Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Those FOI documents include the statement from Treasury 'The hiring credit does not create an incentive for an employer to replace an older worker with several new part-time workers.' That's what's implicit in Senator Gallacher's question, and the government rejects that. We built this program with clear additionality criteria in place—in fact, with a double-barrelled additionality test there: firstly, that the business would have to be increasing the headcount of employees and, secondly, that the payroll for the business would also have to increase. Those two criteria are there to make sure that indeed a business has to be taking on new, additional employees, growing the payroll, and, under this program, young employees, to give young Australians an opportunity.