Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. According to a recent industry survey, 90 per cent of live entertainment companies are currently receiving JobKeeper payments. These businesses say that without JobKeeper beyond the end of March they could be forced to make up to a third of their staff redundant. Prime Minister, many workers in the industry never qualified for JobKeeper. Will your government now abandon those who did?

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his question and thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond to it and to correct some of the grave factual errors in what the member for Wills has said. Once again, we've heard this canard from Labor that in some way JobKeeper has not delivered very significant benefits to the arts and entertainment sector. That is simply factually incorrect. The facts are that among the around 40,000 people who make up the performing and creative arts subsector—to use the language of the Australian Bureau of Statistics—some $800 million has been paid in JobKeeper within that sector alone. Roughly two in three people who fit that description have received JobKeeper.

We have heard this statement from Labor repeatedly over the past few months—that JobKeeper is not well designed to support people in the arts and entertainment sector. The facts are completely opposite. Frankly, it is extremely disappointing that Labor would be creating such anxiety amongst the arts and entertainment sector at this critical time. What have we been doing, by contrast? We've been delivering practical support to the arts and entertainment sector. We're moving to the phase where our focus is on getting shows back on the road. We want our arts and entertainment workers onstage. We want them working backstage. We want them working front of house, in the box office, as ushers or as set designers—all the work that is done across the arts and entertainment sector. That's why we committed a $250 million Creative Economy package, including $75 million in RISE grants—Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand—with $60 million of that already put to work; $50 million for our Temporary Interruption Fund to support Australian film and television; $35 million in sustainability assistance, and we've already allocated some of that for systemically important arts companies; and of course $90 million in loans.

And we heard consistently from these whingeing negativists on the other side that nobody would be interested in the loans. That was wrong. They were wrong when they said JobKeeper was not going to support people in the arts sector. That was wrong. They've been wrong about most things they've said about our consistent support for the arts and entertainment sector. Our focus is on getting Australian performers back to work, doing what they do so well, and getting those shows back on the road, and we are providing practical support to do that.