Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion moved by the member for Adelaide. The government's mantra that Australia has not been hit as hard as most other countries by COVID-19 and that we're doing so well in comparison with most other countries is no comfort at all to the tens of thousands of people whose lives have been left in turmoil by COVID-19 here in Australia—people who have lost lifelong jobs, who have now got no income, who have lost their savings and even their superannuation, and who have little prospect of getting a job in the future because of either their age or their lifelong experience in one industry alone.

There is no sector that has been hit harder with respect to all of this than the travel sector. With no warning and no foresight, they've had the rug pulled from under them. Their businesses have literally vanished. There are some 40,000 people who work in the travel industry today, and over 70 per cent of them are women. There are about 4,000 travel agents throughout the country, and most are in small family owned enterprises that have often taken out loans to set up their businesses, that have been operating pretty much on a shoestring budget and that now find themselves with no income and no prospect of their business reviving in the near future. They'll also find themselves, unlike most other businesses and as others have already said, actually refunding money from previous years' earnings.

Even worse, given what the government has already done in terms of support—I'm talking about JobKeeper, JobSeeker and the $128 million assistance package—the reality is that there is also some discrimination in terms of the way they get all of that support. It's discrimination that is brought about both because of Australia's tax laws and the way that the government has structured the support packages, including JobSeeker. I have spoken to some travel agents in my part of Adelaide who are all struggling to get those benefits simply because of the way they manage their operations; indeed, one of those people, Connie Dziwoki, who I spoke about in this place only a few weeks ago and who I know has since written to several government ministers about her dilemma, makes that absolutely clear. It's to do with the way they report their income for the purpose of their business activity statements. Business activity statements can be reported in different ways and the same outcome results in terms of the tax that they are obliged to pay. How these people report, however, determines the level of assistance that is given to them from the government's $128 million package. It turns out that two identical operators, literally working in the same area in the same kind of travel agent business, can receive a vastly different amount of support. It's different almost to the point of 10 to one. In this particular person's case—she operates Genesis Travel and Cruise—the amount she has actually been offered as part of the assistance package is just over one-tenth of that offered to a similar business, simply because of the reporting nature.

What has the government's response been to all of that? 'We will not allow you to change or amend your funding application,' because, of course, that means they would have to pay out a lot more money—I'd imagine that's the real reason behind it. When they realised that there was an anomaly in the reporting method they put on a cut-off date of 4 January, saying that after that you cannot amend your application and therefore you will only be entitled to the amount based on the figures you originally supplied, not the figures that would otherwise have, quite rightly, entitled you to the higher amount. That is simply absurd and simply unfair.

One in 10 travel agents are likely not to survive if the government does not extend the JobKeeper program. If that happens, we will not only lose years and years of expertise but, quite frankly, we'll leave the whole travel agent sector decimated. In years to come when, hopefully, things do rebound we will not have the people there to give travellers the support that they've been getting for years and which they will depend on in the future.

The government needs to extend JobKeeper, it needs to have an industry-specific support program and it needs to allow amendments to the application process. (Time expired)

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