This morning I attacked the Morrison Government for seeking repayments from households of excess pandemic welfare payments and childcare subsidies while refusing to pursue companies that received billions of dollars worth of excess JobKeeper subsidies.
The AFR’s John Kehoe reports that Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has refused to act on “imperative” Treasury advice recommending an independent review of the $90 billion JobKeeper program, despite the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimating that $25 billion was paid to businesses that did not record revenue declines:
- PBO showed that $4.6 billion was paid to 157,650 firms that recorded increases in revenue in the wage subsidy’s opening three months.
- The overpayments would have been several times higher over the program’s full 12 months.
- The revenue of 365,477 qualifying firms never fell below the scheme’s thresholds during the national lockdown between April to June 2020. Thus, $12.5 billion was paid to employers who never actually recorded the requisite fall in revenue. That equates to $25 billion for JobKeeper’s opening six months.
- Economists and corporate governance experts want access to the micro data on JobKeeper payments.
- The Australian Treasury said it was “imperative that a program of this magnitude and novelty should be studied and evaluated very closely”. It also said “an independent evaluation should be conducted at the completion of the program”.
