Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The north-west of Tasmania is my home. It is a beautiful place, a place of great potential, full of good people making a go of life in regional Australia. COVID-19 hit them hard, particularly the outbreak at the Burnie hospital, which saw thousands of north-west coasters quarantined, businesses shut down, the hospital closed and the Army brought in. When restrictions were eased in early May, of Tasmania's 221 confirmed coronavirus cases, 147 had been in the north-west, including 12 of the 13 deaths.

At that time, I began a community survey. It told about the level of fear in the community, with many, many people saying they wanted the borders to stay closed until COVID-19 had disappeared. And there were some truly heartbreaking stories, such as that of the person who was so terrified of having anything at all to do with Centrelink that he accessed his superannuation instead of applying for JobSeeker. How is it that this country has created a system so complex and hostile than an ordinary Australian, a taxpayer, who is perfectly entitled to seek social security support, can be so traumatised at the prospect of visiting a Centrelink office that he will spend his own retirement savings instead? Then there was a family in despair at having to close their business. Their daughter had also lost her casual job and wasn't eligible for JobKeeper. Where on earth would they get the money to pay their way? There was the school swimming instructor who, after 15 years of regular casual employment with the state government, was laid off, was not eligible for JobKeeper and was genuinely distressed that the support available paid no heed to her dignity as a long-serving employee.

Then there were the visa holders who, unable to return home, unable to access JobKeeper and supported by charities and their communities, were living with huge anxiety. One I spoke to had his full-time hours reduced to less than 16 hours and was trying to support his family on a little over $300 a week. There was a pensioner desperate for the return of his wife, who was stuck in the Philippines. The only way to communicate with the Australian embassy and the airlines was by email, and he had never in his life sent an email before. There was the young couple who, from the virus ravaged UK, sought the relative safety of his home town in Tasmania. He secured a job there, but his partner, who had been waiting for two years for her partner visa with no prospect of it arriving, felt she had no alternative but to return to the UK. So they are living apart for the foreseeable future.

All of this has provided me with an insight into how, in a time of crisis, all the government stuff-ups and neglect compound. With this pandemic shaking the foundations of our country, the structural cracks are opening wider and wider, and these cracks are invariably in areas of policy that have been either neglected and put in the too-hard basket or insidiously invaded by ideology rather than common sense—the ideology that privatisation and trickle-down economics of the market will sort it out. This ideology has undermined our institutions and the very idea that a government should care about the common good and strive to advance the welfare of all its citizens and aspiring citizens. Centrelink is so badly broken. Partner visa processing is absolutely broken. Child care and early learning are broken. Aged care is broken.

Then, as restrictions eased in Tasmania and local travel was allowed, it was time to get out and touch base with people to see how they were faring. I visited each of the eight local government areas in north-west Tasmania: Circular Head, Waratah-Wynyard, West Coast, Burnie, Central Coast, Devonport, Latrobe and King Island. I met with chambers of commerce, mayors and general managers, tourism councils, community and neighbourhood houses, men's sheds, the CWA, individuals, and large and small businesses. I want to thank every single organisation and individual that I met with. Thank you for your welcome and your candour and for sharing your stories. I'll be back to see how you're doing and what I can do to help.

Overwhelmingly, I was taken by the sheer resilience of the people. There is hope and optimism if we can just get through this very tough time. I forget how many times I heard the disheartening phrase: 'We had to let our casuals go.' It is disheartening because the government had cruelly decided that casuals who had been with their employer for less than a year were not eligible for JobKeeper. I spoke to cafes and restaurants who were staying open on takeaway service largely to maintain some kind of income for their visa-holding employees. The other phrase was: 'We're surviving on JobKeeper.'

At the very beginning of this crisis, Labor called for wage subsidies to support jobs. When the government that initially spurned the idea eventually adopted it, we took that as a win, even if their scheme had major, major holes in it. On the west coast of Tasmania, 41 per cent of businesses applied for JobKeeper, in Burnie 39.4 per cent applied and in Devonport 40.1 per cent applied. Now I am worried—deeply worried—about Treasurer Frydenberg's plan to dramatically reduce the amount of JobKeeper payments without developing a plan for jobs. Full-time employees who have been supported at the current JobKeeper rate of $750 a week from 28 September will then have to get by on $600 a week, and on 4 January next year they'll be on $500 a week. Part-time workers will have their income halved from $750 a week to $750 a fortnight and then reduced to $650 a fortnight in January.

Until our borders reopen, tourism restarts and people can gather in large groups, many, many businesses, particularly in tourism, entertainment, the arts, travel and hospitality, cannot restart. An example is King Island Car Rental, a perfectly viable business run by Anna and Adam Healy, who are very much cup-half-full sorts of people. But right now, with no visitors from Victoria and no international tourists, they're in a holding pattern. Hardly anyone from outside Tasmania—not even the visiting dentist from Victoria—can get to King Island. All cutting JobKeeper will do for the employees of businesses like King Island Car Rental is make it even harder for them to pay their bills and buy food. There are many businesses in a similar situation on King Island, hundreds like it in north-west Tasmania and tens of thousands across the country. They're absolutely viable and waiting for coronavirus restrictions to ease. We must consider, too, the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the reduction in JobKeeper will strip from the economy, with people's spending power, including their capacity to holiday at home, dramatically reduced.

Labor was very concerned about the government's plan to rip JobKeeper support out at the end of September. It made no sense at all. We campaigned for and supported the extension of JobKeeper to March next year. But the wind-down in the payment rates of JobKeeper, as proposed, will come at the worst time for many workers and businesses. The bill passed this week to extend JobKeeper doesn't specify rates. The Treasurer alone has the power to decide what that rate is and who receives it. I urge him and the members opposite to consider this carefully, because the outrage of thousands of small businesspeople and their employees could be a mighty thing if they discover that the only plan the government has is to force them into poverty and to the wall.

Let's see that plan for jobs and industry from this government before the toecutters get to work on JobKeeper—a plan for jobs; a plan that protects viable businesses and their employees; and a plan that takes into account the needs of different sectors. We need a plan for tourism, a plan for hospitality, a plan for manufacturing, a plan for energy, a plan for early childhood education, a plan for aged care and a plan for workers on visas. I say to my colleagues on the other side: you've already broken Centrelink, you broke partner visa processing and you certainly broke aged care. It's well past time to show that you can now fix something.