Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Over the past six months the effects of COVID on businesses across Australia have been devastating. The hospitality and tourism sectors have been hard hit. This is especially true in my electorate of Mayo. I don't think there has been a business in my community that hasn't been touched by COVID. My electorate is a tourist destination, whether it be the Fleurieu Peninsula, the Adelaide Hills, the Lower Lakes and Coorong or Kangaroo Island. Many parts of our community are still challenged by the effects of bushfires, making it a double whammy for us. The government's JobKeeper package, which was implemented quickly and efficiently, was in no way perfect, and I have been raising a number of unfair ineligibility issues with the Treasurer. I am pleased that Treasury has overcome many of those hurdles faced by businesses in my electorate. Without JobKeeper I think many businesses across my electorate would have closed their doors for good. 4,604 businesses in my electorate registered for JobKeeper in the first month. I know that without that safety net a significant number of those businesses would have seen thousands of job losses. That's close to half of the businesses in the electorate. We have around 11,000 businesses in the electorate.

A break in parliament has given me the opportunity to travel the length and breadth of my community and visit many small businesses and hear from them how they have been able to quickly adapt because of JobKeeper. For example, the Ozone Hotel on Kangaroo Island: there were restrictions on trading, so staff put down their chef hats, picked up paint brushes and transformed an old section of the hotel, creating a modern lounge bar. They turned from kitchen staff to renovators. David Kerr from the Quarter Mile Cafe in Mount Barker was able to keep his staff employed through JobKeeper, which in turn enabled his team to produce 500 litres of soup to donate to local families doing it tough during the pandemic.

I am sure I was one of many members in this place who were advocating to government for a new version of JobKeeper past the end of September. I'm very pleased to see that the government will be continuing JobKeeper in a different form, JobKeeper 2.0. That will allow those businesses who are not yet on their feet to still that have that support and also provide flexibility for businesses who still have a diminished revenue, are not quite eligible for JobKeeper but still that have that flexibility with their employees, while still providing some protections for their employees.

So I think I speak on behalf of many businesses and employees in my electorate. I would like to acknowledge the implementation of JobKeeper, which I think has been an incredibly important and very new idea for government. We are all in uncharted waters here, and I thank government for their work here.

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