Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In less than two weeks, the Prime Minister is ending JobKeeper wage support across the country. He said he'd do it when the vaccine rollout was well underway. Sadly, the vaccine rollout is very slow, but the withdrawal of JobKeeper is coming at us very fast.

In my electorate of Sydney, 9,290 businesses will lose $13.8 million a week between them. That's going to happen on 28 March. These businesses employ more than 28,000 people. Businesses and workers have been hard hit in my electorate. We know the story of CBDs around Australia has been a very tough one. Universities were deliberately excluded from JobKeeper, and the fact that borders have closed, with fewer international students, means the businesses and the landlords that depend on those students have really suffered, as have the thousands of university staff who've lost their jobs. Arts workers were shut out by design. Local businesses, cafes, travel agents—after 16 years, the 505 club in Newtown has announced this week that it will close because JobKeeper is ending. The owners of the Dendy independent cinema in my electorate are, again, under enormous stress. They're struggling from the hangover of lockdowns plus the lack of movies coming out, and now JobKeeper—it's their death knell.