Coronavirus: Treasurer lays out economic challenge, jobs figures in staged return

Mr Frydenberg will detail the Treasury estimates when Parliament resumes on on Tuesday in what the government is describing as a return to a "normal" parliamentary session that deals with issues other than the coronavirus.

Mr Frydenberg will not deliver a budget update, so the impact of the government's huge stimulus spending on the deficit and debt will not be known until June.

Instead, he will deliver a stocktake of government spending and project economic improvements as the lockdown measures are eased. The data will pressure states to move ahead with the three-stage plan agreed on Friday to reopen schools and businesses.

Treasury has crunched data by state, showing that when Canberra allows restaurants to serve 10 people, perhaps as early as this weekend, 4172 jobs will return.

In stage 2, when 20 people are allowed in restaurants, movie theatres, galleries and venues reopen with small numbers, and beauty parlours reopen, another 4519 jobs will return.

And in stage 3, when the economy returns to a new normal with up to 100 people allowed to meet, pubs open and interstate travel allowed, the ACT gains 5163 more jobs. The total jobs Treasury expects to see restored in the new economy is 13,854.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week suggested about 16,000 jobs have been stripped from the ACT economy in five weeks although economist Chris Richardson said there was considerable uncertainty in the data.

"On Thursday, we will get our first read on whats happening but it's going to be tricky," he said. "JobKeeper is designed to keep people connected to their jobs, but it almost makes reading the jobs numbers out of the bureau of statistics harder."

Nationally, up to a million jobs have been lost to the economy, and Mr Frydenberg says 851,000 jobs can be returned once the three stages of easing are in place.

Despite the lacklustre response from restaurants to allowing them to trade with up to 10 sit-down diners at a time, Treasury estimates the move will return $500 million to the economy.

In a warning to the states, Mr Frydenberg will tell parliament that if NSW went back to the restrictions in place last week it would cost its economy $1.4 billion a week.

Mr Frydenberg says the economic data is sobering, with the stock exchange losing one-third of its value in four weeks, job advertisements halved, car sales down by 48 per cent and house sales by 40 per cent.

The increase in government debt from the $320 billion in financial support ($25 billion of which had already gone out paid) would take years to repay, he says.

"Rebuilding consumer and business confidence will be key as the nation's finances can only be sustained by a strong and growing market-led economy," he will tell Parliament. "Australians know there is no money tree. What we borrow today, we must pay back in the future."

Mr Richardson said it would be a false target if the government was to focus on debt and deficit. The budget had taken a short-term hit but was not broken, he said.

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"If you think of the three possible targets to chase down, if we can keep the virus at bay, then some people are saying race to budget repair, some people are saying race to unemployment repair, and some people are saying you can get unemployment down faster if you can keep migrants away.

"And of those three possibilities, I'm hoping, but also expecting, the government to say it will prioritise a return to jobs. If you drag the deficit down you'll be dragging unemployment up and that's not the smart play here."

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