Prime Minister
KARL STEFANOVIC: PM, good morning to you.
PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Karl. G’day, Ally.
KARL STEFANOVIC: We saw that announcement from the World Health Organization a little earlier declaring a pandemic. They accused us not so long ago of overreacting. They have a lot to answer for, don’t they?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we made this call two weeks ago, as you know, and initially back in January, we also made the call to take this very seriously. And that has enabled Australia to prepare and get ahead, not just on the economic measures that we're announcing today, which we've been working steadily on, but also the health response to this as well. Yesterday we announced $2.4 billion. That's putting money into hospitals and the pop up clinics, into testing, into making sure people can get their medicines, telehealth, support for remote communities, facemasks. So dealing with the health issues, dealing with the economic issues to keep Australians in jobs, to keep business in business, and to ensure we bounce back strongly on the other side of this.
ALLISON LANGDON: There are strong suggestions this morning that the package could be up to $20 billion. Can we afford it firstly? And when will it roll out?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we've worked hard to get the budget back in balance, and that was acknowledged by S&P, one of the big ratings agencies overnight, which puts us in a position to make this sort of response. And that's why you actually do that and get your budget under repair. And this will be rolling out over the course of this next quarter. It’ll start in April and we'll get the legislation sorted out when we come back to parliament in a week. And that legislation will now be drafted having settled these measures.
But an important one today. I mean, there's around 120,000 apprentices who would be at risk, and we're going to pay half their wage with their employers for those small business employers who are putting on apprentices. I think it's fantastic that small business puts on apprentices. And this is going to ensure that we help them carry that load through this virus. We're giving support to businesses of up to $50 million in turnover with grants of up to $25, 000, and that will just come automatically through their, what's called the Business Activity Statement, the BAS process. They don’t have to fill out any forms and they don't have to make any applications and no one has to come and go through their books. This is just an automatic payment that they’ll receive and it's based on businesses that employ people. This is all about keeping people in jobs.
KARL STEFANOVIC: PM, Pensioners, as you would know, are really scared right now. They've got little money anyway. There is a concern that they won't spend this, this injection.
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that certainly hasn't been the history, every time these sorts of things have been done. Those who we will target, and we’ll announce those payments a little later today, those groups that we'll be working with to provide that stimulus to the economy, the experience has always been that that has flowed through very quickly to the economy. And that's why I think it's important to have the health measures in place as well, Karl. That's the difference, I suppose, with this event, this is about a health crisis. This is not a financial crisis. It is a global health crisis. Australia is not immune from that. But what we can do is take the action.
I mean, another important measure today is the instant asset write off. Now, this allows businesses to write off purchases of equipment that they're putting into their business, which they may have planned to do, particularly over the next three months. Well, this will give them the confidence to go ahead because they'll be able to write off completely, 100 per cent, $150,000 worth of investment in each and every item. And that's for businesses up to half a billion a year in turnover. So that's about putting the investment into the economy so on the other side, the economy bounces back and the jobs are strengthened even further. And the budget bounces back because this package does not have expenditure into the never-never. It's targeted. It's now. It's to support us here and now.
ALLISON LANGDON: When is the other side? When do you expect us to get through this?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we don't have a finite view on that at the moment. And we’re having another meeting of the National Security Committee today, where we're getting further advice from our medical experts. They've been doing a lot of work on this, working with people overseas. But what we do know about viruses is that they do have a fixed life, whether it's six months, whether it's nine months. I mean, these sorts of things are not yet determined. But we do know they do have a finite life. And there is another side to this. And what I'm really pleased about Karl and Ally , is that I called on big business earlier this week to do their bit. And we've already seen QANTAS step up and we've seen the big banks pass through that rate cut, first time that's happened by all of them in five years. And last night, Telstra told me, Andy Penn told me that for casual employees, they're going to be ensuring that they get looked after if they have to go into self-isolation. That's the sort of thing I was asking big businesses to do. They’ve got the balance sheets and so does the federal government. And we're going to be supporting and I'm pleased to say that they're following that lead.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Okay. So you're relying on business to do that. You won't be supporting the 3.3 million casual workers if they're in a situation where they're isolated.
PRIME MINISTER: Oh no, there are payments in the welfare system that can be targeted to those sorts of things. I'll have a bit more to say about that today. My simple point is, well, I'll talk about that later today, Karl. But what I'm saying is big business has a role to play in this as well. And I'm pleased at the early signs of them doing that. Our state governments have a role to play, and we all do actually at the end of the day, Karl, whether it's making sure that the reporting of the information is is clear and based on the facts from the medical experts, or whether it's people helping out their neighbours if they've gone into self-isolation. We've all got a role to play. We've got ahead early, but we've got to stay ahead. That's not something the government takes for granted. But all Australians, we’ll keep our heads and we'll get through this.
ALLISON LANGDON: Is it your belief that this package is enough to keep us out of a recession?
PRIME MINISTER: It's well-targeted. It's just under about 1 per cent of the size of our economy. So that's a very significant injection and it happens very quickly over the next quarter. So that's very important. But it's scalable. We're in a position to ramp this up should that be required further. And as you've probably seen from this, we've learnt more and more about this virus almost every day and we've responded to that information. We've not been reckless about this. We've been very careful about it because we know on the other side we're going to bounce back. We're going to bounce back strong.
KARL STEFANOVIC: OK, so it’s $20 billion at this stage, give or take,
PRIME MINISTER: That’s the speculation.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Will you go again?
PRIME MINISTER: As I say, it's scalable, Karl. We've got a budget coming up in a few months, just over a month's time, and the government is always in a position to do what we need to do because we worked so hard to get the budget back into balance. That gives us the platform. I mean, overnight, Standard and Poor's confirmed our triple-A credit rating. They said that what we've been able to do puts Australia in a position to deal with the temporary shock of this virus and that how long that goes for, whether it's six months or a bit less than that or a bit more than that, we're well positioned to deal with it.
ALLISON LANGDON: Prime Minister, we know that this will get worse before it gets better. Can we expect our borders to be closed at some point? Is that on the table?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, once the virus moves into a real sort of global pandemic phase, and we've got more than 100 countries that are now affected by this, the medical advice to us is that those measures become less and less effective because Australians are still returning from wherever they've been. Whether it's the United States or the United Kingdom or many countries that to this point in time have been, you know, less affected by the virus. What matters is then how you manage it within the community. And that's why we scaled up the investment in our health system with over 100 pop up clinics and money for additional testing. And on the testing, just a point the Medical Officer made yesterday. You've got to be presenting symptoms. You would have had to have had contact with someone quite directly that would have either had the virus or been in a country where it had been quite exposed to it. Just rushing off and having a test when you're not presenting any symptoms, on the maybe, that test is not going to do you any good. It's not going to tell you anything. So listen to the medical advice, not to Twitter.
KARL STEFANOVIC: Do you worry about your wife and kids getting it?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, one of the things that the Medical Officer said, Karl, is that for the vast majority of Australians who would contract this virus, it'll be a mild illness, as Dr Murphy has said. And so whether I were to contract it or you were to contract it. The other thing is it showed no severity, particularly, towards younger people and especially children. The more at risk populations are the older population. That's what we've seen. That's why we put an additional $100 million into support for aged care facilities yesterday. The $500 million that we're putting into the state hospital system also helps them support the aged care system. We put money into support remote indigenous communities yesterday. If there were to be an outbreak in those communities, we can react. So there's been a lot of thought go through into the planning of how we’ll respond on the health side and on the economic side. Because together we will get through this, and we'll get through it strongly.
KARL STEFANOVIC: PM, thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks a lot, guys.