Fake Labor gives JobKeeper looters free pass

For months Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh has hammered the Morrison Government for wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money by giving the JobKeeper wage subsidy to businesses with rising profits.

As revealed by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), a whopping $13 billion (over 13% of the $98 billion wage subsidy) was handed to nearly 200,000 companies that received JobKeeper payments but whose profits rose:

Yesterday, Labor deputy leader Richard Marles assured businesses that a Labor Government would not require JobKeeper overpayments to be repaid:

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About the author

Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.