Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The government's original hiring credit bill allowed employers to sack existing workers over the age of 35 and replace them with cheaper, subsidised workers. Why won't the Prime Minister protect the jobs of existing workers?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The suggestion by the Leader of the Opposition is not true—it's not correct. The JobMaker hiring credit is about getting Australians who have been out of work back into work. It's a program that is designed to get Australians who have been most heavily impacted by the COVID-19 recession—which has particularly been younger people, who have been disproportionately impacted of all those in the labour force—back into work at a cost of some $4 billion. That's to put 450,000 supported jobs back into the workforce. It is only available for additional jobs; you cannot reduce your current workforce. And there is the double-barrelled additionality criteria, which has the protection of both headcount from the reference date of 30 September and the payroll of the business. Hours can't be reduced and people can't be let off and rehired under these arrangements.

It is important to have these protections in place. That's what the government foreshadowed, and we're ensuring these protections are in place. There are also the protections under existing industrial relations laws, and the integrity measures that are available cannot reclassify workers from contractors to employees to receive the hiring credit.

This is an important program. It's a very important program and we've built the protections into place. It's not a program for people to play politics with in this place; it's a program for the Labor Party to get on board with and to support getting young people back into jobs in the middle of a COVID-19 recession.