AUSTRALIANS NEED MORRISON TO DO A BETTER JOB AT JOBKEEPER 2.0

JIM CHALMERS MP
SHADOW TREASURER
MEMBER FOR RANKIN
 
TONY BURKE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
SHADOW MINISTER FOR THE ARTS
MANAGER OF OPPOSITION BUSINESS
MEMBER FOR WATSON

BRENDAN O’CONNOR MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND INDUSTRY SHADOW MINISTER FOR SCIENCE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SMALL AND FAMILY BUSINESS
MEMBER FOR GORTON
 

Labor is inclined to support the changes being proposed for JobKeeper today and will work through the details of the announcement.
 
We don’t want to add to the uncertainty created by the Government’s delays in announcing these changes.
 
We haven’t seen the legislation yet but when we do we will look for ways to improve it if necessary.
 
Labor will be as responsible and constructive as we can be, and as we have been throughout, and look for solutions not arguments.
 
The test of the Morrison Government’s management of the recession and its aftermath is what happens to jobs and the businesses which create them.
 
The Government should not have excluded millions of workers from JobKeeper while at the same time borrowing $6 billion to spend on overpaying almost one million people on the program.
 
Today’s announcement does nothing to create jobs for the hundreds of thousands of workers that have already lost their jobs, despite Treasury forecasting even higher unemployment in the JobKeeper review.  
 
Scott Morrison’s admission that he was wrong to commit to a September snapback comes after costly delays and weeks of uncertainty which pushed more workers into unemployment queues, and forced more businesses to close their doors.
 
Today’s changes fail to address some of the original flaws and gaps in the JobKeeper program, including the deliberate exclusion of millions of workers, including many casual workers in industries that have been hardest-hit by Government restrictions.
 
The Government must do a better job with this next phase of support than they did the first time around.
 
This is the first recession in three decades and people are hurting.
 
We don’t want to see unemployment too high for too long.
 
We don’t want to see a jobless recovery where even more Australians are left behind and held back.
 
TUESDAY, 21 JULY 2020