Election 2022: Josh Frydenberg reveals his kids get $20 from tooth fairy

Josh Frydenberg has revealed the stunning rate the tooth fairy pays in the Treasurer’s household.

Well, that explains the $1 trillion national debt.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has revealed the going rate for a tooth in his household — leaving a business audience stunned.

He announced the latest pre-election sweetener during a Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast on Friday, when asked about his daily routine.

“The day started just after five this morning, we’ve got an exercise bike at home, so I jumped on that, only to be interrupted by my son who lost his first tooth,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“He lost his first tooth the day before, and the tooth fairy had left $20.”

The revelation sparked laughter from the audience.

“I’d like to be in your house!” the interviewer said.

“I said to him that when the tooth fairy visited me, I only got 50 cents,” Mr Frydenberg continued.

“He got $20. He’s five, so he likes numbers, he likes money.”

Even taking inflation into account, Josh’s 50 cents in the 1970s would probably only be worth about $2.70 today.

Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

That’ll be 20 bucks. Picture: iStock

Speaking on Seven’s Sunrise earlier this week, Mr Frydenberg defended his government’s record, despite soaring inflation and the first cash rate increase from the Reserve Bank in 11 years.

Consumer prices rose by 2.1 per cent in the first three months of the year, bringing the annual rate to a more than 20-year high of 5.1 per cent, according to ABS data released last week.

On Tuesday, the RBA responded by raising the cash rate by 25 basis points from its record low of 0.1 per cent to 0.35 per cent.

Mr Frydenberg denied pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy through Covid relief and cost-of-living measures had contributed to inflation.

Empty food courts during Sydney’s lockdown. Picture: Jeremy Piper/NCA NewsWire

“To be very clear, Treasury were asked at the Budget estimates, did they think that that extra cost-of-living relief that we provided in the Budget would have a material impact on inflation, they said no,” he said.

“In fact, the halving of the fuel excise will reduce inflation by about a quarter of a percentage point. What we did see from the Reserve Bank yesterday is that they’re expecting the unemployment rate to fall even further from the 4 per cent it is today to 3.5 per cent. That is good news for the economy. They pointed out that our economy is strong and resilient.”

Mr Frydenberg said the Australian public “understand that we’ve just gone through the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression”.

“They look at the events in the Ukraine, the terrible events that are occurring in Europe, and they can see that their commodity prices are increasing, they can see that fuel prices are increasing, they’re international factors that are driving impacts here at home,” he said.

Australian families are grappling with soaring grocery and fuel costs.

“So it’s a complicated picture. It’s a global picture. But there is good news for our economy, because we are having a better recovery and we are seeing lower inflation than many other countries in the world.”

Last week, the Treasurer said he had no “regrets” about the government’s response to the pandemic.

Speaking in Melbourne to address Wednesday’s CPI numbers, he insisted the Coalition “balanced the budget for the first time in 11 years”, but then the pandemic struck and Australia was “hit by the single biggest economic shock since the Great Depression”.

“And you may not have noticed but the Australian economy effectively went into hibernation in March and April last year,” Mr Frydenberg said, referring to state and federal government-imposed lockdowns, restrictions and border closures that devastated businesses.

“When it did, we took steps that no previous government had taken,” he said.

“We took steps to put in economic security across the economy. The net result was that instead of having an unemployment rate at 15 per cent, we have an unemployment rate today at 4 per cent.”

Closed businesses in the Mitchell Shire during lockdown. Picture: David Geraghty/NCA NewsWire

Mr Frydenberg then went on a lengthy tangent to boast about the “more than 1000 individual decisions” – a number that would have made the Gosplan commissars proud – his government had taken to “save the economy”.

“If you ask me, do I regret any of those steps we took to save the economy? I don’t,” he said.

“We took more than 1000 individual decisions, whether it was $18 million to underwrite domestic enrolments in universities, whether it was the work we undertook with HomeBuilder to make sure there were jobs in the construction industry and on those long supply chains, whether it was underwriting freight routes to move pharmaceuticals between (routes) because tourists weren’t hopping on planes and planes (weren’t) going from Melbourne to Sydney.

‘We took steps that no previous government had taken.’ Picture: Sarah Matray/NCA NewsWire

“Whether it was the work that we did with zoos and aquariums to feed the animals because tourists weren’t going there, whether it was the cashflow boost providing more than $30 billion to small businesses to support them, the work we did with the regulator that saw $250 billion worth of loans not needing to be repaid during the heat of the crisis.

“Whether it’s the other work that we have done, JobKeeper which saved more than 700,000 jobs. All the heaps of regulatory changes we undertook, right across the economy.

“There are enormous numbers of major decisions our government, across the complex ecosystem that makes up the economy, and the net result of that? An unemployment rate today equal lowest in 48 years, the Treasury forecasting it will have a three in front of it for the first time in years.”