Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Club is an exclusive men's-only club in Sydney. Despite it being 2021, they still don't admit women as members. Last year, they doubled their surplus, thanks in part to $2 million from the government's JobKeeper program. Accent Group, the shoe seller, paid their CEO a million-dollar bonus, boosted their profits and delivered, through dividends, $11 million to billionaire Brett Blundy. They've gotten $45 million through JobKeeper, and they won't pay a cent of it back. The car dealer AP Eagers turned a $200 million profit. Their dividends will deliver $17 million to billionaire Nick Politis, but they won't return their $130 million in JobKeeper.

Then there's Best & Less. Their profits are up, but, because they're doing a sale, they've actually come clean with investors. They have said to investors that JobKeeper was a sugar hit, directly delivering more than $20 million to their budget bottom line. I imagine Best & Less are thinking, 'You only get one Morrison government in your lifetime, and we've had ours.'

Then there's Premier Investments. They may have received as much as $110 million in JobKeeper. They set a record profit and paid their CEO a $2.5 million bonus, more than most Australians earn in a lifetime. They paid a stonking dividend, of which billionaire Solomon Lew will get a sizable whack, and are refusing to repay the bulk of their JobKeeper. The government set up the 'DobSeeker' helpline which employers can call to dob in jobseekers. There is no helpline which people can call up and complain about the billions of dollars that this government has delivered to profitable firms. Among the listed firms we know that about a fifth of the money went to firms whose earnings went up, not down. If that's true, that means that across the entire scheme we are talking about some $15 to $20 billion delivered to firms that didn't need it. That's about $1,000 of Morrison government waste for every single Australian. It's $1,000 dollars per adult wasted through the JobKeeper scheme—

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