Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. The Peninsula Aquatic Recreation Centre in my electorate employs approximately 300 people. None of them are eligible for the JobKeeper wage subsidy. Why have they and 600,000 other Australians been deliberately left behind?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The particular organisation that the honourable member refers to may indeed be a creature of local government. Now, if it's a creature of local government, it was very clearly set out in the eligibility criteria that local government are creatures of state governments, and state governments have their own balance sheets, and state governments have their own ability to support the staff and the businesses and the organisations like the one referred to. As the Prime Minister points out, the New South Wales government made an announcement in relation to local-government-run childcare centres.

The reality is, this JobKeeper program, with now over 860,000 businesses formally enrolled, is supporting some six million workers—some in the not-for-profit sector, others who are sole traders, others who are part-time or full-time workers or long-term casuals. When you combine that with the Jobseeker program, with the 1.6 million who are on that, you've got a combination of 7.6 million workers. That's out of a total labour force of 13.2 million. The best way that we can get people back into jobs is to continue to grow the economy, to follow the health advice and to ease the restrictions and, as Treasury forecasts, some 850,000 people will be back in jobs as a result of those stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3 lifting of restrictions as agreed by National Cabinet. That includes many workers in recreational centres, in gyms and in swimming centres and the like. I suggest that the honourable member lobbies the Labor state government in Victoria.