Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I'm pleased to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (COVID-19 Economic Response No. 2) Bill 2021. I'm appearing virtually from my electorate office in Pennant Hills to participate and to give voice to the people of my community, who at this time are under lockdown. In doing so, Mr Speaker, I want to acknowledge you, the Chief Whip and the parliamentary officers for making this possible. I also want to acknowledge the people of my electorate who are locked down today in their homes, from Cheltenham in the south to Wisemans Ferry in the north, from Brooklyn in the east to Sackville North in the west and all the suburbs in between. I want the people of my electorate to know that I am with them, as the government is with them, in providing support to our community.

Right across my electorate, people are facing challenges. Whether it is doing as we've been doing in balancing working from home and home schooling, whether it is businesses not operating or whether it is workers who are not in work, people in my electorate are doing it tough. Today I particularly want to acknowledge the people in Carlingford, in the south of my electorate, which is also in the Parramatta LGA, people under the most severe lockdowns of any part of the country. There are residents in Carlingford who can only move five kilometres from their house and whenever they leave their house to go anywhere they must have a mask on. This is an unprecedented time for people in my community. The Delta strain of COVID-19 is more infectious than any other we've encountered before. By the end of August, Sydney will have experienced a lockdown of between nine and 10 weeks.

In March this year my electorate experienced severe flooding on the Hawkesbury River. At that time, the federal government's disaster recovery payments were a godsend in keeping people going and getting them through those hard times. The payments were essential to support the community to recover and rebuild. I'm so proud that so many members of the Berowra community have shown great resilience in bouncing back from those devastating floods. But, of course, businesses impacted by the floods are in many cases being impacted again by the lockdown. Those disaster recovery payments got out the door quickly and have proven to be very effective. It's the experience of dealing with disaster recovery payments which have made them such a good model for the COVID disaster recovery payment system.

That's why the Morrison government has partnered with the New South Wales government to deliver a comprehensive package of support to individuals and businesses across the country, which is particularly focused on people like my constituents in Sydney who are locked down at this time. The legislation that we have before the House provides the backbone for the cooperation and information sharing between our government and the states and the payments which are being made to my community at this time. It enables the government to make disaster recovery payments to individuals and businesses and to make those payments tax free.

I want to say something about what these supports mean for people in my electorate and Australians more broadly. Under the enhanced COVID disaster recovery payment regime, people who have lost more than 20 hours of work can claim $750 a week and people who've lost between eight hours and 20 hours a week can claim $450 a week. This is the same level of support that was received last year under the JobKeeper program. Individuals who currently receive an income support payment through the social security system can receive a weekly supplement of $200 in addition to their existing payment if they can demonstrate they've lost more than eight hours of work and meet other eligibility requirements for the COVID-19 disaster payment. The new payment rate will be automatically updated for those in the Services Australia system. These new payments recognise the significant impact the new COVID-19 delta strain is having on our communities, businesses and workers. While it's effectively the same amount for people, it's a better program than JobKeeper at this time. It's temporary, it's targeted, it's not national and it actually applies to a wider group of people and doesn't necessarily take into account a business's decline in turnover across the country, especially when workers in a business are located in different parts of the country. As the Treasurer highlighted, the disaster payment is supporting those who are unable to work and wouldn't be eligible for JobKeeper if it were in operation. For instance, these payments are open to casual workers who may not be permanent casuals. That's an area where the new payment is actually reaching more people than the payments last year. These individual payments are of course available through Services Australia.

In terms of business payments, we are making those payments in partnership with the New South Wales government, 50-50, administered by Service NSW. Those payments are open to businesses and not-for-profits in New South Wales with an annual turnover of between $75,000 and $250 million. Businesses are eligible if their turnover is 30 per cent lower than in the equivalent two-week period in 2019. Those businesses will receive 40 per cent of their New South Wales payroll payments, at a minimum of $1,500 a week and a maximum of $100,000 a week. To receive their payment, they are required to maintain their full-time, part-time and long-term casual staffing as at 13 July 2021. This continues the scheme of maintaining the connection between employers and employees and therefore supports the longer term economic recovery once our restrictions are eased. For sole traders, the payments are set at $1,000 a week. These expanded payments now cover more than 400,000 businesses, employing 3.3 million workers across New South Wales. The payment is also more substantial support for businesses to cover unavoidable costs like rent, insurance and maintenance, as well as employee costs during an extended lockdown.

When I think about these business payments and the payments to individuals, I think about constituents in my electorate and some of the people I have been talking to across the last few days. I think of Maskell Fine Jewellery in Hornsby who, while they have a significant number of customers who shop online, many customers, especially those seeking to purchase those all-important engagement rings, want to do so in person. I think of All Clear Pest Control in Mt Colah. This business relies on being able to visit homes, which are off limits as a result of the lockdown. I think of musicians like David in Hornsby who regularly plays in major productions across Sydney and for whom opportunities have stopped as a result of these lockdowns. And I think of Louise from Middle Dural and her family who have relied on FIFO income from interstate, which has dried up as a result of state border closures. All these people and thousands of others like them across the electorate will benefit from these specially targeted payments.

I also want to mention that, in addition to these payments, the government has put in place a range of other supports to help people through these difficult times, such as increased mental health support through organisations like Lifeline and Sonder and particularly supports dedicated to perinatal depression and anxiety. I think of the childcare gap fee waiver, through the federal government, in local government areas subject to stay-at-home orders. And I think of the telehealth support through Medicare and additional doses of vaccine that have been set aside for Sydney—an extra 200,000 Pfizer doses and an extra 150,000 AstraZeneca doses.

In the context of this debate, I heard the shadow Treasurer criticising the government's approach. The shadow Treasurer wanted to keep JobKeeper going, even back in March, once the country has emerged from its first phase of COVID. It's to be remembered that you can actually put in place supports for too long. What we saw once those temporary and targeted supports were removed is growth at rates that we hadn't seen since the 1960s and unemployment was at 4.9 per cent—a rate we hadn't seen for a decade. So, while it's important to have targeted and temporary arrangements like the ones before the House, you can keep them on for too long. I also note the shadow Treasurer talked about a $300 cash-splash idea to encourage people to get vaccinated. This is an idea that was developed in jurisdictions overseas that don't have our social safety net. By world standards, Australia has a generous social safety net. The payments before the House today, as with previous payments, have demonstrated that Australians look after each other in tough times. The idea from the shadow Treasurer is a half-baked idea, like Cash for Clunkers or a citizens assembly. It's a reminder of Labor's previous period in office, during the GFC, which they sent cheques to pets and dead people. This government will not be paying its fellow Australians a bribe to do things that they know it is their duty to do.

I want to raise one other issue that is being faced by my electorate at this time—that is, the difficulties people in my electorate face in relation to telecommunications. This makes lockdowns in my electorate particularly difficult. My message to Andy Penn, the CEO of Telstra, and Stephen Rue, the CEO of NBN Co, is: you really need to do a whole lot better by my constituents, especially in these difficult times. There's a school in my electorate where they can't do remote schooling online because mobile phones and the internet are unreliable in their area, where the photocopiers are running overtime preparing printed material which is then delivered to students. It puts particularly those students doing their HSC at a real disadvantage, because they can't leave home but they can't effectively work from home either.

These sorts of stories abound across my constituents. Let me share with the House the story of a family from Kenthurst with seven young children at home during this lockdown. Rather than being at home to help out, the husband of this family has to go to the city every day for work because he can't have meetings from home. They get an upload of 0.3 megabits per second on the existing ADSL service; this is an area where the NBN is not coming in until 2023. The husband contacted Andy Penn, the CEO of Telstra—they had worked together in the past—and was given a standard answer about difficult topographical areas, the slowness of the rollout and the like, but it didn't do anything to help him.

Let me give another example, of Belinda from Glenorie. She writes: 'I thought I would update you on the struggles of working from home. My tradie boys are home, which is what it is. Another house member works in the same industry but in an office.' She tried to work from home yesterday, but, with the phone balancing against a door handle to get reception and having to walk around the house with her laptop to get internet service, this was very stressful and near impossible. Getting further behind in her work, she had to go back to the office this morning. She writes: 'The plea for everyone to work from home is impossible and very stressful. To work successfully, as you and all government workers know, you need a desk, a laptop and a phone in easy reach of each other to conduct a day's work. Sitting at the top of a driveway just to answer a phone call should not be okay in 2021 in Sydney.' I couldn't agree more with Belinda from Glenorie.

I had a situation of a doctor in Hornsby who was unable to take calls for several days to operate his practice because the phones were down, a family in Pennant Hills whose internet connection was unreliable and a 91-year-old pensioner who had so many appointments cancelled on him that he developed anxiety and had to be taken to hospital, and now cannot stay at home waiting for the Telstra technician to come because his anxiety levels are so great. These are some of the examples of the terrible telecommunications that are faced by people in my electorate at this time.

Telecommunications is not a privilege; telecommunications is a right, and it's particularly a right when we are asking people to work from home. This isn't just about the lockdowns; it's about the future of work, and it's about the future of communities like mine right across the country. I note that yesterday the government released the guidelines for the Peri-Urban Mobile Program. I welcome those guidelines and I welcome that program. That is a start. We need to do so much more to fix the telecommunications situation in my electorate, and I will have more to say when I present a private member's bill to the House later this year.

Returning to the bill before the House, these supports are very welcome. They're very welcome for people in my constituency and people across Sydney and New South Wales, and others who are locked down more generally. They give people hope and confidence in a difficult time. They are the shelter from the stormy blast of COVID-19. They are an important protection for people who are locked down through no fault of their own. I commend the bill to the House.

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