Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Carr is right: it is vindictive. And it is arrogant, and Labor will not create uncertainty for those businesses. Before I hear the squeals from the crossbench, I doubt very much that any one of them engaged on the weekend with any business or any employee that is currently locked down in these jurisdictions. I doubt very much that any one of them spoke to a business and said: 'Do you know what we're going to do? We're going to have a bit of fun with this. We're going to kick it around, and, in the meantime, you won't have certainty about the payments that you deserve under these arrangements that will allow to you keep workers employed.' That is what they are asking us to do.

Senator Lambie interjecting—

I've got a lot of time for you, Senator Lambie, but I doubt very much that you have spoken to one business, one worker or one family that is waiting for certainty about these payments. I doubt it very much. But I have spoken to MPs in the lockdown areas. I understand exactly their concern and their worry; they're dealing with businesses every day that do not know how to keep their door open. This is because of this Prime Minister's failure on the vaccine rollout and national quarantine. It is dire out there for these businesses. It is devastating. The last thing they need is a tick-tack between two houses of parliament on a transparency measure that we believe should absolutely be in place, but are we prepared to put the transparency measure above the needs of these businesses and these families who do not know how to make ends meet at the moment? No. That is the position we have come to.

We have consulted: we have reached out to MPs in south-west Sydney, in Western Sydney, in Sydney central, in Victoria and on the coast. We have spoken to those MPs, and what they are feeding back is that businesses are struggling, families are struggling and people are devastated by this virus. Yes, they would like a transparency register and we should keep fighting for it, and the order for the production of documents should come back on Thursday with all of that information. The government should bring a bill that puts in place a transparency register. Yes, we agree with that, but will we sit here and provide uncertainty to those businesses and those families relying on this parliament to do its job? No, we won't. We will take the criticism from the crossbench, who have the luxury of putting this position, because one vote doesn't matter here, but 26 votes do. We have consulted, and we have come to the right position. We do not resile from transparency. We will never resile. The government should do it. But these payments need to get to businesses and to the families and the workers who rely on them. (Time expired)