Treasurer says budget will include ‘jobs, opportunity, investment’

Treasure Josh Frydenberg says tonight’s budget will be focused on rebuilding the Australian economy and bringing it out of the coronavirus economic slump.

Mr Frydenberg is expected to unveil a new debt ceiling of more than $1.1 trillion, and a deficit in excess of $210 billion, that will take years to recover from.

“Our plan will create jobs,” Mr Frydenberg said from Parliament House in Canberra this morning.

© Nine News
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg speaks at Parliament House ahead of tonight’s Federal Budget.

“This is all about jobs. It’s all about helping those who are out of a job get into a job. It’s all about helping those that are in work, stay in work.

“Our plan will create opportunity. Our plan will drive investment. Our plan will grow the economy and guarantee the essential services Australians rely on.

“Our plan will see Australia a stronger nation.”

Tonight’s budget is likely to include wage subsidies for businesses who take on an unemployed younger Australian. That is designed to get more people back into work and there will be tax cuts for low and middle income earners.

But there has been criticism not enough is being done for women, who is one of the hardest hit groups by the pandemic, with an estimated 54 per cent of job losses being experienced by females.

Mr Frydenberg agreed women had been “among those who have been heaviest hit by this crisis”.

He said tonight’s budget will work to address that.

“Sixty per cent of the jobs that have come back are jobs that are going to women,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“Young people have also seen jobs come back strongly. In tonight’s Budget, we’ll be releasing our second women’s economic security statement, helping to boost female workforce participation, because we want to get it back to that record high that was before this crisis began.

“In tonight’s budget, we’ll also be supporting young people, because the history of previous recessions in Australia – in the 1980s and the 1990s – is that it’s taken a long time to get unemployment back to where it was.”

The Federal Government has also announced almost $4 billion worth of road and rail projects for Victoria and New South Wales in the budget.

The infrastructure cash splash – designed to simultaneously create post-COVID jobs and improve access to regional areas – will see $3.8 billion spent across 39 projects on Australia’s eastern seaboard.

The stage three income tax cuts – which give $11,000 a year to those earning $200,000 – could stay where they are, to be introduced in four years’ time.