The AFR’s Joe Aston continues to shine a bright light on the widespread rorting of the Morrison Government’s JobKeeper program. The latest egregious example comes from tiny listed cleaning company Millennium Services Group, which pocketed more in JobKeeper subsidies than its entire market capitalisation:
- “The dinky little cleaning contractor with a market capitalisation of just $23.45 million took home $24.7 million in JobKeeper in the financial year, compared with $24.6 million in FY20”.
- “Just $15.7 million was directed to its stood-down employees. It paid another $10 million of income tax on it. And the leftover $23.5 million it used to “repay borrowings”. Not a word of a lie!”
- “Nowhere in the stated purpose of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg‘s flagship scheme did we ever hear ‘retiring corporate debt’ or ‘repairing companies’ balance sheets in 25 weeks flat'”.
- “We only know about Millennium’s JobKeeper haul because it’s listed on the stock exchange. There are thousands and thousands more private companies who’ve done precisely the same thing, and we’ll never know about it”.
Terrific stuff. The same criticisms can be levelled at the Morrison Government’s $34 billion Cashflow Boost – another gigantic corporate welfare scheme launched at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic that has received little scrutiny or media attention.
