Prime Minister
Prime Minister: Well, thank you very much, Josh, and thank you also to you, Gav, and I acknowledge Richard who’s, he's here with us today. Of course, we also have Ian Jones from Business North-West. It's great to be here with you, Mr President. Of course, Steve Kons, the Mayor of Burnie and Gina Gunn, the General Manager of CPA Australia Tasmania Divisional Council. I also acknowledge the Palawa people, elders past and present and emerging. Can I also acknowledge any veterans or serving men and women who are here with us and I appreciate the acknowledgement that's already been made today, but particularly in acknowledging Gav and his great service to our country over around 20 years, and now he's putting that to work for the people of Braddon. According to Betty, he's doing a pretty good job so I'm pretty happy about that. And there are so many people like Betty who I've met over the course of not just this last week, as Josh and I have travelled the country and talked to Australians and listened to Australians about the Budget that we handed down, he handed down last week, but there are so many of those Australians who over the course of these last 18 months in particular, but a lot longer than that, have just been getting on with it, facing the challenges that they face, each and every day. They don't talk too much about it that often, but when they get the chance and they can get your ear for that short period of time, they'll have a chat with you and they'll tell you how they're going, and they'll tell you that it's been tough but they'll also tell you that we're making it through. That's a bit about what I want to talk about today.
Some of you will remember that song from the 1980s ‘Once in a Lifetime’ –
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
I can certainly claim the last one, but the song goes on to say, ‘Well... how did I get here?’ And then it says, ‘Letting the days go by.’ Some of you may know the song by David Byrne. But that's not how we got here. What Josh has just spoken of and where Australia is today and where we could have been today was no accident. We didn't get to where we are right now as a country just by letting the days go by. If we'd let the days go by, then indeed we may have seen, as Josh said, some 30,000 souls lost during the course of this pandemic. If we just let the days go by, then what happens up here in north-west Tasmania around about a year ago? Well, that wouldn't have ended the way that ended, and we could have seen the entire state riddled with COVID were it not for the strong leadership shown by Peter Gutwein at that time, supported by Gav and the whole team here, working together - health professionals, public officials, members of the Government - all working together to ensure the support was there. It has not been the policy of our Government to just let the days go by, because if you let anything else go, you can let plenty of other things go by as well - jobs, opportunities, the wellbeing of people in our country.
The reason we can say today that Australians are living - whether here in Tasmania, in the north-west of Tasmania, or anywhere else in the world - so different to almost every other part of the world at the moment, I want to tell you what the secret ingredient has been. As Josh and I, together with Michael McCormack and the rest of the Cabinet, supported by our Government team, confronted and looked into what was the abyss just over a year ago, we knew there was one thing that we could count on. We didn't know what the pandemic was going to look like. We didn't know how the virus would seek to wreak its havoc around the world, although we had a fairly good understanding of what its fury would be. We had to rely on one thing and that one thing was you. Every single Australian. We made the assumption, and it was a good one, that the Australian people were strong, they were resilient, they were practical, they’d work hard, they’d look after each other, they'd do everything within their power, everything they could do to ensure that they could secure their future, their community, their family, their business, their employees, their customers. And it was a good assumption because that is what has seen Australia through to this very point. Not letting the days go by, but Australians doing what Australians do, particularly those quiet ones who just get on with it, doing what Australians do when they encounter adversity. Now, this was not a revelation to them, or to Josh, because, as Governments, we are here at a state level, but at a Federal level together, but at a Federal level we had seen the calamity of drought, the calamity of bushfires, the calamity of floods, as it struck the nation and we saw the character of the nation prove time and time and time again as to how Australians respond to a challenge like we've seen with the COVID pandemic. So, this was a good assumption, and it was an assumption well made and it was an assumption borne of experience.
So, what was our job, knowing that Australians would do theirs? Our job was to back you. Our job was to ensure that we gave you, as Gav said, the confidence to get up tomorrow and face that next day of challenges, not knowing what that would mean. I know small businesses, large businesses, community organisations all around the country at that time woke up the next morning totally unsure about what the day would bring, only that they would have to confront it and that they would have to make decisions, often difficult ones, to ensure that Australia came through. So, we set about it, and we carefully put it together in accordance with a series of very important principles about how we would provide this support to the country. This was not Government being the answer, friends. This was not Government being the answer, and Government is still not the answer. Australians are the answer - Australian businesses, Australian employees working together, family leaders, community leaders, getting through each and every day. So, we designed a series of supports, JobKeeper being the most significant.
And JobKeeper, you know, is a uniquely Australian innovation, uniquely Australian. And I would argue strongly, and I know Josh and Gavin would agree with me and so would Richard, it's a uniquely Liberal-National innovation. Because this is how it works. We knew that with the demand on income support that would come from what we knew Treasury were telling us, Josh, that they thought unemployment would rise to 15 per cent, we would see millions of people out of work and we knew that the income support system through the welfare system would not be able to cope with that level of demand, and that was becoming very clear as we moved through those early phases and those lines grew. So, we said we need to come up with something even bigger and better, so we came up with a unique partnership. We said to the employers of this country, ‘Do you want to keep your employees, as many as of them as possible?’ They said, ‘Absolutely.’ Good. We can build on that. We said to the banks of this country, ‘Will you back them in, because we want those employers to go to the banks and borrow their next payroll, the whole lot and we need you to loan them money?’ and the banks said, ‘Yes’, because they knew they knew you, they knew your business, they knew the shock that was on your business was not something caused by you. This was an economic and viral meteor that hit this country. They knew your business was sound and they knew your track record and how hard you worked and so they extended that loan to you. It wasn't a loan from the Government. You went and applied for it and you had to be accountable for it and what we did was back that in. And we said, ‘We'll square that off at the end of each month.’ An important partnership.
See, Government helped, enabled, backed it in, but the first person that had to do something to save those jobs was you as an employer. You had to decide, ‘I need my staff, I'm going to stand by my staff, I'm going to stand by my employees, I'm going to keep my business going and I'm going to fight this and I'm going to make sure we get to the other side,’ and that's what you did. You took the first step and, as a result, 3.8 million Australians were supported by that programme, 3.8 million people were supported by that programme.
Now, the other thing we did to make it uniquely Australian was there was people were saying to Josh and I at the time, they were saying, ‘You need to adopt this program that has been done by other countries.’ Now, we said no to that and I'll tell you why. One, they thought taxpayer income support should be given to people proportional to their income, so if you lose your job and you earn, you know, a higher amount of money, you should get more taxpayer support than someone else over here who's lost their job or their hours reduced to zero, and they should get less. That's not how we do things here in Australia. That's not how we do things here in Australia. We're all in this together. We were not going to give some level of higher income support to some people and lower to others. Everybody was in the same boat. The virus hit businesses right across our economy and hit jobs right across our economy and we were going to say, ‘No, we're going to do this the Australian way,’ and this provided a fairness in the way the JobKeeper was designed by our Government, because that was an important value of our country. I said at the start of the pandemic, ‘We're going to do this the Australian way. We're not going to carbon copy what's being done in other parts of the world that have different systems. We're going to do it our way and we're going to get through.’
And the other thing we did with JobKeeper, which is a very Liberal-National thing, we said, ‘We're going to have to borrow heavily to do this,’ and we did, and without it, we know what would have happened. But we said, ‘If you're going to make the hard decision to commit to that, you also have to make the hard decision to get out of it when you have to get out of it.’ And we did that too. When we set it up, we said it was going to start and it's going to stop. This support was going to be there while it was needed, but not beyond that, because we know as a Government, we know as a Liberal-National Government, as a Coalition Government, we know that if you leave those sorts of supports in when they're no longer needed, they hold the economy back. They take away that important enterprise-led incentive. They take away what drives a business-led economy. See, we wanted a business-led economy on the other side of the pandemic. We didn't want a Government-led economy. There are others who want that - not us. We want a business-led economy with the dynamism of a business-led economy. So JobKeeper was designed to be there when you needed it most to do what you needed to do, and Josh and I moved around the country, and I'm sure it was true here too Gavin, as you moved around the businesses here, the smile on the faces of people when they graduated from JobKeeper. See, so many Australians when they're faced with great crisis, whether they've been struck by floods - I was over in Western Australia where they were struck by cyclones; in New South Wales at the moment the mice plague, devastating rural communities - so many Australians when they face that adversity, they find it incredibly hard to accept the help and the support because they're proud people. They're self-made people. They're the ones usually helping other people and now they need help, and they find that very difficult to do. And as a Government, we've tried to lean in to ensure that people have taken that support when they need it, but the look on people's faces when they no longer needed it was also great. The pride of graduating out of JobKeeper - and then we, as a Government, graduated the nation out of JobKeeper. When it came off at the end of March and we committed to that, and others wanted us to keep extending it, the Labor Party wanted to keep going and going and going - no, we've got confidence in Australians, the same confidence we showed when we put it in place in the first instance. This value, this assumption Australians can get themselves through, and when they need support, we'll provide it, and when they can get on their own feet, they will want to walk and run on their own feet. And that's what JobKeeper did. They were the values that underpinned it. That was the purpose of it, and look where we are now. The cashflow support, the additional supplements that we provided for COVID, you know, since JobKeeper finished – Josh will correct me if I get the numbers slightly off - 120,000, is that right?
The Hon. Josh Frydenberg MP, Treasurer: 132,000.
Prime Minister: It’s 132,000, even better. 132,000 Australians have come off welfare support since the end of March and the unemployment rate has fallen from 5.7 per cent to 5.5 per cent. Now, we had confidence in Australians that that could be achieved. Others didn't. Others thought you'd need to extend this forever and put businesses on the taxpayers’ dollar forever. That was not our view. That was not our view, and I think what's been borne out by the experience is that judgement and that belief in individual Australians, rather than Government as the answer, has proved effective.
Now, another part of what we've done now as we go into this next phase, because in this Budget, which is all about securing Australia's recovery, there's another important assumption, and it's one that we've been making for a long time as a Government. And that is, you keeping more of your hard-earned money is better than the Government taking more of your hard-earned money. Does anyone else agree with that? I think a lot of people agree with that. Small business taxes are down to 25 per cent on 1 July this year. Australians are paying less tax this year than they were last year. They'll pay less tax next year too under the programmes that we have to ensure that we keep taxes low in this country. You keeping more of what you earn whether you're a business or you're an individual or a family. We think that's the right way to back Australians in for them to ensure that we secure this recovery. See, it's the same plan, the same plan that has got us through the pandemic to this point is the same plan that will keep us going out of this pandemic and into what still remains a very uncertain future, but it all rests on the same assumption and it's you, and that's why we believe in lower taxes, and that's why our Budget has lower taxes. So you can keep more of what you earn to reinvest it in your businesses, reinvest it in the people who work in your business, the instant expenses initiatives, the tax loss carry-back, a very important initiative. All of those businesses in this room, if you had a loss during your COVID year, no fault of yours, demand basically vanished overnight, and you may have had a loss in your business that year. Now, under normal tax arrangements, you would have to wait several years as you rafted yourself out of that difficult situation to when you were able to make profits again that you could actually offset that loss against that earned profit income. Not under the plan we put in place. Under our plan, you can offset those losses that you have incurred in COVID against tax you already paid, tax you already paid on the profits that you were making before you went into COVID.
Now, why have we done that? You might say, like Betty, you might think we're good people, and I'd like to think we are, but there is real purpose in why we're doing this, because we know if we can get that money back into your pocket and give your business right now, you will buy that piece of equipment, you will take on that apprentice, you will take on that trainee, you will seek out that new market, you will develop that new product, you will do what you do. And that's our method and that's what's in this Budget. This Budget is designed to keep inspiring, we hope, but certainly encouraging businesses to go and do what they do best - to go and invest what they've earned to build their businesses and put their people in better and better and better jobs. And at the end of the day, as the Treasurer knows, that's how you, ultimately, restore a Budget.
We're often asked, well, the pandemic has put a huge hit on the Government balance sheet and that's true. It has. But I can tell you just like it's better to be here than pretty much anywhere else in the world when it comes to living with a global pandemic or when it comes to the level of employment in this country, which has been restored to its pre-pandemic levels, it's also true that even on these major issues of debt, we are at half of the levels of debt that you see in the UK and the United States, and a third of what you see in economies like Japan. That's no accident either. That's because we went into this crisis with a balanced Budget. We went into this crisis having done hard work over six, seven years to ensure that Australia was in a position that we could deal with it. And so that's what we've been doing.
But I'll tell you how we're going to fix it going forward, and that's just by growing the economy. It's a very simple equation. If someone is in a job then they're paying tax, and under us, less. If someone isn't in a job, they are receiving the payment from a taxpayer, and that's how you turn your Budget around. You get more people off welfare and into work. You get more businesses investing, creating jobs. A growing economy can support a stronger Budget and when you've got that Budget strong, then you can invest, as Richard knows, in important services, as we are committing to because we have a plan for that stronger economy. See, a strong economy is great, people in jobs, people earning more, communities with more money in those communities moving around to support the businesses is a positive cycle, but the purpose of a strong economy from a Government such as ours is that the resources that are raised from that we can invest to make living standards even better, and that's by having an aged care system where people can age in this country with dignity and respect.
I want to commend Richard for the great job he's done in the reform and policy work that's expressed in this Budget, with a $17.7 billion - we've never seen a package this big for aged care, have we, Richard? This is the biggest package to address the problems in aged care that we've been dealing with for 30 years. And as a Government we have really stepped up to address those challenges and there's a lot of work to do. It's a five-year plan backed in by this investment to achieve that, but it's also in mental health. We've got $2.3 billion invested to support the mental health of Australians that came under such stress during the COVID pandemic. Support for veterans, support for disabilities, an increase even in the JobSeeker payment - the first time that's happened almost in living memory, to support those for whom life is still tough and who are still finding their way back into jobs.
So, friends, I want to thank you for having me here today. I could have given you a list of infrastructure projects that we're building here in the north-west. I can, if you like. But I'm going to leave that to Gav to do on many other occasions, because our infrastructure spending, our investments in job training, in apprentices and traineeships here, to all the programmes that are outlined in this Budget - I commend you to have a good look at it, because what you'll find in there is one message and one message only: We are backing you. We are backing your spirit, we are backing your enterprise, we are backing your hard work. We see you as the answer, not the Government, and that's what we'll always see from a Liberal-National Government. Thank you so much for your attention.
Q&A
Host: Thank you, Prime Minister. We're now going to launch straight into our Q&A and we've received a number of questions after our request out to our ticket holders a couple of days ago, and the first question, can I ask people to come over to this microphone and ask their question, Dr Andrew Clarke.
Question: My name is Dr Andrew Clarke. I'm the Chairman of the North-West Veterans Welfare Board and I'd just like to thank the Prime Minister and the Treasurer on behalf of the Tasmanian veteran community for the Budget which will spend $5 million on veteran welfare hubs in Tasmania. I'd also like to say a big thank you to Gav publicly for his tireless work in this area in the background and without so, his constant ...
Gavin Pearce MP, Member for Braddon: … Throwing my toys out of the cot ...
Question: … of the right areas, I don't think we would have got a good result. So, Prime Minister, can you provide an update of where we are regarding the Royal Commission into veteran suicide and what measures you're taking as a Government in the meantime to support veterans in our region?
Prime Minister: Well, thank you very much for the question and thank you for the work you’re doing here in veterans also and that wellbeing centre, a very important part of the network of wellbeing centres around the country. I've got to tell you we've got quite a group of veterans and ex-service people who are part of our Coalition, of which Gav is one of them, but there are many more, aren't there, and that is a tremendous [indistinct], that is a tremendous resource for Josh and I to be able to draw on their experience and their networks of understanding the veterans community and the many anxieties and pressures and daily struggles that they have, but it's also a way of understanding just how well many veterans also do. We've got to be very careful and what we try and do - and Darren Chester, the Minister, refers to this often - yes, we absolutely need to reach out to those veterans who are doing it tough and provide them with the support. That is really the very least we could do to honour their service, but at the same time we need to celebrate the great work that veterans do in our community, the leadership they provide, the businesses they run and the great work they do as employees. Every employer is well served if they take on a veteran in their ranks. I'm certainly well served in having one in mine and many more. So, I would urge you, because that is one of the many programmes that we do support, which is the Veterans Employment Program, getting veterans into work and dealing with the issues that might be preventing them from getting into work. The [indistinct] about half a billion dollars in this Budget, which is all designed to try and keep improving turnaround and service times for veterans to get customised support and help that they need to deal with the challenges that they face.
We've been working hard over many years through various ministers who have really put a lot of effort into this, going back to Dan Tehan and others, and that is reducing the core waiting times for veterans when they're needing that help. We've extended additional support into the medical help provided - free mental health care for veterans no matter how long they served, where they served, whether they served overseas or not - all there. Increasing the payments that are available for particular types of therapy used to support veterans. When it comes to the Royal Commission on mental health, that will work alongside, I think, the many initiatives we have already taken when it comes to supporting mental health of veterans and their wellbeing, and it will also work alongside another initiative that we're pursuing to have in place even right now and we have been now for some time, and that is that we have a permanent Commissioner that is looking into every single terrible occasion where regrettably a veteran may die by suicide.
See, Royal Commissions are great and we are finalising those Terms of Reference now. The Minister is consulting on those Terms of Reference and they will be finalised and then we'll announce those next month and then that will lead to what will be, we anticipate, about a two-year process. But as that process goes on, and I believe that will have a positive impact for many who I think will welcome the opportunity to go and share with the Commissioner their experience, their story, because every veteran's journey has been different, and to recognise that in how the Royal Commission addresses it and highlights the needs that will flow from that will be very important. But alongside that, I want to ensure that beyond the Royal Commission that we have a permanent capability that actually deals with issues raised by the Commissioner, that deals with every single terrible event that can occur with a veteran’s death by suicide now. The Royal Commission is looking into what happens, of what happened in the past, but we need to be in the present and we need to be in the future to ensure that we are learning and addressing every single time this occurs.
So, all of this goes together. The Royal Commission will soon be underway. I would hope the permanent Commissioner will be established through the Parliament, and then the ongoing programs that have been done by the Department for Veterans’ Affairs. We're actually putting more people into the Department of Veterans’ Affairs so there can be a continuity of connection between the veteran support that they're seeking so we can achieve a higher level of veterans dealing with more than a single point of contact. So, these are the challenges. They're difficult challenges, but they're ones that we're very committed to because there are few, if any, members of our community for whom we owe more.
Host: [Inaudible]
Question: Treasurer, the recent Budget had several significant policies related to women’s health and women’s economic situation. Would you like to elaborate on those a little bit further for us on the importance of those policies please?
The Hon. Josh Frydenberg MP, Treasurer: Well thanks Jenny, there was a special women’s statement within the Budget, you would have to go back more than a decade to find a document of significant length and substance here than that. In terms of women’s economic security, one of the big initiatives was the changes to child care. We announced $1.7 billion of additional funding which focuses on families where they have more than one child in child care and providing an additional support for the families. So if the parent wants to choose to work an extra fourth or fifth day, then they’ll be able to do so. We’ve also made some changes around superannuation to boost retirement savings of women, because the retirement savings of women on average are lower than men. And we have put in place some additional places for women to get into what is called science and technology, engineering and mathematics courses, and to support women going into non-traditional roles. And, for example, I was in the Central Coast of NSW recently, Terrigal, I met an electrician who introduced me to his first female apprentice electrician that was taken under our Government’s 50 per cent wage subsidy. So that was women’s economic security issues. On women’s health initiatives, there’s a significant number of new drugs that were listed on the PBS, including drugs for breast cancer, more treatment and awareness for breast cancer, and a range of other support initiatives on women’s health. Women’s safety has been a big focus for our Government, domestic violence is a scourge on society and we put in place in this Budget extra funding that will provide safe places for women, extra funding that will provide legal assistance for women, extra funding for counselling, as well as financial assistance. So if a woman is fleeing a domestic violence situation [indistinct], they can receive actual grants from the Government which will help them with accommodation, will help them with other emergency needs. There’s quite a comprehensive series of measures, to enhance women’s safety, enhance women’s health and enhance women’s economic security.
Host: Our next question is from Chad Smith, [indistinct] Christian School.
Question: Good afternoon [indistinct]. Good afternoon, Prime Minister. Good afternoon, Treasurer. Being a Principal at Devonport Christian School, It’s our hope that we can prepare the next generation of learners and people who can hopefully all become your employees in the future. My question relates to STEM and lessons and subjects, learning especially in the area of robotics and coding are absolutely crucial for our students and their future. How is the Government prioritising this? And what initiatives are you putting in place to support or you could say could support our response to prioritising STEM?
The Hon. Josh Frydenberg MP, Treasurer: He can pull rank on this one. Look, again, this comes back to our desire to get more people into STEM, but including more women, because the jobs of today and tomorrow are going to be around the digital economy. And the Prime Minister gave a speech which I’ll commend you to read before the Budget about our digital transformation strategy. More than a billion dollars for various initiatives. I think one of the big take outs of COVID, or one of the ways the economy will change as a result of this pandemic and permanently, is the acceleration in the take up of technology. You’ve probably all discovered the Zoom meeting, some of you for the first time. That’s going to replace people hopping on a plane and going to another state for a board meeting or another meeting. People are now shopping a lot more online. I visited Australia’s largest global retailer, Cotton On recently. They’ve seen an explosion in the amount of online sales, so what are they doing? They’re investing in their distribution centres. And then, of course, more people are going to probably work from home permanently on the other side of this, of this [inaudible], because everyone has gotten used to working from home in a digitally enabled way. So, technology has accelerated rapidly through this crisis and it’s going to be here to stay, and so we need to prepare young people and older Australians, we need to prepare them to be digitally enabled and digitally capable, and it starts with science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And you know, Gav was in the Australian Defence Force, he probably doesn’t talk about the things he was doing there, but one of the things he was working on was cyber threats and those technology threats. And whatever they were when he was in ADF, they are a lot greater threat today. So we are going to need many more Australians, men and women who are going to understand science and technology, engineering and mathematics, so we can fulfil these roles across the economy. And that’s why we have invested millions of dollars in this Budget to actually do those sort of things and those sort of courses.
Host: Thank you, Treasurer. We hope you have time for one more question, and it is a man of very few words and it is definitely for the Prime Minister. Mr Collins, could you ask your question please?
Question: Thanks Ian, and thanks to the Prime Minister and the Treasurer for coming today. On behalf of the community - as you are all aware, this is a marginal electorate and every election we get peppered with lots of money, but the question that comes out of this electorate is - we haven’t had someone in Cabinet from the House of Representatives for a long, long time. Can we get commitment today that we will get one in the near future?
Prime Minister: I should be able to see the handwriting on that question, because it sounds suspiciously like Gav’s. Look, I have the great privilege to lead an amazing group of people, and Josh as my deputy I know he would agree. We have brought such great talent, and to have Gav joining our team at the last election, together with Bridget Archer just not far from here over in Bass, and I would very much like to see more Tasmanians [indistinct] in the House of Representatives from Tasmania, and that makes it, you know, I’m spoilt for choice in putting my Cabinet together and putting the Ministry together. John Howard used to have a very good rule about first time MPs, and that was that they needed to very much focus on their first responsibility, and that is as the local member. And Gav has been doing a tremendous job there, and as has Bridget. And so, when people keep working hard, and people keep doing great jobs, that, that only further push their names forward when opportunities present. And so I think, I really do think that they’re doing a great job and it’s great to have that increased representation from Tasmania back in our Government, particularly after the last election. Very much look forward to seeing that expanded. Jonno Duniam was doing a great job and he’s joined our executive most recently, and I think he’s doing a terrific job in the portfolios and the opportunities he’s been given, but the harder you work the luckier you get, that’s, I think, a good rule whether it’s in politics or wherever else, and so you know, I would agree with you when it comes to Gavin’s talent, but it’s not just his talent, it’s his experience. Richard, I see there, he’s been in my Ministry from day one after I became Prime Minister. He’s taken on some of the hardest jobs, particularly in aged care, we’ve seen. I greatly appreciate the work he’s done. So we get great input from our Tasmanian members, not just in our executive, but as we sit together in our Party Room or boardroom. The experience Gav brings is, not just of course his great experience in the military and from a Defence Force perspective, or indeed his farming experience and his understanding of agriculture issues. I’ll tell you why people really rate Gav, up in Canberra, amongst our colleagues. He’s a big man, but his heart even bigger. And I think Betty got that right. Gav has a massive heart, and it’s very obvious to everyone that when you’re sitting opposite Gav there is a beating heart on the opposite side of the table. And it is very much focused on your welfare, and what you’re trying to achieve. He’s a very humble man, so just as well you had this [indistinct] through today, because he wouldn’t do it himself, it’s not his nature. He just focuses on the job at hand and what’s ahead of him, and so I’m very grateful to have so many people in the team like that.
Host: Prime Minister and Treasurer, thank you very much for your time today.
[Ends]