Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to take on a few points that some of the speakers on the government side have raised today and I'm going to do my best not to drop the F bomb. I had to apologise to my staff the other day for doing just that, having spent three days trying to get basic information on the business support grants. I phoned two federal ministers and two ministers at the state level and was not able to get basic answers about why those opposite said that JobSaver is based on maintaining your payroll when everything online said it's based on maintaining your employee headcount.

They're two different things. The confusion that's out there is because those on that side of this House do not know their own policies and are confusing people, whether it's about AstraZeneca, or whether it's changing the figures for the disaster payment every week so that businesses can't make rational decisions about how they do the best thing by their staff or whether it's standing up in this House and giving wrong advice to business about how JobSaver is being calculated every single day. Every single day, people on this side of the House are using every power we have on this. Nobody out there in my community has that power. I've got it, I can phone a minister, but I still can't get the answers.

I go to Services New South Wales to find out about JobSaver and hang on there for half an hour. When I finally get through they say, 'Oh, no, you have to go to Services Australia.' I go to Services Australia and it's not even listed—it's not even on the website. The Prime Minister gets up and says, 'Disaster payments are now tax free.' I spent three weeks telling people that they were taxable. I went to the ATO website and the Centrelink website, and they still say that they're taxable. Then I had to go out and tell everyone again, 'Oh, sorry, the decision you made last week about how best to support your staff, to keep your relationship going with your employees and to keep your business open and going as best you can is now wrong.'

For the fourth time: it was $500, $600, $750 and now it's not taxable. It's great that it's going up, but I know businesses, because I've been one. I have sat there with the algebra with some of my businesses, asking what their hourly rate is and what the best position is that they can get for them and their staff with the system that's in place. We've done the algebra—and it's really fun algebra, by the way, until it changes the next day. Both this government and the New South Wales government change their minds every day—'Don't go more than 10 kilometres.' On the next day, 'Oh, by the way, it's five.' Then, 'You have to shut your business down at 11 o'clock today,' but then tomorrow they change their minds and you don't. But the member of parliament has already told businesses that they have to close down and now can't contact them. Every single day it's changing.

The information we're getting from the government, whether it's on AstraZeneca or whether it's business support—no matter what it is—is not up to standard. We are suffering a crisis of leadership that I don't think this country has ever seen. This isn't just the guy who stands up and says, 'I don't hold a hose, because I'm too important.' I can tell him that my husband does hold a hose and that's what he heard: 'I'm too important to hold a hose. I'm the Prime Minister.' And we say: you've two jobs which, incidentally, is what he said in June last year. But now he's saying, 'Oh no, I'm far more important than just those two jobs; I've got lots of other jobs.' I'm telling him: they're the two that count!

The previous speaker got up and talked about hindsight. What does he mean? Chris Bowen was saying in June last year that we needed more vaccines. Every other country did it. If we look at it, in July last year the Americans bought 100 million doses of Pfizer and the British bought 90 million doses. We were offered 40 million doses and didn't take them in July last year, and then we put in an order in November and signed in December. It has cost us $5 billion so far to order these vaccines. How many weeks of lockdown is that? If we had better vaccinated now we'd probably still be in partial lockdown, but it wouldn't be as crippling as it is now. That $5 billion pales into insignificance and it doesn't take hindsight to know it, because every other country knew it. We were in one of the best positions in the world and we have blown it because this lot don't know how to lead and they don't know how to keep their messages straight. They're not paying attention to their own rules and they're putting out false advice every single day.

I'll say to the previous speaker, who got up and said, 'We all understand lockdown' that no, we don't. Nobody in this House knows what families in my community are going through. We all have a job, we haven't been sacked, our pay is going and we all live in reasonable places. We can actually get exemptions and we know the rules. We are not the people who are suffering from lockdown—we are not. There are families in my community at home with more people than rooms, no computers, no real NBN and trying to homeschool their kids when English is not their first language and they didn't finish high school. They know what lockdown is. They're out of work and they were out of work last year. They know what it is; this is ridiculous. (Time expired)

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