham, 2GB
1 October 2020
Ben Fordham: Good morning to you, PM.
Prime Minister: Good morning, Ben, and congratulations, Sydney's number one.
Fordham: Thank you very much. Did you have time to watch yesterday?
Prime Minister: Not really, Ben, to be honest, I've been a bit busy. I saw a few grabs of it last night. It was pretty robust.
Fordham: Is that what Scomo and Albo is going to look like in 18 months?
Prime Minister: I'd be surprised. I think our debates are a little less shouty than that, I suspect. Bu that said one thing I know they both agree on, as the United States, as always, is the importance of Australia to the relationship with them and the partnership that we have that has been enduring now for a century in so many different ways from when we first fought together all those years ago. So that's one thing they certainly agree one and that is it will always be in Australia's interests.
Fordham: Hear, hear. Now, there's many things to talk about. So let's talk first of all about the wharfies. The Maritime Union couldn't reach an agreement in the Fair Work Commission so they're going back there today. You have not held back here. You've said this is extortion.
Prime Minister: Yeah, that's right, and particularly in a Coronavirus recession. And you've got 17 days waiting times for ships in Port Botany at Sydney. There's 90,000 containers, I understand, that are being delayed. There's 30 ships off, 38 ships, off the coast of Australia and then that backs up into the whole distribution system. And there are Medicines Australia who are concerned about the delays that that can mean for medicines coming through that have still yet to leave port. So this is a very serious issue and this is something that needs to get sorted out and so we're watching that very closely. We want those parties to sort it out. But it's what's being sought, particularly the initial claim that was put in. I mean, six per cent every year at a time like this when everyone else is either taking no increases at all or even worse than that.
Fordham: Are you prepared to do a John Howard when he broke up the union stronghold on the wharves?
Prime Minister: Well, I don't speculate on what our next step might be, and I don't think that is constructive. What I am saying is get back to work. The country needs our wharves open and operating at peak capacity at a time like this. That's what is in Australia's interests. And they're not picking a fight with employers. They're picking a fight with farmers, they’re picking a fight with people who need medicines, they're picking a fight with Australians whose jobs depend on what comes through those ports. And that's what's critically important right now.
Fordham: You're going to review the curfew at Sydney Airport, we're being told. At the moment no flights can come in or out from 11:00pm to 6:00am. Would you like to see that change?
Prime Minister: No, I wouldn't. The Productivity Commission has called for this review. We're following through on this review. The slot management system is something… they’ll look at all the issues, but that has to come back to the government and the government has always had a very clear view on the curfew and on the cap. That's why we're building Western Sydney International Airport. That's why we're moving on those sorts of issues. So, I mean, I have always had a pretty clear view on that. They'll do their review. But when it comes to the cap and the curfew, well, the government's always had a very consistent position.
Fordham: Six years away, the new airport. So you're happy to wait until 2026?
Prime Minister: The view will come back, Ben, but I mean, the cap and the curfew has been a consistent part of the Government's policy for many years.
Fordham: You don't want to put people through that extra aircraft noise?
Prime Minister: Well, Ben, that's the policy.
Fordham: Have you spoken to the New South Wales Environment and Energy Minister Matt Kean? Because we know that Santos is wanting to put billions of dollars into a new gas project in New South Wales. But when he was asked about it, Matt Kean said it was a big gamble by Santos. So is that telling them to take their billions somewhere else?
Prime Minister: No, but I spoke to the Premier. I didn’t talk to the Minister, and the Premier actually agrees with the Government strongly. And the policy that the New South Wales Government has is that gas is an essential part of the energy mix. And this is 1,300 jobs, $12 billion worth of investment and it is absolutely critical. The other thing I'm talking about today, and that is to support our manufacturing industry. So if you're not for gas, you're not for manufacturing jobs. And so I'm afraid the Minister is a bit out of step with his own Government, their own policy, his Premier and, indeed, the deal that he struck with the federal government. You've got to stick to deals and stick to your word.
Fordham: You're bringing back Aussie manufacturing in six key areas, resources and minerals, as we've just talked about, food and beverages, medical products, recycling, clean energy, defence and space technology is the last one. So we’ve had Australians involved in space missions but none have been to the moon. Is that the next step?
Prime Minister: It is an exciting part of our advanced manufacturing future. And we've got the National Space Agency, which we set up as a Government, and that's working on everything from satellite launch technology through the construction of componentries of satellites and other important parts of the space sector, which is growing. That's going to be an enormously large part of the global economy in the years to come. And we've got some amazing people working as part of our National Space Agency, something Karen Andrews, the Minister, has been highly focused on and that has benefits for all around the country. The space agency is based down in Adelaide, and that's connected up with other space agencies around the world. But it's not just there. I mean, it's the defence industry as well, which is a key sector where we're now got up over two per cent of our GDP back being spent on defence industries, on defence manufacturing and components and that's exciting. But the food and beverage sector, which is the biggest part of our manufacturing industry. Medical products we've seen what we can do there through the course of the COVID crisis and, in particular, $1.7 billion we're putting into actually making the vaccine here, two of them here in Australia, and get them to every single Australian subject to those medical trials. So we’ve got a lot of capacity here. We’ve got to focus on areas of strength. There are many jobs in this, a lot of investment in this, and it's a key part of our economic recovery plan.
Fordham: The Liberal Senator Claire Chandler is being dragged before the Anti-Discrimination Commission in Tasmania because she said women's toilets are designed for people of the female sex and should remain that way. Is there anything wrong with what she said?
Prime Minister: No, that's commonsense. And I would urge a more commonsense approach on how some of these agencies operate. I mean, the Tasmanian one has had form on other issues in the past. I think people just expect commonsense in these areas.
Fordham: Let me ask you about the ABC staff at the national broadcaster who voted to give themselves a pay rise at a time everyone else is tightening their belts. Should they read the room?
Prime Minister: I think so. I mean, there's 112 Commonwealth government agencies that elected to take the freeze, and had to have the freeze put in place. Commonwealth public servants are the same Commonwealth politicians are the same. And in particular in the media sectors, as you would know Ben, I mean, we've got other parts of the media industry and the private media industry who are taking big pay cuts. And so I was quite surprised that they took that view. It was a six month delay and so both to their fellow public servants and those in the media industry, in particular, I was surprised.
Fordham: Michael McCormack, the National Party leader, reckons eventually it'll be seen as a bargain that taxpayers spent $33 million on a parcel of land in Western Sydney valued at $3 million. Really?
Prime Minister: Well, I had a bit to say about this the other day. While I agree that Western Sydney Airport is an absolute jobs machine for Western Sydney, it is going to transform our city. It's a tremendously exciting project well underway. But at the same time, I wasn't happy with that outcome. It happened several years ago. The department is doing a review and I suspect, I have no doubt there'll be some strong action taken in relation to that matter. And the Ministers at the time felt exactly the same way. There's been a real breakdown in the process there within the department. The Government obviously has to take responsibility for that and ensure it doesn't happen again.
Fordham: Michael McCormack says young Aussies should go bush for work as fruit pickers. He says, and I'll play you this, they might find romance.
AUDIO, MICHAEL MCCORMACK: You might find the love of your life out in regional Australia.
Fordham: So PM, is that the message? Pick fruit and find love?
Prime Minister: If it gets people picking fruit and getting a harvest in, then absolutely. That's a classic Big Mac comment. That's the sort of thing we hear from him quite a bit behind closed doors as well. It's the lighter side of it. But the truth is we need to get this harvest in and we're extending the backpacker arrangements, we’re extending the seasonal worker programmes. But also those who are on JobSeeker can earn up to 300 bucks a fortnight and not have it affect the JobSeeker payment. I mean, there's jobs out there in the bush. There's jobs out there in the Riverina. There's jobs out there for people to be able to support our farmers, get this harvest in. And so it's really important that people take up those opportunities.
Fordham: I'm sure we'll speak next week about the Budget. Good luck with it all and thank you so much for coming on.
Prime Minister: Thanks a lot, Ben, good to chat.
Transforming Australian Manufacturing to Rebuild Our Economy
1 October 2020
Prime Minister, Minister for Industry Science and Technology
The Morrison Government is launching a new era of Australian manufacturing, as part of our JobMaker Plan to rebuild the economy, create jobs and recover from the COVID-19 recession.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said around $1.5 billion in new funding will be invested over the next four years in the Modern Manufacturing Strategy to make Australian manufacturers more competitive, resilient and able to scale-up to take on the world.
“We make things in Australia. We do it well. We need to keep making things in Australia. And with this strategy, we will,” Prime Minister Morrison said.
“The COVID crisis opens a new chapter for Australian manufacturing as a revitalised source of high-wage jobs, valuable exports and national income.
“Our Modern Manufacturing Strategy is at the heart of our JobMaker plan. It starts with creating a stable and competitive business environment to grow our all parts of our manufacturing sector, but it does not end there.
“It will play to Australia’s strengths, improve collaboration and commercialisation, and create a sector that is modern, dynamic and highly skilled.
“Through this Strategy, we are determined to ensure government, industry and the research and education sectors are all working in the one direction to build scale in our manufacturing sector.
“Manufacturing is critical to Australia’s economic future, to the prosperity of our regions and to the capabilities that underpin the success of so many other industries.”
Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said this strategy reflects the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as extensive work with industry before that.
“Our manufacturers have risen to the challenge to deliver during COVID-19 and now, we’re unlocking their potential to deliver for our future,” Minister Andrews said.
“By playing to our strengths, strategically investing and boosting the role of science and technology in industry, we can open up new markets and take more of our quality products to the world.
“This Strategy sends a clear signal that not only is Australia open for business, but we mean business.”
The centrepiece of the Strategy is the $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative (MMI), which will see the Government strategically invest in projects that help manufacturers to scale up and create jobs.
The MMI will support projects within six National Manufacturing Priorities which reflect Australia’s established competitive advantages or emerging areas of priority:
Resources technology and critical minerals processing
Food and beverage
Medical products
Recycling and clean energy
Defence
Space
“This is about Australia playing to its strengths and the Government strategically investing in areas of manufacturing where we know we have an edge and that can deliver the jobs we need,” Minister Andrews said.
Industry will be engaged to co-design tailored road maps for each of the priority sectors to set clear goals over the next two, five and 10 years, and identify the barriers and opportunities that will guide action and investment.
The Strategy will also address the competitiveness of individual manufacturers in our priority sectors, with a $52.8 million expansion of the Manufacturing Modernisation Fund.
The COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the need to better understand and address our supply chain issues and opportunities. A $107.2 million Supply Chain Resilience Initiative will support projects that address an identified supply chain vulnerability.
“This is about incentivising industry to take advantage of opportunities to provide both domestic and global supply chains with critical products,” Minister Andrews said.
Innovation and Science Australia will be repurposed as Industry Innovation and Science Australia, to provide a long-term perspective on growing the manufacturing sector and strong industry advice to Government throughout the implementation of the Strategy.
The Government is also comprehensively reviewing existing industry programs to better align them with the strategy. As part of this, we will provide an additional $50 million to the Industry Growth Centres initiative to support projects in the priority areas out until the end of June 2022.
This strategy builds on the work across Government to improve economic conditions for business, including streamlining regulation, cutting red tape and cutting input costs. A key part of that will be cutting energy costs as outlined in the Gas-fired recovery statement on 15 September 2020.
Annual Ministerial Statement on Rural and Regional Budget Outcomes
30 September 2020
Prime Minister, Minister for Infrastructure Transport and Regional Development, Treasurer
The Government will deliver Australia’s first Ministerial Statement on Rural and Regional Budget Outcomes to Federal Parliament during Budget week next Thursday.
The Statement will update the House on the Coalition Government’s economic roadmap for rural and regional communities. It is the government’s intention to deliver this update annually.
Regional communities and industries have been disproportionately affected by recent challenges including COVID 19, prolonged drought and bushfires.
Our economic recovery plan will create jobs and more resilient regions helping to rebuild our economy and to secure Australia's future.
Just in the last week, the Government has announced $385 million for the new Regional Recovery Partnerships program, the regional Connectivity Program and the new Resilient Regional Leaders initiative, as well as further investment in the Building Better Regions Fund and regional tourism.
Regional Australia will be key to helping Australia’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
Digital Business Plan to Drive Australia's Economic Recovery
29 September 2020
Prime Minister, Treasurer
The Morrison Government is investing almost $800 million to enable businesses to take advantage of digital technologies to grow their businesses and create jobs as part of our economic recovery plan.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital technologies by Australian businesses and consumers, which has enabled many to transform their operations and continue to trade through the crisis.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said this year’s Budget would support businesses to recover, build back and create more jobs as part of our economic recovery plan.
“Many businesses moved online quickly when the pandemic hit, undergoing a decade of change in months, finding new customers or new ways of doing things,” the Prime Minister said.
“Our JobMaker Digital Business Plan provides significant backing to continue that digital push and expand opportunities for businesses to grow and create more jobs.
“The Plan supports Australia’s economic recovery by removing out-dated regulatory barriers, boosting the capability of small businesses and backs the uptake of technology across the economy.”
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Government was investing in Australia’s digital economy to keep businesses in business and Australians in jobs as part of our economic recovery plan.
“The Governments’ Digital Business plan is targeted at building on this digital transformation of Australian businesses to drive productivity and income growth and create jobs,” the Treasurer said.
“Our Digital Infrastructure package is estimated to increase Australia’s GDP by $6.4 billion a year by 2024 and around $1.5 billion of this additional economic activity is estimated to flow to regional Australia each year.”
Key elements of the Digital Business Plan include:
$256.6 million to develop a Digital Identity system to enable more secure and convenient engagement with government services, and in future, the private sector. Digital identity is already being used by over 1.6 million Australians and 1.16 million businesses to access over 70 government services.
A further $419.9 million to enable the full implementation of the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program, allowing businesses to quickly view, update and maintain their business registry data in one location;
A further $28.5 million to support the rollout of the Consumer Data Right to the banking and energy sectors, which is in addition to the more than $120 million already committed;
$29.2 million to accelerate the rollout of 5G, including an initiative to invest in 5G commercial trials and testbeds in key industry sectors such as agriculture, mining, logistics and manufacturing.
$22.2 million to support small business operators take advantage of digital technologies through an expansion of the Australian Small Business Advisory Service – Digital Solutions program, a Digital Readiness Assessment tool and a Digital Directors training package;
$11.4 million for a new regulatory technology commercialisation initiative to improve compliance and directly support our digital technology firms;
$9.6 million to support fintechs to export financial services and attract inward investment;
$6.9 million for two blockchain pilots directed at reducing business compliance costs;
$5.9 million to boost Australia’s influence on international standards;
$3.6 million towards mandating the adoption of electronic invoicing by 1 July 2022 for all Commonwealth government agencies to encourage greater adoption amongst businesses supplying to government and within their supply chains, and to consult on options for mandatory adoption of e-invoicing by businesses;
$2.5 million to connect workers and small and medium sized businesses to digital skills training;
Consulting on making permanent the temporary reforms to allow companies to hold virtual meetings and execute documents electronically;
Reviewing the regulatory architecture applying to the payments system to ensure it remains fit for purpose and is capable of supporting continued innovation for the benefit both businesses and consumers; and
Reforming the regulation around stored-value facilities to support innovation and competition in line with the recommendations of the Council of Financial Regulators.
These initiatives are in addition to the Government’s $4.5 billion NBN investment plan to bring ultra-fast broadband to millions of families and businesses across the economy over the next two years.
They also complement our actions to build digital skills and to improve trust and security in the digital economy, including through the $1.67 billion investment in the 2020 Cyber Security Strategy and investments in online safety.
The Digital Business Plan is part of the Government’s economic recovery plan to grow the economy and create jobs and supports our goal for Australia to be a leading digital economy and society by 2030.
United Nations 75th Anniversary Commemorative Event Monday 21 September 2020
29 September 2020
Greetings from Sydney, Australia.
75 years ago, the world faced a new dawn and it faced the question, would we continue to go down the path of war, conflict, genocide, or would we find a better way, a way that recognised that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights? The world sought to answer this question with the United Nations.
On this important anniversary, we recall two Australians who played a significant part at the outset. Of course, there was Doc Evatt, our External Affairs Minister in the 1940s, who believed in what the UN could become. He negotiated with passion and gusto in San Francisco, moving from room to room, and he went on to be President of the General Assembly. He fought for fairer representation for the smaller states. In his words, no sovereign state, however small, would wish to think that its destiny has been handed over to another power, however great. It was true then, and it's true today.
And there was Jessie Street, the only woman in Australia's delegation and only one of eight women out of 850 delegates that were there in San Francisco. She worked to ensure that the word "sex" was in the clause "without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion" wherever it occurs in the UN Charter. Jessie Street was told that women's rights were assumed in the charter. Her response was "We don't believe in taking chances." Good old Australian realism. Her action helped ensure that the UN stood for the dignity and rights of all.
On this anniversary, I want to pay tribute to every Australian and all indeed who have served as a peacekeeper, delivered aid, tended the sick and contributed to the cause of peace anywhere in the world. And I particularly also want to acknowledge the members of our Pacific family of nations who have played their part in all of these important services. We share that faith and we honour their service.
Like the humanity it serves, the UN is of course not perfect. But its quest is to embody our better angels by listening and engaging, by collaborating and working on the solutions that lift all. This work goes on. It is as worthy and needed today as we face the challenges of health and climate and economy, a COVID recession, scientific challenges, political challenges of our day. So many, just as it was 75 years ago when the world emerged from the ruins of a global conflict.
So I honour all who are continuing this great work, as we acknowledge once again this incredibly important anniversary.
Doorstop - Obourne, SA
27 September 2020
The Hon Steven Marshal MP, Premier of South Australia: Well, good morning and welcome to Osborne, it's a very exciting day. We've got the Prime Minister, the Honourable Scott Morrison, with us. We've got the Mathias Cormann, the Minister for Finance, with us, Gaby Costigan, who is the chief executive of BAE here in Australia. We've also got Andrew Seaton, who's the managing director of Australian Naval Infrastructure, ANI, we’ve got Craig Lockhart, who is the managing director of ASC Shipbuilding and Commodore Steve Tiffen so everybody's here and it's a very exciting day.
First of all, can I say it's always wonderful to have the Prime Minister back in South Australia. We haven't seen him since February. He came over then, and he opened our fabulous space agency headquarters here in South Australia. And since then, of course, we've been dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. The Prime Minister's done an outstanding job leading the nation in our response to both the health crisis and the economic crisis that has ensued from the Coronavirus here in Australia. But he's back now. I've got to say a massive thank you to the Prime Minister for his ongoing support, his passion, his belief in South Australia and our aspirations for the future. He's backed us in terms of developing our skills in South Australia. He's backed us in terms of developing our infrastructure, $12.9 billion dollars worth of infrastructure here in South Australia. He backs us with the space agency, Lot 14, our city deal. But the Commonwealth Government, has done an outstanding job in backing South Australia, in terms of our defence industry capability.
Now, the coalition government was re-elected in 2013 and they made a couple of absolutely critical decisions for our nation. Number one, to increase defence spending, to two per cent of GDP under the former Labor governments, it had gone down to a level that we hadn't seen since before World War Two. This left our nation vulnerable. So the Coalition agreed to increase our defence spending to two per cent of GDP. But more than that, they also agreed to recognise the defence industry as a strategic defence capability for our nation and here in South Australia, we've been the very happy beneficiaries of these two incredible decisions to protect our nation.
We here are at Osborne at the moment, the most modern shipyard in the world. We are currently inspecting for the very first time the new shipyards that will build the fabulous Hunter class frigates, nine Hunter class frigates to be built right here in South Australia a $45 billion dollar programme and even the sheds here, the four critical sheds that have gone up in record time. This alone is a $530 dollar Commonwealth investment into South Australia and doesn't it look fantastic. Incredible facilities. The apprentices that we met this morning will be working here. They could have jobs for decades and decades to come on these critically important programmes.
But South Australia's fortunate with defence beyond the shipbuilding programme. We talked this morning about the frigates programme, but of course, we have the 12 new Attack class submarines we'll be building here. Currently, we have the two offshore patrol vessels being built by Lurssen on this site. And in addition to that, we have Edinburgh here in South Australia, one of two super bases with incredible intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, work being done there. So we are the defence state. We love having the prime minister here. We also love having Mathias Cormann the Finance Minister here. We know that he will be retiring from the federal parliament and on behalf of the people of South Australia I'd like to acknowledge his extraordinary contribution to the nation. And he has been a great friend of us here in South Australia. He's been, he was appointed to the cabinet in 2013 as the finance minister. He now is the longest serving finance minister in the history of Australia. He's a senator from Western Australia since 2007, and the good news is early this month, it was his 50th birthday, so a young guy, a very capable guy, a passionate guy and friend of South Australia, Mathias, sir, congratulations on your outstanding service to the nation. We wish you all the very best for whatever lies ahead.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce the Prime Minister of Australia.
Prime Minister: Thank you Premier. It's great to be back in South Australia, as a Sydneysider who flew in to Adelaide last night, I will be the first of many, many who will be coming back to South Australia enjoying everything that South Australia has to offer, whether it's here in Adelaide or further afield. It's just a wonderful state to come and visit, and I encourage my fellow sydneysiders to make the trip. And those from the ACT as well now, the Premier has made the decision. It will bring, we estimate, some $800 million dollars almost to the state of South Australia, the decision the Premier has made. So congratulations to you Steven it’s been a great privilege to serve with you on our national cabinet as we’ve dealt with the very significant challenges over the course of this year as we've confronted the twin crises of the pandemic, the health pandemic and the pandemic recession, the COVID recession has resulted from the impact of COVID-19 across the country.
This is an exciting day. This wasn’t here several years ago, just over a couple of years ago, wasn't here. And, you know, when I look around this magnificent facility, the most modern shipyard anywhere in the world, as the Premier has just reminded us, I do see an enormous amount of Australian steel. Which is also great. But what I see in all of this is jobs. I just see so many jobs, these 750 jobs at its peak that were involved in building this magnificent facility. Over half a billion dollars of investment to make it a reality, I also see the jobs as we’ve met many of the new apprentices just starting now. Apprentices like Sabrina, whose father was a welder. And she's going to be a boilermaker. She’s training to do that right here in this shipyard. And she’ll be building ships in this place for a very long time to come if that’s what she chooses to do.
This is rebirthing South Australia, and there's a rebirthing going on here in South Australia under the Premier's leadership, which is exciting to be part of, whether it's the heavy industry we're talking about here or it's indeed the future industries like space where I was last time when I was here. Cyber technology, all of these sorts of things. Welded together with these incredible facilities that will provide jobs and livelihoods for decades to come.
$45 billion on the Hunter class frigates. And that steel starts getting cut in December of this year. I was assured here today. And that's exciting news. So it's all about jobs. The way we grow ourselves out of the challenges we have economically is what will determine our future. And you don't grow unless you build these sorts of facilities. You don't grow unless you train thousands of workers who will come and be part of this magnificent venture. We'll have around 2,500 people involved in these projects, thousands of jobs will be created here very, very soon. And these apprentices will come in wave after wave after wave. We haven't seen this in this country at this scale for a very, very long time. And the fact that it's happening here in South Australia is tremendously exciting and it's providing an economic foundation for this state for decades to come. And it's been achieved through a partnership, a genuine partnership between the Commonwealth government together with the state government. Bringing the people, the skills, we currently have to the JobTrainer programme 15,000 additional training places that have been created for this year alone, to ensure that we're training people so they can get into jobs that businesses will be creating with the skills that businesses need. Because, yes, we're going to have a big bill when it comes to dealing with the cost of supporting Australians through this pandemic and the way you pay that bill back is by getting to work, by getting people in jobs, by growing your economy. That's how you build up. You don’t do it through higher taxes and you don't do it through taking away the essential services that Australians rely on. You do it by doing this. This is a magnificent achievement. And to all of those who've been involved, those who’ve designed it, those who’ve planned it. Those have worked and sweated over each and every every part of this magnificent facility, and what's underneath it, I'm told there's more steel under the ground than there is, what we see above us. And just that is a marvel to think about the engineering works that are involved in this.
We make things here in Australia. We made this together, if we can make this nothing can stop us.
And someone who's been incredibly involved in this project from the outset has been the finance minister, who is the shareholding minister who's been part of this project. And Mathias and I've been involved with this project for a long time, formerly in my role as Treasurer. And of course Mathias always as finance minister, and I've got to tell you, it's terribly exciting to come here, having made those decisions several years ago and then to move into the construction phase and now here to stand and see what's been achieved and look forward to what's to come. It really is a great day for Australia and it's a great day for South Australia and I’ll ask Mathias to make a few comments as well.
Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann, Minister for Finance and Leader of the Government in the Senate: Thank you very much Prime Minister. Thank you very much, Steven, Premier of South Australia for your very kind words.
Today is a moment of genuine personal pride. It was just over three years ago that Christopher Pyne and I put a proposal to our National Security Committee to set up Australian Naval Infrastructure as the body to build and develop this world-class facility. By the end of December 2018 we were in a position to first raise steel. Here we are, less than two years later, having met a very ambitious timetable, ready to hand over what is a world-class facility in which we will build $45 billion worth of ships, the Future Frigates, the Hunter Class Future Frigates. It is an extraordinary achievement.
As the Prime Minister said, 750 jobs at its peak during construction, with more than 25,000 tonnes of steel, more than 85 per cent of which here out of South Australia and 97 per cent of the contracts let to build this facility gone to Australian businesses. This has been a genuine sovereign enterprise. But more importantly, from here on in, more than 2,500 direct jobs here in this facility.
As I reflect on my seven years in the job as Finance Minister, I have had direct responsibilities in relation to the ASC the whole way through. We were able to lift performance at ASC submarine maintenance to the point where they consistently meet and exceed world benchmarks of performance - outstanding work. The Air Warfare Destroyer program was under serious pressure when we came into Government. Towards the end of that program, meeting and exceeding global performance benchmarks.
The decision to pursue the structural separation of ASC into submarine maintenance, shipbuilding and the infrastructure business, which has underpinned projects like this, which will set up South Australia and Australia for decades to come, to successfully deliver one of the most exciting, continuous naval shipbuilding programs in our history.
I have got say, the work between the Commonwealth and the State Government here in South Australia under the leadership of Steven Marshall could not have been better. It has been fantastic to have a government here in South Australia that worked hand in hand with us to make sure that we were able to deliver this for South Australia and for Australia.
It is so exciting to be here. I cannot wait to see the products that will be built and developed by generations of workers here in this facility for decades to come.
Thank you very much, Prime Minister. Thank you, Premier and thank you to everyone involved.
Journalist: [Inaudible]
Prime Minister: Hang on, Gabby and then Andrew.
Ms Gabby Costigan, CEO of BAE Systems Australia: Good morning, everybody. Well it's an absolute pleasure to be here representing my company, BAE Systems Australia. And my team in ASC shipbuilding, as you heard the prime minister say, the premier and the finance minister, this is an incredibly exciting day, not just for South Australia, but for our nation. We received the approval to proceed this week with prototyping for the Hunter Force frigate, which will commence in December this year. So it's an exciting day for us. And as as the Prime Minister said, this is all about jobs. You know, we have continued throughout the pandemic with business as usual here in South Australia. And I think looking around you, you can see the amazing work that's been happening. And my team are really excited to kick off, you know, the operational part of this now and build these 9 frigates for our Navy to help protect us and our national interest. Thank you.
Prime Minister: Thanks Gabby, Andrew?
Mr Andrew Seaton, Managing Director and CEO Australian Naval Infrastructure: Good morning all, and thank you for coming down here today. I stand here as as a very proud managing director of Australian Naval Infrastructure, to build great warships you need to have great infrastructure. And three years ago, as the finance minister said, ANI was formed to build the infrastructure here at Osborne. And we have delivered over 1.8 million man hours of work on site. We've delivered this yard on schedule and on budget. It's a fabulous yard. It is, as we've already heard, it is probably the best shipyard anywhere in the world. It's the most sophisticated shipyard with the equipment that we've put in here. We're in the process of handing it over to ASC shipbuilding and we look forward to a long association with them as they build the frigates here in the yard. But we're not stopping there. We are already underway building the new submarine yard just north of here on an adjacent site. And that submarine yard, again, will create the jobs of the future for a very skilled workforce, building our continuous naval shipbuilding programme. So thank you.
Journalist: Prime Minister can we ask, the submarine maintenance jobs that we've been asking for getting on for the best part of a year now, still no answer. The fact that you are here now is that a good sign for the existing Collins class maintenance jobs?
Prime Minister: Well the answer is the same I gave it to you back in February. We’ll make that decision, it’ll be made in the national interest. We have not made that decision as yet. And I want to thank particularly the Premier for the many conversations we've had about that, that decision has not yet been made.
Journalist: Why not? What’s the delay?
Prime Minister: Well, we've been pretty focused on the COVID crisis over the last 6 months I must say. Last time I was here that was just before that hit. And it’s not a decision that is pressing, it is, there is the works that we need to do right here and now in terms of delivering the naval shipbuilding programme. And that's what we're focused on, now. And so we will make that decision. But right now, it is not the priority decision. The priority decision is getting on with the works that we're doing right here. Right now.
Journalist: Some workers waiting on a decision might say it’s pressing?
Prime Minister: We’ve got 2,500 jobs right here on this project. 2,500 jobs just on this project, about the same again I think it is Mathias when it comes to the build of the subs themselves, there is no shortage of naval shipbuilding work here in South Australia. There is no shortage of a future for jobs in naval shipbuilding here in South Australia. And you can see some of the young people who are just about to embark on a decades long careers here in South Australia, getting the skills that they need to ensure that they will have a tremendous future here in South Australia. Building ships.
Journalist: There were many who thought that you would come bearing gifts today considering the Premier has opened the borders?
Prime Minister: Well, I'm just pleased to be here in South Australia. I told the Premier that when he opened the borders, I'll be here pretty quick smart because I’ve missed South Australia very much so it's great to be here. And it's particularly great to be here for this important milestone in this project. And that is the principal purpose for why we're here today. But when it comes to the support that the Commonwealth government has provided to South Australia, I mean, this is unprecedented support that any Commonwealth government has given to this state ever. When we think about just the last six months, some almost $5 billion dollars alone has been provided by the Commonwealth government, federal taxpayers, of which that includes South Australians to ensure that South Australians could come through the worst pandemic we've seen in this century. Now it’s about $3.3 billion already paid out the door when it comes to JobKeeper support here in South Australia. And about another $1.6 billion, that has gone in to supporting businesses with cash flow support to keep their doors open, to keep their employees into jobs. And then on top of that, there are the many other programmes, whether it's HomeBuilder or the JobTrainer programme, which has seen 15,000 extra training places this year. So that's a pretty full basket I think it comes to what the Commonwealth has been doing and will continue to do and alone, our government has already invested in over $9 billion dollars in infrastructure projects here in South Australia. And those projects are happening right now, the North South project, six lanes, that is happening now. So we're going to keep delivering on the promises that we'd be bringing to South Australia and we’ll keep doing that.
Journalist: Prime Minister, when it comes to borders, as you rightly point out, you’ve wasted no time coming to South Australia,
Prime Minister: Just before we get on to those other issues, I mean, we've got Gabby and Andrew here and if there are questions that people would want to raise on this project, or the related projects, very happy to address that. And then I'm very happy to come back to the other issues of the day.
Journalist: Prime Minister, you talk about the importance of defence in our COVID-led recovery. Why is that so important to the national fabric and important for our economic recovery?
Prime Minister: Our economic plan isn't just about cushioning the blow, which we have done arguably, probably more effectively than any other country in the world today. It's not just about recovering the jobs which has seen us recover some 760,000 jobs in the last few months as we've bounced back and we're coming back and the majority of those jobs have actually been for women, which we welcome. There's been a lot of young jobs, youth jobs coming back as part of that. That's not just the jobs that were lost, but they were the jobs that reduced to zero hours. So the aggregate demand, stimulus and support that we put it through programmes like HomeBuilder and so many others, JobKeeper, that's what that has been doing. But there's a third and most important part of our economic plan, and that's to build for the future. And that is to ensure that we have reliable, affordable energy in Australia to support manufacturing industries, including right here in South Australia. You cannot have a viable manufacturing sector here in the decades ahead unless you are prepared to embrace gas as your transition fuel. I mean, basically you are assigning people out of work if you're not going to get on the gas when it comes to supporting manufacturing in this country.
So manufacturing is important, defence industries are incredibly important as part of that industrial element of our economy. And we have deliberately put defence industry and our procurement as part of our manufacturing plan in this country, which builds jobs not just now. But jobs, as we've seen from the young people who are here today for decades to come. These types of investments and building these capabilities, whether it's building submarines or building offshore patrol vessels or frigates or advanced, whether it's in other states like Queensland with vehicles. All of this is building technological and manufacturing, advanced manufacturing capabilities in Australia, which will underpin our income and our jobs and our livelihoods in the future. Industrial relations and infrastructure development, all of these are important parts of the plan, getting access to credit. The changes to insolvency laws, digitising our economy, a huge part of the reform plan we're working through right now. And that sets Australia up for success into the future. So all of these combined together, we've got to cushion the blow. We've got to support the recovery and then we've got to build for the future. That is our economic plan for jobs.
Journalist: Prime Minister, in allowing, as you've just mentioned, credit, allowing for easier loans. Does it also allow for perhaps younger people to rack up debt that they can't afford?
Prime Minister: No, I don't believe so. Getting people to fill out phone books worth of applications doesn't protect them. I know that. I mean, I when I was treasurer, I used to work closely on these issues. What we need is to ensure that banks engage in their business properly, which they will. It's not in the bank's interest to make loans to people who can't afford to pay them back. You'd go broke if you tried to do that. And what we had built up over many years, and the Reserve Bank governor has said it himself. He said, while, these regulations that were introduced years, years ago after the GFC may have been introduced with a noble purpose, all they’ve done at the end of the day is it's taking too long for young people who want to buy a house and build a house. We've got a HomeBuilder programme where we try to support people to build houses. We've got a first home loan deposit scheme which is helping thousands upon thousands of young people get their first home. And we've clogged the system up with regulations and paperwork and red tape that stops them getting into their home. Now, it's not just for those who are looking to buy their first home or buy any home or build their first home, or build a home. It's also about small business getting access to credit. And because unless you keep the arteries of the economy flush with the credit that enables the growth and the employment of people. Then you will not realise the objectives of your [inaudible]. So we think it's a very responsible decision and it's been I think it's been well received, particularly by those who know how many jobs it’s going to create and how many businesses it’s going to support.
Journalist: In terms of the HomeBuilder scheme, anecdotally, a lot of builders are now telling young people and that they can't guarantee that they'll get the $25,000 because of the backlog in between signing a contract and that three-month deadline to pour a slab and start construction. Is there any consideration of extending that period?
Prime Minister: Well, right now, the settings are as they are, but we're watching those things closely. It's important that we move on these things as quickly as we can. The whole purpose of the HomeBuilder programme was to get projects happening now, not twelve months from now, get them happening now. So we want to keep the pressure on the system to to get those moving as quickly as possible. But we're also very conscious. We're listening carefully. And Minister Sukkar who is responsible for the programme as Assistant Treasurer. He's closely liaising with industry and with state governments in particular, and how they're planning processes are proceeding, but I mean the HomeBuilder programme has been tremendously successful. It's an absolute job creator. It's a job making programme, and it's also providing that support to the economy to rebuild our economy from where it's been so devastated by COVID.
Journalist: What, what hope can you give the South Australian public in the upcoming Budget? What can we expect from your Budget to help our economy?
Prime Minister: You can expect us on Tuesday week to continue to step up for Australians in the worst crisis that most of us have seen in our lifetime. Australians know that our government moved quickly and moved significantly. Australia today, as I told the United Nations in my pre-recorded address to the General Assembly. Has managed the combination of crises of the health crisis and the economic crisis better than almost every other country in the world. And that is a testament to the resilience of Australians. But I think it is also a product of the responsive and targeted and proportionate and well-timed support that we've provided, in the Budget you can expect that to continue, in the Budget you can expect to see us continue to roll out the plan I talked about before of cushioning that blow, of supporting our our economy and to building it for the future and the jobs that at the end of the day, are most important. Jobs first, that’s what the Budget is all about.
Journalist: Prime Minister you just mentioned your address to the UN, do you think you may have offended China by doubling down on your call for an inquiry into COVID-19?
Prime Minister: No I don't. I don't accept that analysis of what I simply said, in fact, I was making the opposite point, what I was simply saying was that our purpose in raising this issue was to ensure for no other reason, that we understand what occurred so we can make sure it doesn't happen again. That's just common sense. And 145 countries around the world, including China agree. So I don't agree with that analysis of how it's been characterised. I reject it, actually. I think that has been misread. My statement was simply to say that it was the right thing to do. 145 countries agreed with us and I'm pleased that it's proceeding.
Journalist: Prime Minister, you talk about the borders and how delighted you were to come to South Australia, were you frustrated that it took that long for the borders to be lifted across the country?
Prime Minister: I'm a patient man. And, you know, patience is important when it comes to dealing with crises, and I've always respected and Steven knows this, having served with me on the National Cabinet. When we went into this crisis, all the states and territories were pretty much in the same place. We really didn't know how bad this was going to be. There was a lot of things we didn't know. And so everyone was starting from the same place. And that means we could move on the various measures that we took together. Now, as time went on, different states moved at different paces and they had different challenges. And we've seen, of course, in the worst case situation what has occurred in Victoria. Now, here in South Australia, South Australia was one of the first, if not the first, to move on, leaving people more around their state from outside of their CBDs. . They were the first to move when it came to getting kids back into school. Something the premier and I shared a great passion for in advocating that position. And we continue to this day. But I've always respected the states ultimately making the decisions about when it's right for their state to go to the next step. All I've simply asked is when states make those decisions that they do it efficiently. That they explain the reasons for why they're doing it and they seek to administer it in a way that is done fairly and and doesn't create any double standards along the way and is obviously rooted in the health advice that should guide those decisions. But you've got to balance your economy up with that. And they are judgements which at the micro level the states will make. So I'll leave them to make them.
Journalist: [Inaudible]
Journalist: What do you make of -
Prime Minister: We can do a couple more.
Journalist: What do you make of Dan Andrews’ comments in the hotel inquiry claiming he never received an email that the ADF was willing to help, and denying any responsibility in hiring security guards?
Prime Minister: That that's just a matter for Victoria. I have one goal in Victoria and that is to help the people of Victoria get back on their feet. And to get their economy opening up again, and to do that safely. And that's what I'm working with, Premier Andrews to achieve. All of those issues, I know there's a great deal of interest in them, but I don't think it helps my commentary on those matters. What helps is me continuing to work with every Premier and chief minister in this state, in this country to ensure that we can get Australia firing on all cylinders. I tell you, South Australia's firing on all cylinders and it's great to see. And that's because of tremendous leadership from Premier Marshall, but I will continue to work with all. It's not my role to get involved in those matters that are being investigated in Victoria. They have their process. I'll respect those processes and let them get on with it. I'll get on with my job, which is to work with everybody, to rebuild the country.
Journalist: Did Premier Andrews throw Jenny Mikakos under a bus?
Prime Minister: I'll leave that to Victoria. I honestly don't have any observations on those things.
Journalist: Prime Minister, back to your UN address, you talked about upholding the international law of the sea, why not just call China out on its militarisation of the South China Sea?
Prime Minister: I think Australia has adopted a very consistent position when it comes to the international rule of law. Whether it's on the law of the sea or otherwise, the point about making a national address to the United Nations General Assembly, it's an opportunity to reaffirm your nation’s support for all of these key principles, and the way we achieve stability and balance and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, is ensuring that the rule of law and the partnership of nations that operates, does so within that international rule of law so that's, that's exactly the point I was making?
Journalist: Was that comment aimed at China though?
Prime Minister: No.
Journalist: Who was it aimed at?
Prime Minister: It was about reaffirming our support for the international rule of law of the sea.
Journalist: What was the purpose of that reaffirmation?
Prime Minister: Exactly what I just said.
Last one?
Journalist: Prime Minister, the cash handouts, further cash handout for pensioners is that going to support them enough?
Prime Minister: Well you’d have to tell me what you are referring to. I haven't made any such announcement.
Journalist: Isn't there a further cash handout to pensioners later in the year?
Prime Minister: Well, I have not announced that. The Budget is on Tuesday week, tune in. It's gonna be a great Budget. It's gonna be a Budget that is going to have the most unprecedented investment in Australia's future that this country has ever seen. It will be a titanic effort that we're involved in to ensure this country can get back onto the growth path that we want to be on. And that means we're going to have to do some very heavy lifting in this Budget. And that comes at a significant cost. But I can assure Australians that particularly the finance minister and I and the Treasurer have been over every dollar and every dollar we're spending is targeted and it's proportionate. It's temporary for those programmes that are designed to be so. And it's designed to ensure that Australia comes out of the COVID recession in the way we all want it to happen with thousands, indeed millions of jobs.
Thanks very much.
Victorian Restrictions Joint Statement
27 September 2020
Prime Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Health
Easing restrictions in Victoria in a COVIDsafe way is vitally important so that more Victorians can get back to work and resume their normal lives.
Today’s announcement is a small but further important step in that direction. The removal of the curfew, the ability of sole traders to operate garden maintenance and related services and the improvements in supermarket capacity and manufacturing are all welcome.
It will be important that more be done in the weeks ahead to safely ease more restrictions.
We note that at similar case levels NSW was fundamentally open while remaining Covidsafe due to a world class contact tracing facility.
As many epidemiologists have encouraged, we would support Victoria in reviewing the trigger of five and zero cases with regards to the third and last steps.
As it stands this lockdown is already longer than that faced by residents in many cities around the world. We remain deeply concerned about the mental health impacts of a prolonged lock down on Melbourne residents.
The Morrison Government has already delivered more than $27 billion in economic support to Victorians during this crisis and we have extended JobKeeper for another six months which is estimated to see an additional $16.8 billion be paid to Victorians in the December and March quarters.
The Government will continue to support Victorians during these challenging times.
The Hon Susan Ryan AO Statement
27 September 2020
The Honourable Susan Ryan AO was a ground breaker who spent her life advocating for Australians who had been excluded from full participation in our national life.
Susan was the first woman to hold a Cabinet post in a Labor Government. During the Hawke Government she served as Minister for Education and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women, and Special Minister of State. Elected to the Senate in 1975, the then Senator Ryan was first Labor Senator for the Australian Capital Territory.
Opening the doors for women in our national life was an abiding passion for Susan Ryan.
Susan Ryan said she had two goals in Parliament, “One was to bring into consideration matters of vital importance to women which had been neglected; the other was to establish, through my work and by supporting the work of other women in the Parliament, recognition that women were capable parliamentary performers. I wanted to demonstrate that the neglect of female candidates by the major political parties had been an error, and had deprived the nation of a great deal of capacity.”
These defined her Parliamentary career. From her first election when she ran with the slogan “A woman’s place is in the senate”. In 2019, the Senate reached gender equality in terms of representation. In part, this was achieved because of ground breakers like Susan Ryan.
Following her time in Parliament, Susan Ryan was a leader in the superannuation industry holding various roles.
In 2011, Susan Ryan was appointed as a Commissioner with the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Again, Susan Ryan’s passion was for our nation to see the capacity we were neglecting: older Australians and people with a disability.
She sought to remind Australians that because of discrimination in employment, older Australians and people with a disability were “denied the benefits – of dignity, independence, a sense of purpose and social connectedness – that work brings. Belief in the rights and benefits of work has always been a core value for me”.
Susan Ryan will be remembered as someone who sought to make our country bigger and more open to every citizen. She leaves a legacy that will endure.
To Susan Ryan’s family, the Government extends its heartfelt condolences.
Interview with Chris Kenny, Sky News Live
22 September 2020
CHRIS KENNY: Prime Minister, thanks for joining us. So I’m wondering whether you're seeing the relaxation in borders today, the expansion of the border bubble between Queensland and New South Wales, and South Australia opening up now to New South Wales as a bit of an outbreak of at least some common sense when it comes to state borders?
PRIME MINISTER: I think it is common sense and I welcome these decisions. I particularly congratulate Steven Marshall for going the full distance in what he's decided to do there. And I think South Australia will benefit greatly from that. But equally, I welcome the changes that have been made with Queensland. I look forward to more in the future as we further open up Australia. We're seeing a real improvement in case numbers in Victoria, but we're not there yet. New South Wales’ results have been tremendous. And of course, the ACT, well, they haven't had a case for over a very long period of time. So I think these are commonsense changes. Not before time. And I think that will just further assist getting people back into jobs and making sure that we live alongside the virus and not have the virus dictate how we live.
KENNY: Yeah, there's no doubt that it's a step in the right direction. But New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, she says, says she wants that new Queensland border opened up all together. You've still got Western Australia and Tasmania sort of locking themselves off to most of the nation. Are you worried that this border belligerence is deeply embedded in the states now? It’ll take a long while to unwind?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the impact of the borders economically is different in each state and territory. I mean, the health reasons for having them, I mean, that's for the chief health officers to explain and the Premiers to explain the medical basis for what they're doing. I've always said that. But if you look, for example, in Western Australia, they have an economy which has a very strong resources component to it. And if you look at what's happening in their economy, they've seen a lot of jobs come back and we welcome that. If you look in Queensland, you've seen a 44 per cent increase in the jobs coming back into the economy. But in New South Wales, you've seen 70 per cent. Now in Queensland the economy obviously draws a lot more on its tourism and hospitality side and being disconnected from that domestic tourism growth is obviously going to have an impact in Queensland. So I think the economic impacts of these borders are different in different states, depending on how their economies function. You look at, a state, like Tasmania, for example they will be benefiting greatly from the support that has been put in to income supports in Tasmania. Now, we're obviously transitioning away from that. But I know Tasmania are looking to open up as well. So, look, I know there's a lot of frustration about this, but you know, what I'm basically trying to do is get us all heading in that direction, get us opening up safely. And I think Australians very much, Chris, want it to be done safely. And they want to have the confidence that the testing and the tracing and the outbreak containment is there. But the, news actually, New South Wales has demonstrated how it's done. I'm pleased Victoria have taken up those lessons and they've dramatically improved their capability there. And Queensland always had a pretty good testing and tracing regime. So I think they can have a lot of confidence that should they be able to open up further, then their public health system, if they keep focussed on that, should be able to deal with the challenges that may come.
KENNY: But what about the unrealistic expectations where we have premiers, whether it's a Labor Premier in Queensland like Annastacia Palaszczuk or a Liberal Premier in South Australia like Steven Marshall, they're talking about wanting to see zero community transmission in a state the size of New South Wales for a couple of weeks. Is this unrealistic? Shouldn't they be leading their populations to understand that we need to live with the degree- with the disease to some degree rather than have those sorts of expectations?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the federal government definition of a hotspot is obviously very different to that, and we released that some weeks ago. And that also works hand in glove with having a strong testing, tracing and outbreak containment regime like New South Wales has. I mean, one of the reasons I think New South Wales has done so well economically has been that they've had the best testing and tracing and outbreak containment regime, which means they've been able to keep much of their economy open and at the same time manage the health effects, which means people have greater confidence. Now, we've still got a long way to go, even in states like New South Wales. We've got to get people back into our major CBD areas, whether it's in the CBD where I am now or out in Parramatta or Liverpool or or other parts of the city, Chatswood and so on, where a lot of small businesses depend on people working in those office towers. So we've still got a long way to go. But I think this commonsense move today, we look forward to seeing more of that. I know that there is a sense of security people feel from being behind a border. But that border is not a substitute for testing, tracing and outbreak containment. And New South Wales has demonstrated that and they've got both the health and the jobs to prove it.
KENNY: What about in Victoria? Obviously, we're seeing a dramatic reduction now and then the level of infections. We've got this curfew in place in Melbourne, still stage four lockdowns. Now, some eminent epidemiologists have suggested that the infection curve was turned down by stage three lockdowns, that all this additional stuff is in large part unnecessary. Do you have any hope that Daniel Andrews might start to open up the state on a slightly exaggerated timetable? Or do you just stay right out of that?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I said at the outset that obviously the news around the curfew and the very strict controls that were put in place was devastating news to Melburnians and people across the state. That was just a statement of the obvious. I mean, that wasn't a statement really about the policy. It was that, how that would impact on people. And it obviously has impacted on them very significantly. It's impacted unemployment. It's impacted on investment. But there's also, I think, a view in, across Victoria that they obviously want to get out of this mess. It's been a terrible mess and they want to get out of it. And the fact that the numbers have come down over the course of these many weeks is welcome news. And I said at the time that I hope that's the worst case scenario in terms of the plan that they laid out at that point. And we have seen some improvements in that. I hope we can see more and they'll be judgements that the Premier and the Victorian government will make. And we'll certainly through both our the federal government officials through what's called the National Coordinating Mechanism, and Nev Power’s group which is the COVID commission, we're going to keep inputting into the Victorian government and to encourage further changes along the way, which ensures that as Victoria comes out of this, not only do we not risk them going back into it, and that is incredibly important, but also we can build up that industrial and small business capability and business and demand as quickly as possible. But let's also not kid ourselves about this. Look what's happening in the United Kingdom. Look what's happening in France. Look at what's happening in Germany, in Denmark, in Israel and all of these countries going through into some very significant further waves. And so we can't pretend like it's not there. Of course it's there. And if it takes hold, it has devastating impacts on all of these countries. So we've got to be careful. But I think in Australia, we can also be confident because of the good work we've done on testing and tracing and outbreak containment. And again, you know, it's the Premier’s, in New South Wales birthday today. So she got two birthday presents. I think one was the opening up of New South Wales to South Australia, the relaxation of that border up in Queensland. But but equally, I think there is an acknowledgement of the great work that she and her team have done to build the best testing and tracing regime in the country.
KENNY: I didn't realise it was Gladys Berejiklian’s birthday. Happy birthday to her if she's watching, did you send her any birthday wishes?
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I did. And it would be indelicate of me to say what significant milestone she's passed, but she's joined a club that I'm already a member of.
KENNY: Very good. Now, look, you're talking about what's happening in Europe and what we risk and what we've avoided in this country so far, of course. But what worries me is the level of fear that we're getting from some political leaders. Labor and Liberal, as I say, and they're telling people that everybody's at risk with this virus. Now we know we have to flatten the curve, keep it flat. We know we don't want to overwhelm the health system. We don't want to lose control, of course. And every passing of every person is very, very sad. But shouldn't we also be open about the fact that young people essentially don't, are not badly affected by this virus? That's that's a blessed relief. When you compare it to the Spanish flu and other pandemics, we ought to be open about the the people here at risk are the elderly and people with comorbidities. And therefore, as time goes on, we should be able to get much smarter and much more targeted about who we can protect. So that other people can go about their lives in a more normal manner. For instance, kids going back to school in Victoria?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, going back to school has always been something, you know, I've been a keen advocate for, and I think the medical evidence has always supported that. But we've also got to remember, Chris, is that the virus moves most quickly amongst young adults. And that's where outbreaks predominately occur and can move most rapidly across a population. And that's what actually puts the most vulnerable at risk. And so those we rely on to be the most diligent in their COVIDSafe behaviours, the distancing, the hand hygiene and all of those sorts of things, the COVIDSafe app and so on, are sort of young adults and those in their Middle Ages who move around and a large amount within our communities. And so those restrictions, when it just comes to normal COVIDSafe behaviours, I'm not talking about how many people you can have around to your house and those sorts of things. What I'm just talking about is the discipline, the habit of living alongside the virus is not people sort of living in the, you know, in a mosh pit- you can't have that. That's risky. And that's going to put everyone at risk. And we're seeing that again in the United Kingdom and many other places. And that's a terrible and wicked problem for them now to be dealing with. Now we have avoided all that largely except for in Victoria and in Melbourne in particular. And we don't want to go back there. So there is always a risk when you come out that people will fall out of the habit and people will see all these case numbers go down or people might think, well, I'm behind a border. You know, I don't have to do all that. Well, the truth is, you want to live alongside the virus, COVIDSafe behaviours are absolutely essential. And so that does need to become and always be part of our routine. That's why constantly getting tests, if you're feeling sick, don't go to work. All that sort of stuff is incredibly important, because if we slacken up on that, then we'll find ourselves back where most of the developed world is in the northern hemisphere right now. And Australia, when you look at it, as you know, Chris, we've had you look at the June quarter, in the June quarter. Our economy fell by 7 per cent. Devastating, absolutely devastating. But compared to the rest of the world, it was one of the lowest falls of any developed country. And when you look at our health results, both on the case incidents in Australia of COVID and the upsetting number of deaths that we've had compared to overseas. I mean, I know a lot of people on your programme talk about Sweden. Well, Sweden has had a bigger fall in their economy and they've had almost 20 times the number of deaths. So I don't really see that as a model to follow. I see Australia as a model to follow. And, of course, there's a spectrum of things that have been done across the states and territories. But when you add it all up, I'd rather be here than anywhere else.
KENNY: No, I think it's a very important point. Restrictions or not. There's gonna be a hit to the economy because the natural impact of the of the of the virus on people's behaviour. But we've got to keep refining this stuff. And I appreciate talking to you about it. I just wanted to go on to other issues, though, because the business of government continues,
PRIME MINISTER: It does.
KENNY: And your Energy Minister, Angus Taylor, has outlined the road map on energy for this country. Is this now, the what your critics have said is that the missing energy policy, the delivery of of energy policy certainty in this country?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we've outlined, I think, is very sensible. It's about technology, not taxation. That's what Angus has basically been saying. You know, you hear people say, oh, there's an absence of policy certainty. You hear it from the big energy companies. You hear it sometimes from, you know, the big business groups and you hear it from the Labor Party or others. What that means is simply this. What they want is a price that customers have to pay more for. That's the policy certainty they want, getting people to pay more for energy. Now that I assume then goes and underwrites a whole bunch of investment decisions that they want to make, but it's all based on the customer paying more. Now, we believe that we can avoid that by ensuring that we're investing in technologies and co-investing with the private sector in particular, to ensure that these new areas of technology, whether it's in hydrogen or the many others that Angus has outlined as being our priorities. And then there are sub-tiers to that which will guide investment in our technology sector. That means we can achieve lower emissions, more jobs, lower costs and more reliability. And that's what you have to achieve. That's what we're seeking to achieve. And so we're not going to sort of set up a system which basically enables people to get charged more for giving big companies a certainty about being able to rake in more revenue. What we're going to focus on is a regime which invests in technology, which gets both- keeps the lights on, does it at a more affordable price with lower emissions and more jobs.
KENNY: Just to clarify that, Prime Minister, you're saying it's not just the Greens and the socialist left of the Labor Party that want a price on carbon. It's also the major energy companies and they want that price not necessarily in order to reduce emissions, but in order to extract more money from the public?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, to basically put in behind their investments and they want a higher rate of return on those investments. Now, I understand that, I understand why a company would want that. But we believe there's another way to achieve that through our technology roadmap and giving it certainty about the technologies and the investments that we're making in the sector. And I mean we've got, we've always had this challenge up there in the Hunter with Liddell, it's going to close. And all of these plants have their effective life. And so that will always come to an end. Now, I remember when Hazelwood closed down, people said, oh, well, there'll be plenty of other projects that come on line and that will make up the difference and it'll all be okay. Well, that wasn't okay, prices shot up. And we know if we don't get reliable energy back into that system by the end of 2023, and that means you need to make a final investment decision in April of next year to achieve that, then we'll see prices go up. Now, we're not prepared to allow that happen. We want the private sector to step in and provide that additional reliable energy capability. And if they do so, great. But if they don’t get there by next April, well we'll do it through Snowy Hydro with a project that can actually happen, that you can actually get an approval for, that will be delivered on time and can have the desired effect that we want at that time. So, look, I suppose you'd put it this way, Chris. When it comes to energy, we're very practical. We know you need a, you need a sufficient amount of supply. You need a significant component of that which is reliable to support heavy industry or you lose all your heavy industry jobs and it needs to work hand in glove with the massive transition that's taking place over many years towards more renewable energies. So it's just a very practical plan. It's about, you know, investing in technology, not making the public pay more through higher taxes.
KENNY: Prime Minister, thanks for making time for us today.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks, a lot Chris, good to chat.
City Deal to Create 10,000 Jobs and Transform Perth CBD
20 September 2020
Prime Minister, Premier for Western Australia, Minister for Finance and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure, WA Minister for Transport and Planning, Chair Commissioner for the City of Perth
A new billion-dollar partnership between the Commonwealth Government, State Government and City of Perth has been finalised, unlocking economic benefits and opportunities for the Perth CBD.
The $1.5 billion City Deal will re-energise Perth, bringing government and private investment into the CBD, creating almost 10,000 jobs while encouraging more people back into the city creating flow on economic benefits for small businesses.
The Perth City Deal includes:
$695 million investment by the Commonwealth Government, State Government and Edith Cowan University, to move its law and business schools, along with the world class Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts into the Perth CBD, creating the State’s first inner-city university campus. More than 9,200 students and staff are anticipated on campus from day one.
$360 million investment from the State Government, Curtin University and Murdoch University to expand or establish new presences in the Perth CBD. Murdoch University will create a vertical campus and eSports Stadium linked with Singapore and East Asia, while Curtin University will build a CBD knowledge and innovation precinct.
$105 million has been allocated to the Perth CBD Transport Plan to upgrade cycling and walking infrastructure, bus stop accessibility upgrades and enhance Roe Street. The centrepiece of this plan is the new Swan River Causeway Bridge.
A $20 million investment into the Perth Cultural Centre precinct will see immediate improvements in lighting, security, wayfinding and environment and the development of a longer-term vision for the space to become a place of destination for all visitors to the city.
$42 million to develop the Perth Concert Hall into a premier world class music venue.
Up to $100 million to redevelop the WACA and transform it into a state of the art sporting facility including an inner city swimming pool
$20 million for the East Perth Power Station to upgrade necessary infrastructure and improve connectivity to the site and surrounding areas while plans for redevelopment and preservation of the historic buildings and heritage progress.
$36 million to provide facilities, safety improvements and services for homeless people in the city.
$18 million for the creation of an Australian Space Robotics, Automation, and AI Command Control Complex to encourage start-ups, small businesses, and researchers supporting the development and operation of robotic and remote asset management activities in space.
$10 million towards a WA Indigenous Business and Employment Hub in partnership with the Wirrpanda Foundation to provide support and advice to Indigenous businesses, job seekers and entrepreneurs.
$4 million of funding to undertake a pre-feasibility study for an Aboriginal Cultural Centre to be located in Perth on the traditional lands of the Wadjuk Noongar people.
Under this plan more than 25,000 students and staff will be bought into the city and the construction of the campuses will bring over $1 billion of investment to Perth’s CBD. It is estimated this will create more than 4,100 construction jobs and nearly 1000 ongoing direct jobs.
Under the deal, Edith Cowan University will move their law and business schools into the CBD, along with the world class Western Australian Performing Arts Academy.
Murdoch University will establish a vertical campus that will include partnerships with STEM, other higher education providers and an eSports stadium linking to Singapore and South East Asia. The campus will also include a digital futures academy, and Aboriginal CBD Centre, professional development and cultural activities.
Curtin University will develop an east end ‘historical heart’ development, building on their existing CBD campus and establishing a knowledge and innovation precinct in the CBD.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Perth would benefit for generations to come from the game-changing investment in education, culture, jobs and lifestyle.
“This is a JobMaker investment which will generate employment for thousands of hard-working West Australians, it will boost those businesses that are already in the CBD and it will drive new businesses to open,” the Prime Minister said.
“WA, like the rest of Australia, needs a targeted economic stimulus which will provide a boost now and into the future, and this is what we’re delivering.”
Premier Mark McGowan said the Perth City Deal will see more than $1.5 billion worth of investment into the Perth CBD unlocking thousands of local jobs and creating flow on economic benefits for small businesses.
“This City Deal has given us the unique opportunity to collaborate with the Commonwealth Government, universities and local businesses to help re-energise our capital city,” he said.
“We have worked to establish up to three university campuses in our CBD which will create up to 5000 direct and indirect jobs while re-energising Perth.
“This will have positive flow on effects for small businesses including retail, restaurants and bars while returning vibrancy to our capital city.”
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said City Deals are the Federal Government's proactive approach to help develop our cities and regions.
"The opportunity is to bring all levels of government together as well as the private sector and the community to provide a coordinated investment plan for Perth,” he said.
“We have negotiated an ambitious City Deal that unlocks Perth’s incredible future potential while continuing to develop it into a vibrant, exciting and liveable capital city.”
Federal Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge said the new deal will help drive people into the Perth CBD.
"More people and students in the CBD, means more activity, a better vibrancy and more money flowing for retail, restaurants and tourism,” Mr Tudge said.
Western Australian Transport and Planning Minister Rita Saffioti said the City Deal aligns with the McGowan Government’s key objective to connect, activate and future proof Perth’s communities.
“The Perth City Deal is creating exciting new opportunities in the planning and transport spaces while also re-energising our capital city,” she said.
“The Perth CBD Transport Plan will feed into METRONET, closing gaps on the shared path network while encouraging people to embrace new modes of transport.
“The new university campuses highlight what density can achieve and the positive effect it can have on creating well planned and vibrant communities.
“This new deal will create and support local jobs, encourage more people into our CBD and provide a much needed boost for local businesses.”
Chair Commissioner for Perth Andrew Hammond said the City of Perth welcomes the announcement of the Perth City Deal as a transformative landmark deal between all three tiers of government.
“The City’s commitment includes $25 million toward the redevelopment of the iconic WACA, specifically funding the addition of a community aquatic facility, and $10 million toward the CBD Transport Plan to upgrade Roe Street and facilitate regeneration of the area.
“We look forward to working in partnership with the Federal and State Government and the wider community to bring the Perth City Deal to fruition and secure the future prosperity and liveability of our great city.”
Interview with David Speers, ABC
20 September 2020
DAVID SPEERS: Prime Minister, welcome to the program. You've made a series of energy announcements during the week, but there is one we haven't heard yet: Will you commit Australia to achieving a net-zero emissions target by 2050?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, as you know, our policy is to achieve that in the second half of this century, and we certainly will achieve that, and that's why this week's announcements were so important because it was about the technology we need to invest in now, which will make it a reality, particularly on the other side of 2030 and I think the sort of target that you've talked about then becomes absolutely achievable. I'm interested in doing the things that make that happen. I think that is very achievable, but it involves making the investments that we have set out for ARENA and the CEFC this week. That's how you get there and that's what matters because we are very focused on lower emissions. I believe that can be achieved but what I'm more focused on is the doing.
SPEERS: The technology roadmap is about to be released. The Government has been working on this for a while. Just to be clear, you are saying a net zero target by 2050 it can be achieved but won't be in the roadmap as the end goal here as the actual target?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the technology roadmap as you say, will be released shortly what we've been saying all along though is that it is about the technology, and that will produce the results and the results means lower emissions and what we need to make sure the investments are driven by having lower emissions, lower costs and supporting both today's jobs and future jobs.
SPEERS: But you've got to know where you're going, PM, you’ve got to know what the, what the, end of the road is?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we do know where we are going. Yeah we do, and the end of the road is lower costs, lower emissions and more jobs. That's where we are going. And on the 2020 target, well of course we have just met that target very comfortably by 430 million tonnes. I remind you as you will recall, that back in 2013 we took a plan to the election to achieve that. That was actually dismissed but we had a plan to achieve a 2020 target and we have achieved it, and not only just achieved it, we’ve bettered it. The same will be true for 2030 and the investments we’ve outlined this week and the many other initiatives we're already engaged in-
SPEERS: And I’ll come to those, just on 2050, you’ve got the Farmers Federation, the Business Council, every state and territory, more than 100 countries have all committed to this. Why won't you commit to that target?
PRIME MINISTER: Because I'm more interesting in the doing, David. I know people get very focused on the politics of these commitments, but what I'm focused on is the technology that delivers lower emissions, lower costs and more jobs. That's what actually matters to people. That's what changes their lives and so that's what we are delivering. When we make a commitment, we meet it, and we don't just meet it, we beat it. That's our form.
SPEERS: But you won't make this commitment?
PRIME MINISTER: We are committed to investing in the technology which reduces emissions in this country. And I think those sort of things are achievable with the right investments in the right technology. And you won't get there, I guarantee you this, if you are going to narrow the sorts of technologies and the sorts of solutions that you are prepared to look at which is why we want to broaden that out.
SPEERS: So let's talk about what you have announced during the week. Is the Government still committed to a technology agnostic approach to achieving the cheapest, most reliable power?
PRIME MINISTER: Of course we are.
SPEERS: So when the Liddell coal-fired power station closes in 2023 or before, does it have to be gas that replaces it?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, gas has chosen itself because as yet, there has been nothing that has been presented which meets the goals that we have which is reliability and the firming capability for renewables to meet the gap that will be created. But of the 1,000 megawatts that are needed to replace Liddell, there will be a mixture. There will be gas but there will also be some form of traditional coal-fired which will make up part of that, but there’ll also battery as well. That's all part of the 1,000 megawatts [inaudible] so it’s not just one.
SPEERS: You are threatening to build a new gas-fired power plant, why not say-
PRIME MINISTER: Yes, because that's the bit that is missing.
SPEERS: Why not say to the market, ‘Here's what we need. Give us the best, most cost effective option you can'?
PRIME MINISTER: That's exactly what we've said to the market. We're saying, ‘you step up, we'll step back'. If they can produce that on the rules, and the rules are the reliability and affordable and it meets the challenges that we have with the closure of Liddell, the market should go right ahead, they should knock themselves out. And that’s what we actually want them to do.
SPEERS: It has to be 1,000 megawatts? It has to be, 1,00 megawatts?
PRIME MINISTER: Sorry?
SPEERS: What are the rules here? What are you actually asking for?
PRIME MINISTER: The 1,000 megawatts are already being made up in part by some investments which I believe definitely will go ahead. I think Energy Australia is very close to going ahead with a number of projects. As I said, there are a number of battery projects, there are a range of projects that will make up that 1,000 and that is the market responding.
SPEERS: So what is the missing piece?
PRIME MINISTER: There is about 250 megawatts or thereabouts that we believe are going to be necessary to fill that plan out, and we can do that and deliver it on the ground and that's important, David. A lot of people can talk projects, but they've got to get approved, they've got to be built in time, and you can get a gas-fired power station built in that time and delivered when it will be there. It won't be on the wish list, it will be on the done list, and that's what we need to be in place. That will meet the criteria. If there are others who come up with a better plan and can deliver that plan in the time-frame and meet the reliability - great, tremendous! It hasn't happened yet, though.
SPEERS: You are at least open. Okay we will see what comes up based on that definition there of 250 megawatts.
PRIME MINISTER: For that component, yeah.
SPEERS: For that component. You also want to expand the remit of the renewable energy agency to fund non-renewable options including carbon capture and storage. You are putting an extra $50 million into carbon capture and storage research. PM, you know that Australian taxpayers have spent more than a billion dollars I think over many years trying to see if carbon capture and storage will work one day. The fossil fuel industry keeps saying it is just around the corner. What makes you think this will be a viable option one day?
PRIME MINISTER: It is already happening at Gorgon, there’s already projects that Santos are wanting to pursue and for our resource base David, we have the most skin in the game to make sure that we can make it work. I'm not prepared to give up on it. I'm prepared to keep looking for the answers in this area because it will reduce emissions and it’ll support jobs in Australia. That's why I think Australia has a special interest in wanting to ensure that if anyone is going to crack this technology for those resources then it will be us.
SPEERS: Sorry to jump in there, the Gorgon project you mention isn't operating yet as I understand it. The Santos project - they say it would need a carbon price of nearly $30 a tonne?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, whether it needs that or not, David, the point is that carbon capture and storage, when you say it is a myth and will never happen -
SPEERS: Well, it is expensive, is the point. That's what the companies are saying - it is expensive.
PRIME MINISTER: But this is why, it is an emerging technology. We are also investing in hydrogen. That's not a reality to the extent we would like it to be now, but if you go back 10 years ago, the story was very different. Our argument on ARENA is this, that solar and wind which dominated a lot of the last 10 years and a lot of work that ARENA did - fine, it is established as commercially available, has got scale, it stands on its own two feet. We now need to invest in the technologies for that next generation that will be there post-2030 and post-2035. And so, that goes in the mix, but so does a range of other issues. We want it to be able to look at things like how steelmaking is done in Australia, how we build residential buildings and how we run hotels and HVACs systems, all of these things which lower emissions and change how industries operate and at the same time ensures that we're reducing emissions in those businesses, because at the end of the day that's what we are trying to achieve. We are not trying to achieve any particular kind of renewable technology. We are trying to lower emissions. Soil carbon, for example, is something that can be funded under this. Now soil carbon is a negative emissions technology, effectively, and if that- and Australia has an opportunity to do very well there. And that means it can achieve all the sorts of ambitions that we started the interview talking about.
SPEERS: On coal, Prime Minister, can you just clarify for us: Is there realistically any chance of a new coal-fired power station now being built in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it’s been a while since there has been one, but there have been some new ones. We do have a feasibility study which has been funded up in Collinsville and that was done genuinely. We promised that we would do that. That study is now under way and that is a question that is in the process of being answered so I’m not going to prejudice the outcome.
SPEERS: With Liddell for example there’s a lot of talk about making AGL sell off that coal-fired power plant, someone else running it. That's obviously not going to happen now. Has the world moved on?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it will be driven by the economics, ultimately. I'm not about to sort of rule things out unless the economics rules them out ultimately, and that is why if CCS is able to be established, then these are game-changing technologies. So whether it's viable in these forms, that is the very proposition that has been put as part of that Collinsville project which is not a large project, but it is an important project for industry, and regardless of whether - I mean, if that proves feasible, fine. If it doesn't, then we still have heavy industry challenges, and that's why the funds we’ve announced this week are to change and improve how industry can operate. I mean, I made announcements in the Hunter and in the Illawarra. I mean, they are the oldest in heavy industry regions in our country. I want those sectors to be successful, those regions to be successful in the future. If you go up to Gladstone and places like that, I want them to be successful, and that means finding reliable energy solutions with technology and harnessing what we have well into the future because their jobs are important to them.
SPEERS: Let me turn, leave the energy space. In just over a week, the JobKeeper and the JobSeeker payments will be reduced by about $300 a fortnight. Has Treasury done any modelling on the impact this will have on the economy?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, what we've seen in the last three months is over 400,000 jobs come back into the economy, and that is good news. That is encouraging news. We are just over half of the way back, and JobKeeper has played, with JobSeeker, an incredibly important role in keeping people in positions. But what was more interesting about the figures this week, David, is that we saw the effective rate of unemployment fall from over 14 per cent when it peaked after the crisis hit and that went down to 9.3 per cent. Now, I've always said that the actual rate of unemployment is a lot higher than that measured rate, always been up-front about that, and what I found most encouraging about the jobs numbers this week is that effective rate of unemployment was coming down which mean this: Those who had been reduced to zero hours are starting to get the hours back. Still a long way to go.
SPEERS: I want to ask you about that but just coming back to the question, has Treasury modelled the impact of reducing the JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we are moving forward with the Budget is just under two weeks' time, and there are a range of measures that are in the Budget, I can assure you, which are going to be pro-boosting...
SPEERS: I'm sure that's the case, but I'm just asking you and surely you must have had the experts look at this-
PRIME MINISTER: My point David is they take into account - Sorry I will let you finish.
SPEERS: This is a big call. We are in the middle of a recession and you are reducing the payments. What does Treasury say the impact will be on the economy?
PRIME MINISTER: What Treasury says is that we need to boost aggregate demand in our economy and the full suite of measures you have as a government need to do that job and that's what the Budget will do. And so you don't have to hold on to every measure forever. There are other measures that come in and pick up from where others left off. We are transitioning JobKeeper - it's important to do that. We always said it was not something that would be around forever. JobKeeper also finds its level where the need is greatest. 60 per cent of the JobKeeper payments which will be made at the end of this will be in Victoria. Of all, Victoria will account for more JobKeeper payments than all the other states put together, combined.
SPEERS: Unemployment is still rising in Victoria.
PRIME MINISTER: Of course, that's right, so it is a program that finds its level of need, David, and JobSeeker is the same. But there are other programs and the Treasurer will go into greater detail about that obviously in the Budget which are dealing with the here and now, but rebuilding our economy and then building it for the future so we can go into a decade of prosperity.
SPEERS: Do you think unemployment nationally will keep rising from this point?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, it is a bit hard to say on the measured rate, David, I must say, and there are conflicting views. The figures that came out this week were a pleasant encouragement in terms of their improvement, but for those who still don't have a job, that is of no comfort to them. People are still out of work and we need to get them in it.
SPEERS: What's your sense of it?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I'm watching these issues closely and I'm pleased that we've seen over 400,000 jobs come back. I think we will see more come back-
SPEERS: So it might have peaked. It might have peaked Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: David, I'm trying to answer the question if you’ll let answer the question.
SPEERS: OK.
PRIME MINISTER: I'm saying there will be more jobs come back in. The measured rate of unemployment will depend on how many people, what the participation rate is and all of those things, but what I'm saying is we’ve seen over 400,000 jobs come back in, I think there will be hundreds of thousands of more jobs come back in between now and Christmas, particularly if we get this next step right in Victoria. The number of jobs went backwards in Victoria in the last month. We will see Victoria bounce back, that will add to the national jobs growth. Now where the actual level of measured unemployment is by Christmas, it's hard to say at the moment I’ve got to say. I hope it's lower, but at the moment it is hard to say where the course of the pandemic is, because it's not just about what's happening in Australia, David, it's also about what is happening around the world. We are in the middle of a global pandemic recession and so Australia's growth is going to also be affected by that as well. And they are issues that are well beyond our control, so we will keep getting it right here and keep seeing the jobs come back and importantly that means extra jobs coming back for women and young people.
SPEERS: A final one, Prime Minister, the relationship with China, it seems to deteriorate continually. Do you have any plan for a circuit-breaker here, any plan as to how you can at least restore communication between ministers?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there is communication obviously between our two countries and there is quite regular communication at that officials level-
SPEERS: Not at the ministerial level.
PRIME MINISTER: We are always available - the point I was about to make, obviously we would welcome that and as soon as- it takes two parties to actually have that engagement.
SPEERS: How do you do that, though? What's your plan to make that happen?
PRIME MINISTER: Well David, our plan is to always be consistent about Australia's national interests. Our plan is to be very clear about what we're seeking to do and to ensure that the offerings that we are making from the Australian economy, whether it is in our resources sector, agricultural sector, our services sector - they are compelling offers because our trading relationship is a mutual one. It is not all one way we both benefit from it and I believe the Chinese Government understands that as well. What we are also doing is we’re working constructively with all the partners in the region who also want to see a balanced Indo-Pacific and a safe and secure Indo-Pacific that respects the sovereignty of every country in the Indo-Pacific and we're big supporters of that and we're working constructively with partners like Japan and India in particular, Indonesia, Singapore and so many others. Vietnam - I mean one of the most important relationships we've been developing most recently outside of Indonesia in the region has been with Vietnam who have proved to be a great strategic partner on many issues within the Indo-Pacific. So the way I think we come through this is by drawing together a region that is focused on stability, and I think that will improve relations within the region more broadly.
SPEERS: Prime Minister, thanks very much for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks a lot, David.
World-Class Education Campus to Revitalise Perth's CBD
20 September 2020
Prime Minister, Minister for Finance and Leader of the Government in the Senate, The Hon Alan Tudge MP Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure, Premier for Western Australia, WA Minister for Transport
Perth’s city centre will receive a major boost under the Perth City Deal – a plan which will bring Edith Cowan University’s world-class Creative Industries, Business and Technology Campus into the heart of the city.
The $695 million project will form the centrepiece of the Perth City Deal. By 2025 the campus will draw more than 9,200 students and staff into the CBD.
That number will grow to over 11,000 by 2034 with thousands and thousands of spectators expected to attend more than 300 public performances in the heart of the City every year.
The development will create $1.5 billion of economic stimulus and more than 3,000 jobs during construction, as well as over 380 ongoing jobs.
The ECU City Campus will bring together programs in technology, industry and creativity, including the WA Academy of Performing Arts, the school of Business and Law and an advanced technology and cyber security centre.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Perth would benefit for generations to come from the game-changing investment in education, culture, jobs and lifestyle.
“This is a JobMaker investment which will generate employment for thousands of hard-working West Australians, it will boost those businesses that are already in the CBD and it will drive new businesses to open,” the Prime Minister said.
“WA, like the rest of Australia, needs a targeted economic stimulus which will provide a boost now and into the future, and this is what we’re delivering.”
Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan said the investment also supports longer term recovery by leveraging Perth’s enviable position as a pandemic safe destination.
“Our strong response to COVID-19 means there is no better place to be in the world than WA, and the new campus will attract both domestic and international students when our borders are safe to re-open,”
Premier McGowan said.
“The Western Australian Government will be investing $150 million in grant funding and CBD land for this transformational project which will support local jobs and encourage people back into the Perth CBD.
“As part of the deal, the current ECU site will revert to full WA Government control and ownership and the State Government will now embark on a masterplan for the site.
“The new university will attract thousands of people into the city, delivering a huge boost to local businesses and building on Perth’s reputation as a vibrant cultural and entertainment district.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the new campus will help support Perth’s economic recovery, creating thousands of jobs while reinvigorating the City by bringing lots more people into the CBD on a regular and consistent basis.
“We have committed $245 million to help make this city-shaping project a reality,” Senator Cormann said.
“This campus will be a major catalyst for an exciting rejuvenation of Perth’s CBD, attracting locals and visitors to live, work and play in the city while creating great opportunities for local businesses.”
“The WA Academy of Performing Arts is a world class, world renowned institution, which has produced some of this country’s best known performers, including none other than Hugh Jackman.
“With more than 300 public performances a year, it will attract more than 100,000 unique visitors into the city creating great excitement across Perth for generations to come.”
Federal Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure Alan Tudge said the relocation of the ECU campus would be a transformational change for Perth with the economic flow-on to last for decades.
“Thousands of students flooding into the city will inject more life, vibrancy and dollars into the city centre and its local businesses,” Mr Tudge said.
“COVID-19 has had a profound impact on all our cities and this element of the City Deal is exactly what WA needs right now because it means local jobs and a boost to the economy.”
Western Australian Minister for Transport and Planning Rita Saffioti said the campus added to other significant commitments to support the Perth City Deal that will enrich Perth’s city centre and boost the livability of the area.
“Every great city needs a lively CBD at its heart, and our investments will bring this in spades,” Ms Saffioti said.
“I can’t wait to see more people riding our world quality public transport and using our state of the art cycling infrastructure to visit and support our amazing small businesses.”
ECU Vice-Chancellor Steve Chapman praised the City Deal model for achieving great outcomes for the university and the city.
“This is an outstanding result for ECU and for the state. We are delighted to be working with all levels of government to create Perth’s first comprehensive university campus in the heart of the city,” Professor Chapman said.
“It is a transformational project which will change the face of our city and shape the future for ECU and its students.
“This campus will be where technology, industry and creativity meet to deliver the innovative thinkers, adaptive learners and global citizens who will be the leaders of tomorrow.”
With the announcement of these significant investments, the three levels of Government and their private partners will now work together to finalise the Perth City Deal that will deliver our joint vision of creating a vibrant, liveable and productive Perth city.
National Cabinet Statement
18 September 2020
The National Cabinet met today to discuss Australia’s COVID-19 response, recent progress following the Victorian outbreak, easing restrictions (including international border measures), helping Australians prepare to go back to work in a COVID-safe environment and getting the economy moving again.
National Cabinet continues to work together to address issues and find solutions to the health and economic consequences of COVID-19. Australia has done well on both the health and economic fronts compared to most countries around the world.
The Acting Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paul Kelly, provided an update on the latest epidemiological data and medical advice in relation to COVID-19.
There have been more than 26,800 confirmed cases in Australia and sadly 837 people have died.
Following Victoria’s second wave, there are now around 1,100 active cases in Australia, a decrease from 2,500 cases two weeks ago. In Victoria, infection rates continue to decline in a positive sign, while daily infection rates have remained low in all other states and territories. Some differences have emerged in testing rates between states and territories, and National Cabinet agreed the importance of enhancing testing. More than 7.2 million tests have been undertaken in Australia.
National Cabinet reaffirmed a suppression strategy for COVID-19 with the goal of no community transmission. Seven of Australia’s eight states and territories are successfully suppressing COVID-19, enabling most Australians in those jurisdictions to live and work in a COVID-safe economy.
National Cabinet recommitted to providing all necessary support to Victoria.
National Cabinet welcomed the Commonwealth’s $2 billion extension of the COVID-19 Health Measures package to support Medicare-subsidised telehealth and pathology services, GP-led respiratory clinics, home medicines delivery, public and private hospital services, as well as further investments in PPE. To date, over 30 million telehealth consultations have been delivered, with mental health telehealth consultations a priority. Telehealth services will be extended to 31 March 2021.
National Cabinet will meet again on Friday 16 October 2020.
ADF Support
National Cabinet welcomed an update from Lieutenant General John Frewen DSC AM, Head of the Defence COVID-19 Taskforce, on the contribution of the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force to the national pandemic response, particularly relating to Defence’s support to the states and territories.
As at 17 September 2020, there were 3,241 Defence personnel directly supporting Operation COVID ASSIST and contributing to the Commonwealth’s whole-of-government efforts. This included 1,306 personnel in Victoria, 736 personnel in New South Wales, 586 personnel in Queensland, 163 personnel in Western Australia, 152 personnel in South Australia and 128 personnel in the Northern Territory.
Full details of Defence’s contribution is provided in Latest updates - Operation COVID-19 Assist HTML | Defence COVID-19 National Support Daily Task Summary - 17 Sep 20 PDF 764KB.
Australians returning home
National Cabinet noted that there are a significant number of Australians wishing to return home from overseas, with the Commonwealth having taken steps recently to provide further support for those facing personal hardship.
National Cabinet agreed that all jurisdictions would continue to work towards enabling more Australians to return home by increasing the current caps on international passenger arrivals.
New South Wales and South Australia will continue to implement existing plans to accommodate more returning Australians by increasing their current international passenger arrival caps by Monday 28 September 2020 by 500 and 100 respectively.
Queensland and Western Australia will adopt a two-stage increase in their international passenger arrival caps over the next three weeks that will see an additional 500 Australians returning through each jurisdiction each week. Queensland will commence with an additional 200 passengers from Monday 28 September 2020, increasing to 500 passengers from Monday 5 October 2020. Western Australia will commence with an additional 200 passengers from Monday 28 September, increasing to 500 passengers from Monday 12 October 2020.
National Cabinet also agreed that any facilitation of special commercial services would be carried out through the jurisdictions of South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory.
Contact tracing by domestic airlines
National Cabinet noted that domestic airlines will progressively implement four mandatory contact tracing data fields (name, email address, mobile phone number and state of residence) from 1 October 2020 on a mandatory basis during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This will be implemented by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications in-conjunction with domestic airlines.
Coordinating contact tracing efforts and quarantine arrangements
National Cabinet welcomed the review by Dr Alan Finkel AO and Commodore Mark Hill CSC on the lessons learned from the visit to Health NSW by Commonwealth and Victorian officials.
National Cabinet agreed to a review of systems and operations in all jurisdictions to strengthen capacity and capability to effectively track, trace and isolate COVID-19. Further, National Cabinet agreed to commission a report by Dr Finkel to enable jurisdictions to exchange case and outbreak management data to enhance the management of outbreaks nationally.
National Cabinet received an update from Jane Halton AO PSM on the review of state and territory hotel quarantine systems. Australia’s hotel quarantine system has performed well across most jurisdictions and Jane Halton’s work will provide useful guidance on improvements for state and territory governments.
Agriculture Workers Code
National Cabinet noted progress with implementation of the Agriculture Workers Code, which is on track to be implemented by Victoria, NSW, ACT and the Northern Territory by at least 25 September 2020 as provided for in the Code.
Rural and Regional National Cabinet Reform Committee
National Cabinet commissioned the new Rural and Regional National Cabinet Reform Committee. As a first tranche, the Committee will focus on developing a shared understanding of the quantum, status and impact of existing investments by governments in rural and regional communities and, by the end of 2020 provide advice to National Cabinet on options to improve the delivery of existing investments to support Australia’s COVID-19 economic recovery through strong and sustainable rural and regional communities.
Aged Care
National Cabinet noted progress on joint actions underway to meet the commitments it made on 21 August 2020 to boost aged care preparedness at the provider, local, state and national level.
National Cabinet noted that while all states and territories are considered to have good existing emergency response capabilities and are on track with establishing and/or scaling up virtual or physical Response Centres, further practical actions will be undertaken to ensure a high level of preparedness.
The Commonwealth will continue to work with the states and territories, including through the development of resources, to support the operation of response centres.
On 7 September 2020, AHPPC endorsed advice from its Aged Care Advisory Group that each state and territory should establish emergency response centres.
Within each jurisdictions’ public health response structure, a dedicated aged care emergency response team has been established and key personnel identified at the state and Commonwealth level.
The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission is completing an infection control site visit program as part of its COVID-19 regulatory activity. As at 11 September 2020, the Commission has undertaken 673 visits relating to infection control out of a total 2,720 Residential aged care Facilities (RACF) (25 per cent). These visits are sequenced based on a risk assessment such that those visits represent those considered to be highest risk facilities. In total nationally, 2,446 visits to RACFs have been undertaken by the Commission, the Australian Defence Force, AUSMAT and state and territory governments.
Income tax exemption for small and medium business grants
The Commonwealth and Victoria have reached an agreement to make the grants to small and medium business recently announced under Victoria’s Business Resilience Package exempt from income tax. This recognises the exceptional circumstances Victorian businesses face.
The Commonwealth will extend this arrangement to all States and Territories on an application basis. Eligibility would be restricted to future grants program announcements for small and medium businesses facing similar circumstances to Victorian businesses. Any tax exemption would be time limited for grants paid until 30 June 2021.
AHPPC Advice on Boarding School Students
National Cabinet agreed to a new AHPPC Statement on Boarding Students and Students Living in Border Zones, which supports all jurisdictions adopting appropriate risk-based approaches (such as the Queensland approach) to ensure boarding students can cross borders and safely return home to their families during school holidays.
Retirement of the Hon. Dr John McVeigh MP
18 September 2020
Dr John McVeigh leaves the Parliament with the respect and admiration of his colleagues. He is a true gentleman.
This is a difficult time for John and his family. Like all Australians, our obligations to our families come first. I commend John for his decision and wish him, Anita and their family all the best, and for Anita to continue on her road to recovery with John by her side.
John was elected to the Parliament in 2016 following service in the Queensland Parliament, including a term as Queensland Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
He served as a Cabinet Member from December 2017 to August 2018 as Minister for Regional Development, Territories and Local Government.
John’s father Tom had also been Member for Groom and served as a Minister in the Fraser Government. They are one of just a handful of fathers and sons who have served in the Parliament and the Ministry.
Earlier this year, Tom told me he had planned to return to Canberra for his 90th birthday. Whilst COVID interrupted that plan, I still hope to meet Tom in Canberra sometime in the future.
Like his father before him, I am sure John will continue to play an active community role on the Darling Downs in the decades ahead.
As Member for Groom, John was proud of the infrastructure projects delivered for his region. Most notably, the Toowoomba Bypass that opened in 2019 as well as the Inland Rail, for which John has been a passionate advocate.
John said in his First Speech to Parliament and in his most recent speech that “our future is exciting”. My hope for him and his family is that they will not lose that optimism in the years ahead.
$2 Billion to Extend Critical Health Services Across Australia
18 September 2020
Prime Minister, Minister for Health
Millions of Australians will continue to receive medical care and support in their own homes with the Morrison Government investing more than $2 billion to extend a range of COVID-19 health measures for a further six months, to 31 March 2021.
Medicare-subsidised telehealth and pathology services, GP-led respiratory clinics, home medicines delivery, public and private hospital services will all be extended, as well as further investments in PPE.
These health initiatives play a major role in detecting, preventing and treating COVID-19.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the $2 billion extension in funding brought the Government’s commitment for the COVID-19 health response to more than $16.5 billion since March 2020.
“We will continue to provide Australians with critical health care and support to protect both lives and livelihoods,” the Prime Minister said.
“By providing telehealth and home delivery medicine services we are reducing the risk of exposure to COVID-19 in the community while also supporting people in isolation to get the care they need.
“Importantly this also includes mental health services, delivered over the phone, by trained specialists and GPs.
“As we continue to suppress COVID-19 while continuing to open our economy up, Australians can be reassured that we have the world’s best medical support in place to protect their health.”
Minister for Health Greg Hunt said “Our Governments response to the pandemic brought forward a 10 year plan on telehealth within 10 days.”
“As a consequence, over 30 million consultations protected the health and wellbeing of Australians, and protected our health workers and the viability of their practices.”
Patients will continue to have access to Medicare-subsidised telehealth for general practitioner, nursing, midwifery, allied health and allied mental health services, where and when they need them.
Telehealth is also being extended for essential specialist services, such as consultant physician, geriatrician, and neurosurgery services. Bulk billing will continue to be available and regular billing practices will apply to all of these services.
Up to 150 GP-led respiratory clinics across the country, which complement state run fever clinics, will continue their pivotal role in testing. Patients will continue to have access to bulk-billed COVID-19 tests under Medicare, with aged care residents and staff getting priority access to rapid testing.
Medicare-subsidised pathology and testing at the point of care will continue in 86 rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. This enables early identification of cases and rapid response if COVID-19 is detected in these highly vulnerable communities.
Eligible people will continue to get free home delivery of essential medicines by their local pharmacist. The Home Medicines Service has already delivered more than one million medicines to patients’ homes at no additional cost to patients.
Our support for states and territories continues, with the historic National Partnership Agreement ensuring the public health system is prepared and the public and private hospital systems are fully resourced and able to respond rapidly to any outbreak.
As an example, this agreement has enabled the transfer of more than 480 aged care residents to private hospitals and deployed clinical and nursing staff to assist in aged care during Victoria’s second wave.
The National Coronavirus Helpline will continue to operate around the clock providing important advice.
The expert Australian Health Protection Principal Committee recognises that future outbreaks will occur. The ongoing health response must be maintained to protect the health of Australians.