Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on what should have been the most consequential measure for working people in this country since the pandemic hit and since the JobKeeper wage subsidy was passed in this parliament. I say that this should have been consequential because, in actual fact, it has been anything but. The Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020 is, instead, a massive wasted opportunity. It is a wasted opportunity for the unemployed, the underemployed and the small and medium-sized businesses that drive our economy. What Australians need right now is a well-designed job subsidy, a subsidy that will support the transition to the post-COVID economy, a subsidy that recognises that the recession we are in will not be over soon and so many of the jobs that were there before COVID are not coming back. The problem is that the JobMaker hiring credit is not that subsidy. What the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the Treasurer have brought to this parliament is not JobMaker—it's job replacer, job churner and job destroyer. One of the most concerning aspects of this bill, as we have seen before by this government, is that we know from experience with JobKeeper that public money will be misspent if there are not safeguards put in place.

The Australian public support protecting jobs and businesses through the pandemic. But they have a right to know how their money is being spent, and the record with JobKeeper is not encouraging. Let me give you one important example of the misuse of public funds that brought ordinary workers to this parliament today. Aviation workers today rallied outside Parliament House to call for an inquiry into the future of aviation in this country post-COVID. They were also protesting against the fact that over half a billion dollars in JobKeeper wage subsidies were paid to Qantas, only for this company to turn around and outsource 2,500 ground crew so they could fill these jobs for less money using labour hire companies and contractors. Think about it. Taxpayers gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Alan Joyce to keep Qantas workers connected to their jobs—and he banked the money, only to tell the families of 2,500 of his loyal employees that they were no longer connected to their jobs and if they wanted these jobs back they would have to bid for them at the lower rate. We've seen companies that take JobKeeper funds and pay huge dividends to their shareholders, and there was a parade of companies that took JobKeeper money, only to then pay their executives massive bonuses. If the government has learnt lessons from JobKeeper, it will make sure that this kind of abuse of public money and public trust cannot happen again.

Before we go into the flaws of the JobMaker scheme, let's back up to earlier in this tumultuous year. Let's go back to March 2020. This is when the coalition announced that they would be introducing a coronavirus supplement that would double the rate of the below-poverty JobSeeker allowance. They did this because they didn't initially want to introduce a wage subsidy. The United Kingdom, New Zealand and countries in Europe were rolling out wage subsidies as COVID hit. In Australia, Labor was calling on the government to introduce a wage subsidy. The union movement was pushing for a wage subsidy. Economists were pushing for a wage subsidy. We all agreed that the most important thing the government could do was to keep the connection between workers and their employers. But this government thought, 'Let's throw them all out on the Centrelink queues.'

It wasn't until they saw how long those Centrelink queues were, in the first few days—and then the Centrelink IT system crashed—when employers across Australia took their cues from the government that their businesses would get no support, that they started sacking their staff in the thousands. It wasn't until they were watching the queues grow before their eyes on TV that this transactional government decided it was in their own interest to legislate a wage subsidy. So JobKeeper was announced.

Labor did the right thing and supported JobKeeper, even though its flaws were enormous. We're appalled, and we still are, that a whole swathe of the economy was excluded from JobKeeper: casual workers, gig and contract workers, university workers, arts and the entertainment industry, airport workers, particularly those workers at dnata, and workers here on temporary visas. All of them are Australian taxpayers. All of them are critical to our economy. Many of them have partners and children to support, an economy to support.