Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] The wage subsidy, given the catchy name of 'JobKeeper' by our marketing Prime Minister, was of course a very important support measure for many businesses and workers last year; there has never been any doubt about that. But it was also massively expensive, and it's likely to be around $90 billion, making it the largest single one-off scheme the Australian government has ever run. You would think it would be commonly accepted that the public are entitled to expect that that $90 billion of public money is spent appropriately. Surely the public are entitled to expect that the government would have the same high standards of accountability for all recipients of public money, be they citizens, workers or large corporate businesses. Or so you'd think—wouldn't you?

Let's engage in an exercise of compare and contrast to see what the reality really is. Compare: according to an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office, from April to June last year, $12.5 billion in JobKeeper payments was paid to entities which didn't meet the shortfalls they themselves forecast to qualify for the scheme. Over the first six months of the scheme, $13 billion was paid to businesses which had increased revenue—not the ones that the ministers on the other side of the chamber have been talking about who needed the money to keep their workers employed, but businesses who increased their revenue.

Contrast: the Prime Minister has described calls for these big-profiting businesses and corporations to pay back their windfall taxpayer-funded profits as 'the politics of envy'. Seriously, 'the politics of envy'! I know he meant that as an insult; he is good at insults. But there is some truth in his statement—the truth that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer seem determined to ignore. The truth is that there are more than 11,000 people across Australia who are full of envy that the Morrison government is content to stand by while corporations pocket massive profits of $13 billion. These 11,000 ordinary people have been issued a debt letter by the Morrison government, which is clawing back a grand total of $32 million of JobKeeper that these citizens were apparently overpaid. Denise, from my community of Frankston, sent me this email: 'Dear Peta, I'm on a payment plan with Centrelink as I owe them $1,000 due to being overpaid from JobKeeper. I'm on a disability support pension and was working in a disability day service. It's not fair at all that businesses don't have to pay back what they owe.' Denise is happy to pay back money she was overpaid, but she thinks it's only fair that everyone who was overpaid should also have to, including big businesses.

Compare and contrast: the government has written to 11,000 people, telling them to pay back money, but it is yet to write a single letter to its mates in big business about the overpayments they received. I recently asked in this parliament why companies weren't being forced to repay a single cent, while age pensioners like Jan from my electorate, who lives in Frankston and received JobKeeper, is being made to pay it back. The Treasurer said: 'Oh well, people knew their obligations. Welfare recipients in particular had an obligation to report JobKeeper as ordinary income.' The people that the Treasurer so casually dismisses as 'welfare recipients' are age pensioners, disability pensioners, single parent pensioners and people whose jobs disappeared with COVID. They are decent, hardworking Australians. They are people like Jess, in my electorate, who did fulfil her obligation to report JobKeeper as ordinary income but is now paying back $2,300 to the government. Let me tell you about Jess in her own words: 'I'm a single mother in Frankston with a background in acting. Acting work has been scarce, so I've been working part time, casually, as a drama teacher. The last 18 months have been hard, like it has been for most people. We're in lockdown again. My company's policy that I work for is to cancel online classes and refund payments if lockdown goes for three weeks or more. I don't get JobKeeper, because it doesn't exist. I've got three children at home. We're barely scraping by. Bills are going unpaid and stress is going through the roof. To make matters worse, I've received notice of three debts from JobKeeper overpayments last year, even though I declared my JobKeeper income every fortnight and was told I was allowed to claim a part-payment of JobSeeker.' Jess did everything right and this government is making her pay it back. Why don't businesses have to pay their $13 billion of profits back? (Time expired)

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