Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the Treasury Laws Amendment (2020 Measures No. 4) Bill 2020 and in particular I rise to speak in favour of the second reading amendment moved by the member for Whitlam. This bill contains four schedules. In saying that, this is a bill that is far less substantive than one might think for a bill with four schedules. As is so often the case with bills brought to this place by this government, it is less than the sum of its parts. More importantly, this bill is far less than what is needed, given the predicament this nation faces.

We can look at each of the schedules in this bill and find minor measures, most of which are fairly unobjectionable, particularly after the government very belatedly included amendments in relation to franchise measures. What is most galling about this bill is not that it's one in a succession of bills that contain almost no content but that it does so at a time when this nation is at a fork in the road and needs so much more. We are at a point in time when so much of this nation is being flooded and is facing natural disaster risks. We are at a point in time when the vaccine rollout is occurring far slower than this nation needs. What we see in this bill is a complete lack of economic vision. This government should be bringing so much to this chamber, but instead it is withdrawing so much support.

I will deal with schedule 4 of this bill first because to me it is the most egregious part of the bill, mostly because it reflects what this government is not doing. Schedule 4 of this bill extends the operation of schedule 5 of the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus (Measures No. 2) Act 2020. Schedule 5 of that bill provides for temporary mechanisms for responsible ministers to change arrangements for meeting information and documentary requirements under Commonwealth legislation, including requirements to give information and produce witnessed and signed documents. That's all fine. The hundreds of thousands of workers out in the community who are unemployed and the additional hundreds of thousands of workers out in the community who are at risk of losing their jobs will be saying, 'That doesn't really seem like enough at this point in time.' We're now going to be discussing in this bill schedule 5 of the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus (Measures No. 2) Act 2020, but what we're not going to be talking about—because this government isn't offering it—is anything substantive to provide support to those hundreds of thousands of workers who have lost their jobs already or are at risk of losing their jobs because support is being pulled.

I want to go back to the single biggest measure that this government has introduced. It was something we supported. They brought it in after some weeks of us calling for it. It was JobKeeper. I will talk about a couple of aspects of JobKeeper which we would have liked to have seen done differently, but I want to talk about the rationale for JobKeeper. The reason I want to talk about that is the rationale for JobKeeper hasn't disappeared. Indeed, over recent weeks the rationale for JobKeeper in many areas of Australia has strengthened. We are pulling out JobKeeper holus-bolus at exactly the worst time.

What are some of the key rationales for JobKeeper? This is not an exhaustive list, by the way. One is—and this is something that the member for Whitlam spoke about at some length during his contribution—that there is a moral obligation on the government of the day to assist businesses and the employees of those businesses where the government, through legislation or regulation or edict, shuts those businesses down or shuts an industry down. Everybody in this chamber agrees that many industries did need to shut down for a period of time during the start of the pandemic. The point is, because it was a recession brought on by the government shutting those industries down, there was a moral obligation for the government to help the businesses and the individuals in those industries. I think that that rationale for JobKeeper would be agreed on by people across this chamber.

The second rationale for JobKeeper and for wage subsidies in general is that it is important to keep a connection between employers and employees, particularly where businesses are likely to be sustainable in the long-term. Because of the significant search costs, the significant cost to individuals and businesses of losing that connection, it made perfect sense to maintain that connection where it was highly likely that a business would survive the pandemic. Many of the costs of having an unnecessary separation of a worker and a business would be irrevocable; those would never be connected again. So it was absolutely critical that we kept workers and businesses together where it was clear that businesses were only under financial stress because of the necessary regulatory impositions in response to coronavirus, and that businesses would be able to get back on their feet once those impositions had been lifted.

Another rationale for JobKeeper and for the wage subsidies contained within that program was need. Many individuals, many households and many regions had lost incomes for considerable periods of time. So another rationale for that program was to provide people with support during a time of need.

Finally, a key rationale for JobSeeker was macroeconomic stability and supporting aggregate demand. Here, it's critical to acknowledge that one of the key reasons we needed JobKeeper, and we still need JobKeeper in many areas, is it's the spending power of people receiving JobKeeper that supports so many other businesses. So it's not just the people who lose JobKeeper that are going to suffer when those supports are pulled out; it's all of the other businesses and individuals that those people spend money with. It's that interdependence within the economy that is a key rationale for JobKeeper.

Those four rationales are important to spell out, because, as I'm going to outline in a moment, those four rationales still exist in this economy and, indeed, have arguably become more urgent over the last month. As I said, we supported JobKeeper. We called for JobKeeper for some period before this government implemented it. We thought that some aspects of JobKeeper weren't implemented as well as they could have been—for example, the fact that a number of businesses, a number of extremely wealthy people, have lined their pockets unnecessarily through the payments that were made. That's a debate which is still going on in our community. We felt that the scheme should have been better designed. In fact, if it had been better designed with that issue in mind there would be more money now for people who are truly in need.

Secondly we felt that a number of businesses were excluded. I can point to dnata and a number of other businesses as cases in point. I have spoken about dnata a number of times in this chamber. Many, many employees in my electorate and, of course, right across Australia suffered greatly because they were, in my belief, arbitrarily excluded from the JobKeeper scheme. Then, of course, there were a number of other scope issues which, I think, were material and arbitrary. For example, casual workers were excluded if they had 12 months or less of continuous service. There were many instances where people had longstanding connections to an industry or discontinuous but longstanding connections to a business. Many of these people had dependants. The scheme wasn't well designed for those instances.

I want to return to the situation we find ourselves in now and the fork in the road we are now facing. Is now—31 March—the point in time when we should just be taking this scheme away entirely? The answer is clearly no because the rationales that I outlined before remain. In fact, there are a number of ways in which our economy and our society have become even more vulnerable over the last month. The floods are damaging the economy and, more than anything, societies—communities, individuals, households, property and livelihoods—and they are putting people at risk. Those floods make it even more difficult for many communities to deal with a sudden withdrawal of income support. The vaccine, as we know, is being rolled out slower than expected. I won't go into all of the reasons why that might be the case. That's a separate issue. But the reality is that that is what is happening. We're at 10 per cent of the government's target, and we know that the health outcomes are intimately intertwined with the economic outcomes. We cannot get the economy back on a full footing until we have our health outcomes on a proper footing. So we know that we should not withdraw the economic supports until we are more confident about the vaccine rollout and about getting the health outcomes onto a firmer footing.

We also know that, while the recovery in aggregate terms has been stronger than expected, it is still very patchy. It is patchy in terms of geography; it is patchy in terms of sector. That ought to make us a bit more careful about withdrawing this significant support package in its entirety. I want to look at a couple of examples, which have been raised by a number of others in this chamber, both in this debate and also over recent weeks. One is travel agents. It's a very good example of where those initial rationales still exist. The first rationale was that, where the government has—through necessary regulation, but through regulation—shut down the operation of a sector, there is a moral obligation on the government to provide some kind of support. For travel agents, particularly those relying on income from international tourism, that is still the case. The borders are closed, so that rationale still exists. The second argument, which is that we should be keeping a connection, where possible, between employers and employees where a business is sustainable, still exists. International tourism will, at some point, return. These travel agents are sustainable businesses. We ought to be putting in place arrangements which allow for sustainable businesses to maintain themselves until regulations are lifted. And the need for the JobKeeper program, which was the third rationale that I talked about before, still exists. It certainly still exists in the case of travel agents. One can look at a number of other sectors, such as international aviation and related businesses, and, in terms of those first three rationales, the boxes are all ticked.

I want to look at the fourth rationale, in terms of the overall economy. There are, clearly, individual sectors where not enough is being done by this government and where the original rationales for JobKeeper are still there. What about the overall economy? Macroeconomic considerations were central to JobKeeper. It was meant to be a support for aggregate demand during a very difficult time for the economy. What has happened to aggregate demand over recent weeks and months? We have a massive natural disaster right up and down the east coast. We have many communities that have been shut down and are fighting to survive. We have incredible uncertainty over the vaccine rollout, and, as I outlined earlier, this is absolutely central to the economic recovery. As many, many prominent economists here and overseas have said, the two are absolutely intertwined; one cannot have a full economic recovery until one has a full health recovery. So the macroeconomic considerations have actually worsened, and the need for aggregate demand support is, if anything, more urgent. Now, because of some announcement made many months ago under entirely different circumstances, the government is proceeding with this plan nonetheless.

An additional consideration I think is worth mentioning is the sheer uncertainty around the current circumstances. It is true to say that the recovery that we have seen in the labour market over recent months has been stronger than just about all forecasters had predicted, whether they be public sector forecasters in government agencies, whether they be private forecasters or whether they be academics. The whole point is that forecasting the macro economy in circumstances such as this is extremely difficult. What that says is that it is just as possible that the forecasts which are currently saying that we can get through withdrawal of JobKeeper could be wrong also. The point is, with worsening macroeconomic conditions, we should erring on the side of caution. When the livelihoods of so many communities, when the livelihoods of so many sectors, when the livelihoods of so many individuals and households are at stake, we should be a bit more humble and accept the fact that our forecasts might be wrong, the other way this time. Were that to be the case, were our forecasts in relation to GDP, were our forecasts in relation to commodity prices, were our forecasts in relation to the labour market wrong—the other side—and we pulled the entire JobKeeper scheme out as a whole, it would be an absolute disaster for many of our most vulnerable individuals.

We can use that set of arguments around the need for aggregate demand at the regional level because they apply there also. We are going to be pulling support out for many vulnerable people in communities like Cairns, when so many other small businesses are relying on individuals who currently have that support. So what is that going to do to communities like Cairns? We simply can't be so bold, we simply can't be so foolhardy, as to rely upon one set of forecasts when they could be wrong and when so many people could be adversely affected.

This is a bill with four schedules. As earlier speakers have said, we on this side don't have an objection to most of them. But the egregious thing is this government is bringing such a trivial set of schedules to this place when so much more is needed at a time of so much dire need in our community.

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