Prime Minister
WILL GOODINGS: Joins us on FiveAA Breakfast Prime Minister, good morning to you.
PRIME MINISTER: Good morning.
DAVID PENBERTHY: Thanks for joining us, PM. Now the budget's been generally very well received. There's clearly a lot of measures in it to encourage people back into work after the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown. I've got to say, though, one issue and bearing in mind our radio station here is predominantly listened to by people in their 40s, 50s, 60s. A lot of them are scratching their heads about why it was that the government decided to put this 35 year old cut-off on the application of wage subsidies?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, because it's youth unemployment that is double the rate of unemployment around the country. And that's where the job hit has been greatest. And you know, we’ve got a youth unemployment rate and this is just the measured unemployment rate and as you know Penbo, the effective rate when you consider people are no longer in the workforce, or hours reduced to zero and things like that, I mean, it's at 14.3 per cent, across the country it’s 6.8 per cent. And so obviously, for young people, if you can't get young people back into jobs, particularly when they're, you know, early on in their working age life, we know that the risk of them then becoming conditioned to being on welfare increases. And then you get a generational problem.
So our government has always tried to focus on getting youth unemployment down and before the crisis. We'd got it, you know, significantly down from where it had been from its peak. And, you know, we need to get young people back and we need to get everyone back into work. I mean, people of all ages, they all pay tax and there's tax and this tax cut, they all benefit from the massive incentives we put in for people to invest, businesses to invest in new equipment and move their businesses forward. And that's all there. And in lost carry-backs, that helps people hire people and keep people in work, JobKeeper is for everyone of all ages. And but there is a particular need that if we allow a generation to fall out of work, then they don't go back in and the scarring will last a lot longer. I mean, you and I are about the same age. We remember what happened in the early 90s, that’s when you and I were coming out of university. And if people don't get into work or out of school at that time and get those skills and get that experience, then a habit establishes and it gets really hard to take to break that.
PENBERTHY: Yeah, I get all of that. How do you make sure, though, PM, that you don't have a situation where some employers try to sideline older staff knowing that they can hire younger people and pocket 200 or 100 dollars a week for doing so?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, you can't do that. I mean, it's an additional staff. You can't let people go. And it's - the mark has made before the programme started. So if you let someone go and employ a younger person, you don't get the subsidy. You only get it for additional jobs. Now, JobKeeper has kept a lot more of those older workers in place. I mean, not older I mean, talking about people in their 40s and things like that, because they've got experience, they've got skills and younger people, last one on, first one off. And that's what we saw happen when the COVID recession hit.
I mean, we saw, you know, significant job losses, almost 50,000 job losses in South Australia. Now, the good news is 33,300 have come back. But unemployment is still too high in South Australia and we need to get that down. And not just today, but for the future. And you get a young person back into work early then they're more likely to stay in the job over the course of their life.
PENBERTHY: Prime Minister, infrastructure spending in South Australia's been a major talking point since the release of the federal budget and the data point that underscores South Australian concern the best is this that by 2022, 23, infrastructure spending in South Australia will be under 4 per cent of the of the national total. Our state's population share is about twice that?
PRIME MINISTER: South Australia has been a massive beneficiary of the investments we're putting in in infrastructure and between, since we were first elected back in 2013, more than $4 billion has been spent on land transport projects and infrastructure alone. We’ve got 21 that are done. 15 that are under construction and 43 that are now under way with planning. There’s 11 projects specifically in this Budget, where it's the 136 million for the stage 2 of the Main South Road duplication, between adding Aldinga, and Sellicks Beach. There’s 100 million for the Strzelecki track upgrade. There's 200 million for the Handorf township improvements-
PRIME MINISTER: But our share is dropping away. And so you're saying that's because we've done well previously, under your administration?
PRIME MINISTER: Plus, and let's not forget, I mean, I was just in Adelaide the other day, the half a billion dollars we put into building what is the most advanced shipyard of anywhere in the world for a, that's for the frigates programme. $45 billion dollar build programme in South Australia. And then we haven’t even got to the submarines yet, they’re in place in place out there at Osborn. So there are trucks full of investments that have been put into South Australia to create jobs and-
PENBERTHY: Was that always the trade off? Was that always the trade off for the Subs jobs?
PRIME MINISTER: No, what I’m simply saying is the amount of investment that the Commonwealth government is putting into infrastructure in South Australia, whether it's industrial infrastructure like the Osborne shipyards or it's the transport infrastructure. And I was just with the Premier the other day. And, you know, we're obviously looking at a lot of the important interconnectors, the interconnector between South Wales and South Australia. That's very important to South Australia's energy future. There's those projects. So, look, there's a lot there. But what we do every year is you look at the infrastructure spending profile and you look where projects are up to. And that does move about a bit in the years from now. So, look, as we move forward and as projects get to higher levels of readiness and if we can move things more quickly, then I think you see those numbers change. They do move around quite a bit.
PENBERTHY: PM in this crazy year you've spent a awful lot of time with our various premiers. Probably more than you’d normally care to spend with the Premiers-
PRIME MINISTER: 29 meetings of the National Cabinet, Penbo. More meetings than we’ve had in 15 years, in one year.
PENBERTHY: How would you rate South Australia’s performance in terms of managing the pandemic?
PRIME MINISTER: Steve Marshall has been an absolute champion in that National Cabinet process.
And what Steven has done, is he's come to the table in the national interest. And the National Cabinet, I know, has copped a bit of flak lately for some disagreements. But I've got to tell you, and Steven's been a key contributor to this, we do get in the room and we do sort it out. Sure there’s disagreements from time to time. But, I mean, you've been around federal politics in your working career for and state, for that matter, in various states for a long time. And, you know, more often than not, we agree than we don't. And the fact that we meet so regularly sort of forces us to resolve those things and not having them go on for months and months and months. Now, the way it- when it does work best is when people from whatever state they come from or territory come and focus on the national interest.
PENBERTHY: Given how mature and level headed we've been here in South Australia and-
PRIME MINISTER: That's fair.
PENBERTHY: And given we’ve got Western Australia effectively cutting itself adrift from the mainland. Why not just give us the sub's jobs?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, that decision is not yet made because we've been making a few others and I've made that point when I was down there. But the thing that disappointed me about what was said in Western Australia the other day, I mean, states will make decisions and in South Australia had borders closed for health reasons. And they still do to Victoria, which is understandable as does New South Wales. It can only be for health reasons, if it's not for health reasons, and the Premier said the other day, and I was surprised more than anything, that there seemed to be just some suggestion is well we won’t open the borders because Western Australians will spend their money in South Australia. Well, sorry, that's not a reason. That is not a reason to have a border up. And I do think that falls foul of the Constitution.
PENBERTHY: Just finally, PM, the Budget. I thought one of the most interesting things, it's predicated on the fact that we are going to have a working vaccine rolled out by by late 2021. Is that is that a hope or a predictable reality?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, first of all, Penbo it doesn't- it doesn't predicate you know, is there a hiring credit? Are these infrastructure projects going ahead? Will there be tax cuts? None of that is dependent on whether there's a vaccine or not. It's an assumption in the Budget. There is an assumption in the Budget about iron ore and metallurgical coal and thermal coal. And as you know, with Budgets, there are a lot of assumptions. And on the swings and roundabouts, you know, some will prove to be more conservative. Some will be, prove to be optimistic. But on balance, it means that the overall assessment of the state of the Budget can end up being very reasonable, as the vast majority of our Budgets have.
PENBERTHY: Does that mean you had to cost, that you've had to cost what a delay in a vaccine would be? What does six months cost the budget?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there's no there's not those sort of costs. You’ve just got to make an assumption about where you think things currently are. I mean, there's an assumption that the Western Australian border won't be open till March. It could be November. It could be December. Lots of things could move either side of the line. And it's when all of these things combined together that determines what the ultimate outcome is. Now, it's for the back end of next year. And that's our best understanding now. But you put a Budget together based on the information you have right now. And one of the reasons we delayed the Budget till October was because back in May. It was like, you know, kicking a ball into a hurricane. You had no idea back at that stage what certainty you could put around anything. And so we enabled six months to pass to get JobKeeper in, JobSeeker, deal with all those immediate things and then build to the Budget of this week, which is a plan for economic recovery. It's a plan for a longer term future. I mean, things like our gas recovery, our manufacturing plan, which includes particularly the space sector as a high priority, which you know, down there at Lot 14, which I saw when I was just there the other day. And that's that's one of the most exciting urban projects I've seen anywhere in the country. It's obviously a beautiful part of the city, but it's what's going on in there- cyber technology, space. This is one of the most exciting things I see going on in Australia at the moment, is what is happening in South Australia.
PENBERTHY: Good to talk to you, Scott Morrison, Prime Minister Thanks very much for joining us on fiveAA.