Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] Australians have been plunged into uncertainty and disruption because of a leaky quarantine system and a slow vaccine rollout. The Prime Minister had two jobs this year: a speedy and effective rollout of the vaccine, and quarantine. He has failed at both. This is a Prime Minister who refuses to take responsibility. He doesn't hold a hose; he says it's not a race. Well, the Olympics are on and the Prime Minister could learn a thing or two from our athletes. It is a race and it's time to start acting like it. The starting gun was fired long ago, but the Prime Minister is only just getting his shoes on. The government are keen to pass legislation that they only provided to Labor fewer than 24 hours ago. This legislation is required to immediately pass in order to provide urgent support to affected communities. Lockdowns like the ones in Sydney and Brisbane at the moment are necessary because of the Prime Minister's failures on vaccines and quarantine. They're costing our national economy hundreds of millions of dollars a day and billions of dollars a week. We won't stand in the way of providing urgent support for Australians. In fact, we have been calling for it for months. Labor of course support getting money out to communities in lockdown and we will support this bill.

Australian workers and small businesses continue to pay the price for the incompetence of the Prime Minister and his government. Their failures on vaccines and quarantine are putting lives, jobs, the economy and our nation's entire recovery at risk. Australians need greater certainty and comfort that support is there when needed, not well after it's already too late for too many. On Friday, the Prime Minister announced that disaster payments for Australians in lockdown wouldn't be taxed—a change from how JobKeeper was set up and different to every other measure. Meanwhile, the official guidelines from the Treasury, the ATO and Services Australia said these payments would be taxed. At the moment, the government's left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, so how on earth can Australians have confidence in the government?

This bill will make several changes to implement support for communities in lockdown. There are five schedules put forward in this legislation, but there is nothing on the table to support businesses or individuals who have suffered losses outside the lockdown areas. Why is there no support for businesses and workers who suffer through shorter lockdowns like in WA? Things aren't all hunky-dory for businesses just because they are outside of a locked down CBD. Where is the support for the tourism businesses who lost potential income the second capital cities started going into the lockdowns? We need a national approach from Scott Morrison to provide assurance for our nation's 2.4 million Australian small businesses. States making the hard calls for lockdowns swiftly to stop the spread of the new COVID delta strain within their states and into others should be supported by the federal government, not disadvantaged for taking action and seeking to look after their residents. Without a nationwide approach, we will see continued uncertainty for millions of Australians who own, operate or are employed in various industries. The recent outbreak, right as school holidays got underway, was disastrous for small tourism businesses. For many small tourism industry businesses, the school holiday income that they were going to rely on has gone right down the gurgler. Also, these same tourism businesses are operating at significantly reduced capacity due to staffing constraints brought on by the lack of a seasonal and backpacker workforce. This is an issue that won't be rectified in the most part until borders reopen.

To be clear, the borders are keeping us safe. The problem is that we can't change that until the vast majority of Australians are fully vaccinated, and we still have no idea when that will be, how it will work or if it is even possible without clarity on the vaccination rollout. Australians understand the need to pull together and make sacrifices during these difficult times, but they want to know our national government has their backs to. Labor has called on the Morrison government to urgently offer a national small business survival package that includes rental support, support to retain staff so they can reopen easily after lockdown, and debt relief to help small businesses avoid a debt trap. So the changes in the legislation put forward today are welcome, but we must ask: why are businesses and workers still paying the price for the Prime Minister's incompetence? Why do we not have an effective vaccine rollout or an effective quarantine program?

And why on earth was JobKeeper cut long before the need for it dried up? It's been 18 months. You'd think surely they would have it all in hand by now. A better targeted and better understood replacement for JobKeeper should have been in place long ago.

This legislation is a mere concession from the government that they got the support packages, and indeed their management of the COVID-19 pandemic, awfully wrong. We must get the support right. It's critical to ensuring workers are still employed and businesses are still ticking over on the other side of a lockdown. Be it due to lives lost, illness or business closures, Australians have lost far too much in this pandemic, so let's get it right, government.

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