Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Small businesses in my electorate of Macquarie are struggling to keep their doors open, this time without any JobKeeper. They don't know how much longer they can go on. Isn't it true that this wouldn't be happening if the Prime Minister had done his two jobs on vaccines and quarantine? Australians are paying the price for this Prime Minister's neglect. Who is he going to blame this time?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The support that is being provided to New South Wales right now—the member opposite may not be familiar with how JobKeeper worked—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say that because JobKeeper provided payments to businesses to make payments to their employees. Those payments were $750. That's what JobKeeper did. JobKeeper made payments to companies so companies could make payments to their employees. JobKeeper was designed to be an income support mechanism to individuals, paid through companies. I can tell you that in New South Wales so far we have made payments of $1.7 billion in income supports directly to people who have been working in those same businesses and who may have been getting supported by JobKeeper in the first iteration of that. In addition to that, I can tell you that, across that workforce, some 743,624 people in New South Wales have been receiving that direct income support from the federal government through the COVID disaster assistance payment. Of those, 655,000 are in Sydney and greater Sydney, and some 87,390 more are across New South Wales, where they have been receiving that support. Not only have they received it once, they keep receiving it each and every week.

I thank the staff at Services Australia, who in the first waves of the pandemic did an extraordinary job in ensuring they were supporting people who needed income support and other benefits to get them through the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. I can tell you that the staff of Services Australia have backed up again with the delivery of the COVID disaster assistance payment to those individuals. Those people include many, many thousands of sole operators that we know have decided to avail themselves of the COVID disaster assistance payment rather than the New South Wales business payment program, which we are supporting on a 50-50 basis with the New South Wales government. The business payment program is being delivered by the New South Wales government to businesses across New South Wales with a turnover between $75,000 a year and $250 million a year with payments of $1,500 a week through to $100,000 a week. So the combination of the cash flow support with the income support coming together is providing the same support that was provided previously, but in a more targeted way to assist those people.

An opposition member interjecting—

The member opposite interjects and says it's not working. I don't know what's not working about payments that are being made within 30 minutes of people making applications. It is further evidence that those opposite could encourage the constituents to avail themselves rather than undermine— (Time expired)