A little more from Scott Morrison on youth workers: But young people, I remember this from when I was social services minister, you have to get young people into jobs before they are 22 and no later than 25 because the simple analysis is that if you do not, their chances of spending a lifetime on welfare go through the roof. I am conscious of that. That has been a statistic. The first time I heard it as social services minister, it has never left my head. So how are social services operate, however employment services operate how our welfare system operators to get these young people back into jobs. For their own sake, for the sake of their families but also for the nation’s economic sake and its fiscal sake because the impacts of lifelong welfare dependency are crippling. In these extraordinary times, the Guardian’s editorial independence has never been more important. 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(The lowest gender pay gap by the way is 13.9% - meaning on average, women are being paid $242.90 a week less than men) Scott Morrison on who has been hit hardest by the economic side of the pandemic: It has been younger people and it has been women who have been more impacted from the initial shock of this crisis so much and a recession is quite different from the last in respect. It was often those going through structural transition such as middle-aged males coming out of older industries that were impacted on that. This one is different. That is also a sign of the times and of our workforce being completely different today. We are at record levels of female workforce participation. The lowest in the pay gap we have seen in this country before the Covid-19 crisis hit so we are making great gains there. And those jobs have been hit very hard. And so that is a key focus and as I said, as the economy, particularly in those industries which are heavily employing of women start to revive again then we would hope to see at least an initial improvement in that situation. But we will need to maintain a key focus on our women’s economic security plan which we were the first to introduce and that will get a refresh and on top of that the focus we need to put on youth employment and we already have a number of programs in this area. “Growth adventure” now seems to be part of the vernacular. It’s going to be a long couple of years in more ways than one. This conclusion to Scott Morrison’s speech is quite something: In conclusion, Australia faces an immense challenge as we look to recover from our first recession in three decades. Those words are hard to say. For many of us, I think for most Australians, it is still to sink in. We worked so hard to get Australia back on the right track, 1.5 million jobs, a budget back into balance and then in the space of days - it shows how important economic resilience must be for the future. It shows how we must never let the tension in the cord slacken when it comes to the important economic changes we need to make to secure the lives of Australians and their livelihoods. We need to return that growth that will support real sustainable jobs, the wages that support families of all the decisions they want to make and, importantly, essential services that Australians rely on. Our government’s 5-year job make a planned child is the way for a new generation of economic success. We are weathering the storm. It is now time to gather the momentum and continue to build the confidence that we need to resume this great adventure. Scott Morrison gets to the red tape cutting part of the speech: Covid has shown our laws have not pace with digital to ology when it comes to business communications. By requiring business to use paper for storing information instead of electronic delivery or adopting new technologies like lock chain. These laws are ripe for modernisation. Today I announce I’m bringing the deregulation task force into the Department of prime minister and cabinet as part of the job make it agenda, driving of whole of government approach as to how regulatory policy is prosecuted, with the assistant minister Ben Morton. This applies to the culture of regulators is much to the content of regulations. I’m sure anyone in business would understand that point. This crisis has shown what can be achieved when regulators are pragmatic and responsive, solving problems without compromising safeguards. The treasurer I know would reinforce, APRA in particular working with the major banks to ensure that we could be dealing with deferral of loan payments and how that effect banks capital adequacy ratios in all these issues, just working constructively together to solve quite a serious problem that was going to have a significant impact on whether businesses could keep their doors open. The attitude of the regulator mattered as much as the regulations themselves. So I asked the assistant minister to report back on lessons learned in recent months, highlighting cases where governments and regulators responded to the Covid crisis and its economic fallout with urgency and commonsense and there are many encouraging examples beyond the ones I’ve mentioned Daniel Andrews will hold a press conference at 10am. You can follow along with international Covid news here. Back to the Ceda event for a moment – You will be pleased to know that we are still a “positive and aspirational people”. Scott Morrison: The good news, and there is good news, because we are aspirational and we are a positive people. The good news is, we are now coming back. Australia is opening up again. Australians are once again, as this chart demonstrates, on the move, as states and territories work together to implement our national cabinet three-step plan to open up the economy. And this is used in consumer confidence. Jobkeeper and jobseeker helped with consumer confidence back in March and now recovered that lost ground in consumer confidence, both on Westpac and the ANZ indices. High-frequency spending data shows this is being increasingly translated into increased retail sales. That’s good news for those young people and women working in hospitality and retail who will be the first to benefit from the reopening. And this especially means those people. While trailing the improvement in consumer sentiment, business confidence and conditions are also clawing their way back. The easing of restrictions and Australians emerging from isolation, confident in their health measures taken by governments, will continue to drive a demand and indicated businesses that they can once again open their doors and make of it. It’s not just enough for the business is to be able to be opened, they’ve got to have confidence to open, to bring the staff back, to get the orders in, for their inventory is. You have to put investments in including through the instant asset write-off which Treasury extended out. That provides confidence. Here is the Adem Somyurek statement in full. He says it was the comments he made about LGBTI community which led to his resignation: This morning I advised the Premier of my resignation as a Minister. It follows publication of numerous personal and private conversations between myself and a long term friend and factional ally of mine. It is clear that I was taped and surveilled in a Federal electorate office without my knowledge and that this material was published without my knowledge of its existence or my consent. I will be taking steps to seek a police investigation into these matters. With respect to allegations made around memberships of the party, I reject those and will be providing a rigorous defence during any party process. The conversations published without my knowledge or consent were with someone who I trusted about internal party matters. There are many robust discussions that occur on any given day in the Labor Party across all factions. However I accept and take full responsibility for the fact that my language on a number of occasions was simply not appropriate. While Ms Williams and I have been at odds factionally for many years, I should not have used the language I did about her and I apologise to her unequivocally. Further, I am deeply sorry for language I used regarding highly valued and exceptional young people who are members of the LGBTI community. These comments have quite rightly cost me my job. "Record" deficit expected for the next two years Scott Morrison says in April alone the country lost the equivalent of 30 months of job growth. But he repeats that the spending we have seen will be stopped: We must be extremely cautious about our expenditure. Especially as we navigate our way back from the record fiscal supports now in place. There will always be a case made for spending more and spending for longer and there are plenty of people who are happy to make that case. But it is not a wise nor responsible course. Such a path is dangerous and will prejudice medium- and long-term capacity to deliver on core essential services like health, hospitals, schools, education, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, our social security support. Overextending on the fiscal supports puts those longer-term and medium-term supportive services at risk. Our budget will be balanced again by keeping expenditures under control while boosting revenues through pro-growth policies that lift investment and get Australians back into jobs, just like we did last time. Neither excessive austerity nor higher taxes are the path that our government will pursue. Victorian minister out of ministry, calls for investigation into survelliance Adem Somyurek is no longer with the Victorian ministry. He says he will be providing a “rigorous defence” to the claims against him. He also wants an investigation into how what he said were private conversations became public. There are charts, as you would expect. It’s not an important press conference or speech these days without a PowerPoint presentation. Scott Morrison has begun his Ceda State of the Nation address: We are saving lives and we are saving livelihoods. We have managed to do better than our fears and even our hopes. In Australia, our actions have limited Covid-19 infections to just over 7,000, fewer than 500 active cases today. And we have reduced our daily infection rate to less than 0.2% and even lower. From a peak of more than 25%. [Tragically] 102 Australians have died but, mercifully, this is a long way short of the predictions of hundreds of thousands of Australians contracting the virus and tens of thousands of deaths and a health system in crisis. Our health response has been undoubtedly world-class, working together between states and territories and the commonwealth, bettering those of similar developed and sophisticated economies around the world Queensland has recorded no new cases of Covid in the last 24 hours. Laguna Street primary school in Sydney’s south is still closed after a teacher tested positive. Those students will switch to online learning for the time being. Anthony Albanese talked a little about where his Ceda speech will be going, while speaking to the ABC this morning: This government uses big figures but all the infrastructure investment’s off on the never never. Even projects like the Princes Highway has $50m allocated. We saw during the bushfire crisis that in many cases it was simply just blocked and people couldn’t get out of those communities. So there is infrastructure projects that are ready to go. They should be invested in. We should also look at the opportunities that are there from the clean energy revolution. Taking action on climate change is good for jobs and good for economic growth as well, and clearly what the economy is looking for, and investors are looking for, is certainty in that area. That will be another focus of my speech this morning. We need to be prepared to take strong action. The economy has slid into recession. The government was so busy concentrating on producing mugs saying the budget was back in black they had their hands off the wheel last year. Mike Bowers is at the National Press Club, where Scott Morrison and then Anthony Albanese will address the Ceda State of the Nation event.