Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful to the member for Fenner for bringing this important motion forward for debate and I urge anyone who is watching or listening to get behind his efforts to scrutinise the uneven and unfair application of JobKeeper. That's something you'd think that the government itself might do in relation to the largest one-off commitment of taxpayer's funds in Australia's history but, unfortunately, you'd be wrong.

There is a basic obligation on government to take action that's necessary and effective, but to do so in a way that is honest and fair. After being dragged by Labor to accept the need for a wage subsidy in the face of a pandemic, the Morrison government has delivered a program that is full of holes and full of blind spots. There is no support for universities, no support for arts and cultural workers, no support for local government employees and no support for nearly a million casuals in Australia at the time of a pandemic. But when it comes to large, profitable companies, companies which actually increased their profits through the circumstances of the pandemic, they have been well looked after. They have received tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. As a result, they've paid enormous dividends and executive bonuses.

Crown Casino received $111 million in JobKeeper and yet paid a dividend to shareholders of $203 million. Harvey Norman's profits jumped by 160 per cent. They received $9 million in JobKeeper support and then paid $75 million in dividends. And Premier Investment, a retail conglomerate that includes Just Jeans, Portmans and other businesses, received more than $40 million in JobKeeper support but made a bigger profit in 2020 than in 2019. It paid out $57 million in dividends, of which the chairman, Solomon Lew, alone received $24 million. In the circumstances of a pandemic, with economic pain and suffering all around, those companies received $160 million of taxpayer funded support they clearly did not need.

What did the Prime Minister say about that situation? He said:

Now, if there are some companies that feel that they want to hand that back, great! Good for them.

Good for them!

What did the Minister for Human Services say about the people the government had wrongly and illegally targeted with the industrial-scale cruelty of robodebt? He said: 'We'll find you, we'll track you down, you'll have to pay those debts, you may end up in prison.' No good for poor people, no good for disadvantaged Australians, for veterans, disability pensioners and the unemployed. Not good for them; for them threats, collection letters and legal action. For them penury, deprivation and despair.

As millions have struggled through this pandemic, lost jobs, lost wages and been forced to ransack their superannuation in a falling market, the billionaires of Australia have seen their wealth increase by 50 per cent. How can that be right, and how can a government program contribute to that kind of grotesque outcome? Those massive holes and blind spots, the squeezing of those who have least and taxpayer funded sunshine for those who have plenty corresponds exactly to the value system of this government. We've seen it from the beginning. It goes back to Joe Hockey and their concept of lifters and leaners. While they peddle the rubbish of transcending ideology and occupying the magic world of the pragmatic middle ground, look at the reality: business tax cuts that never trickle down; penalty rate cuts that result in no new jobs; wages as a share of national income at a 50-year low; unemployment support below the poverty line, with fully one quarter of all single-parent households below the poverty line. At the same time, there are tax cuts for profitable big businesses; personal tax cuts the vast majority of which benefit high-income earners; and taxpayer funded handouts to businesses whose profits have gone up.

This is a hands-off government. It's a 'nothing to see here' government. It's a 'how dare you question us' government—a government of the spreadsheet for the spreadsheet of their own self-interest; a government that is always there for friendly companies that could use $80 million for water that never arrives or $30 million for Leppington land worth a tenth of that. But it is never, never there for those doing it tough. There are millions of dollars worth of carrots for those doing well, and for those doing it tough it's always the stick.

I know what the government will say. They always get wounded and indignant and say, 'We reject the politics of envy.' In the meantime Solomon Lew profits $24 million while a million unemployed Australians crunch back down to $40 a day. In the meantime Australian billionaires grow their wealth by 50 per cent in a single year while 17,000 university workers lose their jobs and a million casuals are denied support.

What will the Prime Minister do? He'll get angry and defensive and say, 'We're not into class warfare.' Not half they're not.

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