Australians are being told to brace themselves for a harsh reality around debt and deficit numbers ahead of the mini-budget later this week.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Ben Fordham we need to prepare for some confronting figures in the budget announcement on Thursday.

“They’re eye-watering numbers, certainly numbers that Australia’s never seen before.

“But that’s also reflecting an economic shock that we’ve never seen before.

“I mean this is a one in a hundred-year event and the scale and the speed of the changes to the employment market have been much greater than we’ve seen in previous recessions.”

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