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| Australia coronavirus live update: Qld premier hits back at NSW over pressure to open borders, as Labor accuses Coalition of demonising China – latest news | Australia coronavirus live update: Qld premier hits back at NSW over pressure to open borders, as Labor accuses Coalition of demonising China – latest news |
| (32 minutes later) | |
| Annastacia Palaszczuk says she won’t be lectured to ‘by a state that has the highest number of cases in Australia’ as Joel Fitzgibbon opens new front in China row. Follow live | Annastacia Palaszczuk says she won’t be lectured to ‘by a state that has the highest number of cases in Australia’ as Joel Fitzgibbon opens new front in China row. Follow live |
| Steven Kennedy has addressed Adam Morton’s report on the leaked Covid commission manufacturing taskforce’s massive plan to expand the gas sector. | |
| Kennedy said he’s aware of the news report, but hasn’t read the draft briefing paper, and takes on notice whether anyone else in Treasury is aware of it. | |
| Kennedy said the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission has not commissioned work from Treasury. “We haven’t been asked to model their proposals,” he said. | |
| Peter Dutton also called in for his weekly love-in with Ray Hadley on Sydney radio 2GB. | |
| The “proud Queenslander” says “the public needs to keep the pressure up here” because it is “hard to understand the logic” the premier is applying to the border closure. | |
| There hasn’t been a huge amount of noise on this issue from the LNP in Queensland – and that seems to be because a lot of Queenslanders are actually in agreement with the border closure. | |
| But there is a state election to be held in October, so Queensland, despite taking the same stance as WA, Tasmania, SA and the NT, seems to be taking all the heat. | |
| Dutton says Palaszczuk is conducting “some social experiment while tourism operators are going broke and their families are being destroyed”. | |
| Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick has accused Treasury of “obstructing” the Covid-19 inquiry by refusing to release modelling about projected unemployment, labelling it “disrespectful”. | |
| Patrick said he will start using freedom of information to get at the modelling. | |
| The chair, Katy Gallagher, says the committee will be “responding to you more formally than that” – which indicates Labor and other members share their concerns and plan to write to the Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy. | |
| Kennedy suggests the committee include the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in any correspondence, because he had been “guided” by its view on consideration of material. | |
| Gallagher asks if PMC had instructed Treasury not to release the modelling. Kennedy says Treasury “sought advice on the treatment of documents” and PMC advised they should be treated as cabinet documents which Treasury “wouldn’t usually release”. So basically: yes. | |
| Earlier, Kennedy said Australia is “well past” what would be called a recession, but is cautious about using the term “depression” because the Covid-19 contraction is a “disease-led shock”. Unlike a depression, there is no “massive misallocation of capital or highly dysfunctional credit markets”. | |
| He said: | |
| “I’m not predicting a V-shape recovery. But given the nature of the shock – if the government responds well with its fiscal levers, we needn’t have an L shaped recovery, which is what people would think when it comes to a depression.” | |
| All the people are there after the shock ... All the productive capital at the beginning sits there at end. [The question is] Have you avoided the destructive cycle of firms going broke, running out of cash, and people losing confidence and becoming very precautionary.” | |
| It may be time to just scrap everything and start again: | |
| Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Nick Coatsworth had a morning chat with Alan Jones on Sydney radio 2GB. | |
| I missed it originally, as I try to limit my daily rage quota and mornings on 2GB can be counterproductive to that. | |
| Coatsworth echoed his colleague Prof. Paul Kelly, that he saw no reason to keep borders closed or for physical restrictions to be so strict. | |
| “I think we have to open up, the prime minister said that we can’t let the fear of going backwards stop us from going forwards, and I absolutely endorse that” he said. | |
| Jones was tres impressed. “That is the most significant thing which has been said this morning”. | |
| Greens senator Dr Mehreen Faruqi says without access to packages like the jobkeeper wage subsidy, universities could shed up to 30,000 staff. | |
| It’s a national day of action for higher education – Faruqi says universities could not afford to be left off the wage subsidy scheme any longer: | |
| Stephen Jones has again attacked the government’s early super release program (which Labor has never been for) following reports from the AFR some recipients had gambled the money away online. | |
| For the record, if you count the number of people who dropped out of the labour force market statistics, almost 500,000 in the last month, unemployment would already be at almost 10%. | |
| Steven Kennedy, the Treasury secretary, is at the Covid-19 committee addressing April’s labour force statistics showing a loss of 600,000 jobs and unemployment rate of 6.2%. | |
| Kennedy said that “roughly speaking” the figures were in line with Treasury’s estimates that unemployment would reach 10%, or 15% if it weren’t for the jobkeeper wage subsidy. | Kennedy said that “roughly speaking” the figures were in line with Treasury’s estimates that unemployment would reach 10%, or 15% if it weren’t for the jobkeeper wage subsidy. |
| Kennedy noted the second week of April was one with “lots of restrictions” on the economy, and the ABS stats showed there were 489,000 people who had left the labour market ie were not looking for work. | Kennedy noted the second week of April was one with “lots of restrictions” on the economy, and the ABS stats showed there were 489,000 people who had left the labour market ie were not looking for work. |
| He said: | He said: |
| “If we put that plus the unemployed, we’d get an unemployment rate of about 9.6%, that’s roughly equivalent to the 10% we expected to see. The thing that we missed was there was a much larger withdrawal from the labour force than we anticipated. I expect they will go back into the labour force and be counted unemployed.”Kennedy noted that mutual obligations have been suspended, but argues workers were “simply unavailable” to work because they were advised to stay home, and he “wouldn’t be surprised” if there is a significant rise in unemployment when the economy reopens and they start looking for work. | “If we put that plus the unemployed, we’d get an unemployment rate of about 9.6%, that’s roughly equivalent to the 10% we expected to see. The thing that we missed was there was a much larger withdrawal from the labour force than we anticipated. I expect they will go back into the labour force and be counted unemployed.”Kennedy noted that mutual obligations have been suspended, but argues workers were “simply unavailable” to work because they were advised to stay home, and he “wouldn’t be surprised” if there is a significant rise in unemployment when the economy reopens and they start looking for work. |
| Kennedy also noted a “dramatic” fall in the number of hours worked, and said the UNDERemployment work is 19.9%. | Kennedy also noted a “dramatic” fall in the number of hours worked, and said the UNDERemployment work is 19.9%. |
| That is quite the escalation from Joel Fitzgibbon there. He wasn’t asked to go further, and instead the interview moved on to how the agriculture sector is feeling, but if Tim Pallas’s comments kicked off furious rebuttal, then Fitzgibbon has just kickstarted a whole new argument. | That is quite the escalation from Joel Fitzgibbon there. He wasn’t asked to go further, and instead the interview moved on to how the agriculture sector is feeling, but if Tim Pallas’s comments kicked off furious rebuttal, then Fitzgibbon has just kickstarted a whole new argument. |