Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

Serving as a Senator for Western Australia and as the Australian Minister for Finance continues to be one of the greatest privileges of my life.

Having the opportunity to help shape the future direction of our country as part of a great team working to make our country even stronger, more prosperous and more resilient is a great honour.

I love this job. Every single day I am giving it my all.

I can honestly say that I have left nothing on the field.

By the end of this year we will be half-way through this current term of government.

Having decided not to recontest the next election, I can confirm that I have advised the Prime Minister that the end of this year would be an appropriate time for an orderly transition in my portfolio.

We have many highly talented Members and Senators in our team who stand ready to make an outstanding contribution in what, in my mind, is the best and most interesting portfolio in government.

While today I’m announcing my future intentions, I am not about to go anywhere just yet.

Before handing over the baton, there is another six months or so of hard work to be done in this job, to help manage a responsible transition out of this coronavirus induced crisis and to help finalise and set in train our five-year plan to maximise the strength of our economic and jobs recovery.

We will also need to make the many necessary decisions to re-embark on the important journey of Budget repair.

So between now and the end of the year I will be working with the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and all of my colleagues on finalising our July Economic Statement, our Budget in October and our half-yearly Budget update in December.

Working with our team in the Senate, we will seek to secure the passage of all of our important reform legislation through the Parliament.

Making this decision has been made easier by the knowledge that the government of our country is in very good hands.

Our Prime Minister leads a team that is stronger, more focused and more united than ever.

I would like to thank the Prime Minister for the trust and confidence he has placed in me to do this job, as I would like to thank his predecessors as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, for the opportunities they have given me to serve.

The Prime Minister and I have worked closely and very effectively together for many years.

We worked together directly on three budgets and three half-yearly budget updates.

The work our government did to repair the Budget, with Joe Hockey, Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg leading our economic team, has helped ensure that Australia entered this most recent crisis from a position of comparative fiscal strength.

That has been a key factor in helping to ensure we could implement a highly effective health response while managing and reducing the impact of this pandemic on our economy and jobs through historically unprecedented fiscal support measures.

I will be doing my very best over the next six months as a member of the Morrison Government to ensure that our country is positioned as strongly as possible for the brightest possible future.