Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator McAllister, I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Bilyk today relating to JobKeeper.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Earlier this year we found out that $13 billion in JobKeeper went to firms that increased their turnover during the pandemic. It went to Monaco based billionaires, to men-only clubs and to the highest-fee private schools in the country. It is a shocking amount of waste—$13 billion is more than the government spent on the childcare subsidy last year. It is more than the government spent on public schools last year.

JobKeeper was supposed to go to the firms that were suffering, to support the connection between those firms and their workforces. It was never meant to go to highly profitable firms. Like so many things offered by this government, it's a good idea implemented very badly. Just reflect on what it would have meant had the Morrison government avoided this waste: it could have afforded to extend JobKeeper to the one million casual workers who missed out on any support; it could have saved additional people from losing their jobs and their livelihoods during the first wave of the pandemic; and now it would have more to spend in supporting Australians who are currently affected by lockdowns and who are struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table.

The Prime Minister has never asked any of these recipients to pay back a single cent. He has said that calls to pay it back are 'the politics of envy'. Minister Birmingham has said that we shouldn't shame and vilify the businesses that took billions in JobKeeper while turning profits. The Morrison government continues to resist Labor's calls for transparency and accountability and refuses to crack down on businesses that won't send back payments despite turning monster profits.

It's a strong contrast with what has been reported today—11,000 people who receive income support payments have been sent debt notices of almost $33 million. Many of these are vulnerable people who sought support during the worst health and economic crisis Australia has faced in nearly 100 years. These people shouldn't be punished. There are two stories, aren't there? There is one story for the rich and powerful and there is another story for those that aren't. But it's very on brand for this government.

This is the government that set up the robodebt scheme, and it's worth reflecting on what the Federal Court thought about the impact of that scheme on those who suffered under it. Justice Murphy said:

One thing … that stands out … is the financial hardship, anxiety and distress, including suicidal ideation and in some cases suicide, that people or their loved ones say was suffered as a result of the Robodebt system, and that many say they felt shame and hurt at being wrongly branded 'welfare cheats'.

The double standard is quite breathtaking. No effort was spared to claw back money paid to some of our most vulnerable, yet no effort at all has been expended on clawing back money from big business. Indeed, the government seems pretty relaxed about handing out money to billionaire shareholders and CEOs, just as long as nobody knows about it.

Transparency is actually not a radical solution or idea, is it? Both the New Zealand government and the US government keep public databases of companies that receive income support, but the Morrison government is so opposed to transparency that it made clear yesterday that, if the opposition and crossbench insisted on transparency provisions, the government was willing to delay the job-keeper legislation that was debated yesterday. It really says something about this government. It says something about the Prime Minister that he is prepared to let the livelihoods of Australians on COVID support payments be collateral damage in his fight against transparency. That's an outcome Labor didn't want to risk, but we strongly believe that the public deserves to know how its money is being spent.

Transparency is a basic obligation, never more important than at a time when we need our citizens to have trust in our government. That is why we will keep looking for opportunities to force the Morrison government to reveal just how much JobKeeper went to firms that actually increased their turnover during the pandemic. Australian voters deserve to know.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seem to recall it wasn't all that long ago that we had Labor actually condoning the robodebt scheme. They themselves were the ones that brought in the averaging scheme, under the Paul Keating government, in the late eighties. The member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, said:

But if people fail to come to an arrangement to settle their debts, the Government has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover that money.

From the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Maribyrnong:

The automation of this process will free up resources and result in more people being referred to the tax garnishee process, retrieving more outstanding debt on behalf of taxpayers.

And from Chris Bowen, the member for McMahon, who also called for a refund of overpayments through the robodebt scheme:

It is important that the Government explores different means of debt recovery to ensure that those who have received more money than they are entitled to repay their debt.

No-one is saying that the scheme is perfect and that we haven't made mistakes. We've owned up to that, but we'll never apologise for trying to automate processes in terms of the tax and transfer system in this country. When it comes to talking about subsidies for the rich, I think Labor should take a good look at themselves in the mirror. As the Treasurer pointed out yesterday, the unions themselves received $22 million in JobKeeper payments. Given the billions of dollars they collect every year from superannuation fees, they are the last people to need handouts in a time of crisis. Let's be honest. The union industry today is really nothing more than the finance-brokering arm of the industry super funds. You have to ask yourself why they aren't being taxed. I know Labor loves to complain about how the coalition loves to give tax breaks to big business, but if there is a big business in this country it's the industry super funds. It's the industry super funds and their brokerage arm, the unions themselves.

Look at the amount of money these guys in the unions collect by threatening to go on strike at these tier 1 builders. In Queensland, they're threatening to go on strike if it gets hotter than 30 degrees, which is a bit of a joke really. Anyone knows that it's 30 degrees in Queensland quite often after September, so I'm not quite sure when we expect to get anything built in Queensland. Good luck with that for the Olympic Games!

Of course, the other thing is the great big renewable energy subsidies that also go to the big end of town. We've got $10 billion—

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, I have been listening carefully, and you have drifted off the taking note response. I am listening carefully for a segue back and I haven't heard it yet.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm segueing back to the notion, which I know Senator McAllister was implying, that we're always giving tax breaks to the big end of town and we're looking after the big end of town. I'm merely pointing out, Madam Deputy President, that Labor should look in the mirror at how they look after the big end of town, whether it be unions, whether it be super funds or whether it be large corporations that get generous subsidies for energy.

I'm agnostic here. I don't think any energy company should be getting government subsidies. I know one of the big myths is that our agricultural industry, our fishing industry, our timber industry and our mining industry get free diesel subsidies. That's not true. They're actually rebates—that is, they've paid the money and they're getting back what they paid. It's neutral.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Rennick, you do need to get back to the taking note response.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay. I'm coming back to robodebt and that technology, albeit flawed. I've worked on many IT projects myself, and I can tell you that you can always take the cost of an IT project, double it and multiply it by three, because that's how much it will end up costing. I'm happy to take it on board. I would love to look at that robodebt stuff myself, because, having come from a systems implementation program, I'm sure there are ways we could fix the system. But we were trying to do the right thing. (Time expired)

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am always interested in listening to the coalition talk about robodebt. They never talk about the fact that they had to say sorry. They never talk about the fact that $1.8 billion was awarded to nearly 500,000 people, victims of their robodebt scheme. They never talk about the fact that the judge said it was shameful and unlawful. They never talk about any of that. They try to blame the Labor Party, when, of course, this was a scheme designed by the Morrison government.

What is happening now, and what happened in question time today, is that we hear in responses relating to JobKeeper the rank hypocrisy of the government when it comes to enforcement and compliance measures applied against those who are most vulnerable. The interesting thing was Senator Birmingham's response. He tried to throw back to the Labor Party: 'You just look after those who can't look after themselves—the more vulnerable.' Yes, we do! Seriously!

It is quite clear in the responses we got that there are two standards here. There is one standard for big corporations that have done well from this pandemic. JobKeeper was good for people who were losing their profits. I know that. I know two companies that received JobKeeper—you can have a little chuckle behind your mask over there, Senator—but they had to show that they were going backwards in profit by, from memory, about 30 per cent. So it is really interesting when you talk about the guidelines here. We've got one standard for big corporations that have done well and another for ordinary Australians struggling through the repeated lockdowns and border closures, trying to make ends meet and trying to put food on the table.

It's just a form of hypocrisy that we really have come to expect from the Morrison Liberal government: one rule for the rich and powerful, where you get off 'Scott-free' with taxpayer support, and when businesses have never been better, and another for the working people of Australia, who are just trying to do the right thing, faced with some of the most difficult circumstances Australians have experienced in generations, because, as we have seen highlighted in this place, this is a government more than comfortable—indeed, from what it appears, overly eager—to send more than 11,000 debt notices to welfare recipients who received JobKeeper while simultaneously handing out an astonishing $13 billion in JobKeeper payments to companies that actually increased their earnings. This is what we're talking about: we're talking about companies that increased their profits. That's what we're talking about. They didn't need the JobKeeper. They increased their profits during the pandemic. Just think about that—and I really ask the senators on the other side to just think about that: $13 billion to line the pockets of businesses who didn't need the support.

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands—most probably, millions—of Australians out there who've had their income smashed and are in desperate need of support, a great many of whom this government has ignored. Think about all the Australians who work in the gig sector: struggling, ignored by the Morrison Liberal government, while their industry was shuttered. In many, if not most, parts of the country, it's shuttered again. While the rest of the nation has to deal with cancelled shows, gigs and entertainment and sporting events that ordinarily employ hundreds of thousands of Australians, where is the support for these workers in our creative and arts industries? What about our academics and other university sector workers: denied JobKeeper; tens of thousands of them out of work because of the decisions made by this government—decisions made by Mr Scott Morrison, a Prime Minister who turns the other cheek when millions of Australians need support, because, you know, he doesn't hold a hose—not his problem. But when it comes to corporate welfare for the most successful firms in the nation: 'Hello! Here's a cool $13 billion in cold hard cash, no questions asked. Take it!' (Time expired)

Sam McMahon (NT, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to respond to senators who have taken note of answers to the questions from Senator Bilyk to Senator Birmingham. I must admit I am a little bit confused and perplexed—having conniptions, even. When we first talked about JobKeeper, when the Prime Minister first announced JobKeeper, those on the other side canned it: 'It'll never work. What a stupid idea.' It turns out that they were wrong. In fact, they were more than wrong. This was a revolutionary scheme. It hadn't been done anywhere around the world on the scale proposed here, and it turns out it was a wonderful scheme that saved many, many jobs and many, many businesses.

Let's face it: we all understand—well, at least, those of us on this side understand—that the vast majority of Australians who are employed in private enterprise are employed in small to medium businesses. So there's literally no point in saving jobs. You can sit someone down in a corner and you can pay them money to keep training for their job, but if they're not working for a business that job doesn't exist. You can save them and you can keep paying them and keep them ready to work, but if, in the meantime, all of those businesses that employ those workers cease to exist, then you've got nothing for them to come back to. So, despite the criticism from Labor, JobKeeper was a very, very good thing that this government brought in. I'm constantly told by businesses in the Northern Territory as I travel around: 'Thank you. It was JobKeeper that saved us. We would not be here today if it weren't for JobKeeper.'

On this side of the chamber, we seem to have not gotten the crystal ball that those on the other side have, because they seem to be able to look into it and predict what's going to happen. There was doom and gloom at the start. The whole country was locked down. There were predictions of huge levels of unemployment. We thought many people would be unemployed and many businesses would go under and we would have no economy left when we finally got on top of the pandemic. We felt that on this side as well. We thought that this was going to be a tragedy and that we had to step in and do something to stop that from happening. And we did. We stood up and we got in with JobKeeper, saving those businesses.

We couldn't predict how the pandemic would go and how the economy would respond. Some quite amazing things happened that we certainly didn't predict, that nobody predicted. I was amazed in the Northern Territory at the time of the first lockdown. Fortunately, we have only had one tiny one since. We are very lucky. But I went around talking to businesses, seeing how they innovated and managed to get through, including businesses that, in fact, thrived in the lockdown. I remember speaking to one particular business in Tennant Creek. It was a family run business and they thought that they were going to go under. But it turned out they became incredibly busy. They had a few different businesses and one of them was supplying skip bins. Who would have thought that a pandemic would create a demand for skip bins? Yet it did, because everyone was cleaning out their homes and yards and needing to dispose of things. So this business boomed. Many other businesses boomed and many have recovered and are doing really well.

Now they're trying to penalise us and criticising us for the fact that we did something that helped business not only survive but thrive. We now have an obligation to taxpayers to recover money that was either paid accidentally or in some cases claimed deliberately when it shouldn't have been paid. There is nothing wrong with that. We are not targeting poor people. This is across the board to anybody who received payments that they were not entitled to. There is nothing wrong with recovering funds on behalf of taxpayers— (Time expired)

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Senator McMahon said at the commencement of her remarks that she was confused. That was the strongest part of her contribution and nothing that she said over the succeeding five minutes did anything to undermine her perspicacity in making that original remark. I think, in fact, the government itself is wilfully confused. It is absolutely determined to put its own interests, and the interests of its mates, ahead of the interests of the people in Australia who they should actually be looking after.

We are in the depths of a social, public health and economic crisis. More than half of the country is in lockdown. In some parts of the country, like here in Sydney, it's with no end in sight because of the government's failure on vaccines. In the middle of this crisis, when people are uncertain about their jobs and household incomes and fearful for the future, the Morrison government has decided to issue 11,771 of our most vulnerable Australians, the people least secure in this COVID crisis, with debt notices because of JobKeeper. These debt notices are for amounts of money that may be nothing to the people who sit on the government side of the chamber—a few hundred dollars here or a few thousand dollars there—but those notices will strike absolute fear into families right across the country. It is hypocrisy. I may well be in Sydney and not in Canberra with you today, but I can smell the hypocrisy from here. You can see the absolute misallocation of priorities and you can see the absolute wilful determination of this government to look after itself and its mates rather than looking after the interests of ordinary Australians.

Contrast the approach of the government in terms of compliance and going after welfare recipients with its approach on two other issues. Previous senators have pointed out that the government's approach to corporate recipients of JobKeeper is entirely different. One company, Harvey Norman, received $22 million. It recorded a $462 million profit—half of that on the back of taxpayer receipts. Mr Harvey alone received $78 million. Thirty ASX companies recorded higher profits and received hundreds of millions of dollars in JobKeeper allowance, a complete misallocation of resources and priorities—problems that were easy to foresee.

Contrast this with the government's approach to public money when it's looking at its own interests. Every week there is another rort scheme. It was sports rorts—over $100 million—where public money was misdirected away from the interests of community sports clubs to the Morrison government's own re-election prospects. There were the community development rorts—hundreds of millions of dollars allocated in an entirely partisan way. There were regional rorts—hundreds of millions of dollars allocated in an intensely partisan way for the government's own narrow political priorities. There were infrastructure rorts. And, of course, this week we discovered car park rorts, where the government has allocated money in an entirely partisan way and has ignored all the recommendations of the department to allocate money to marginal electorates, some of which didn't even have a railway station adjacent to the car park they were building. The money was allocated in an entirely political way.

There's no interest in accountability for hundreds of millions of dollars—billions of dollars—misused for the Morrison government's narrow partisan interests. There's no interest in public accountability or in recovering billions of dollars that's been shovelled out the door—not to achieve its purpose of protecting people's jobs but to lift corporate profits, lift shareholder dividends and lift executive salaries—and produced zero jobs in the process. This government has entirely lost its way. It has lost its capacity to act in the public interest. It's got no interest in that accountability. It just wants to put pressure on ordinary Australians who are the most vulnerable. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.