Tory Shepherd: Some firms are happily putting millions of taxpayer dollars in the pockets of Australia’s richest

Tory Shepherd: The most outrageous dole bludging is being done by corporations who took JobKeeper money, only to pass it on to executives and shareholders.

Have you ever seen such outrageous dole bludging?

No, not the royal family (Queen Elizabeth II gets more than $100m from taxpayers each year, although it’s hard to track exactly thanks to the royal aversion to revealing something so mundane. She does undertake a form of work for the dole, looking eternally interested in damnably boring things in return for her upkeep. And they do attract the tourists. Mutual obligation?)

And no, the welfare grab is not by those on JobSeeker who are getting an increase of less than $4 a day, while being asked to do more to justify their existence.

The most outrageous dole bludging is being done by the Australian corporations who took taxpayer money during the pandemic, only to pass it on to executives and shareholders in the form of bonuses and dividends.

This $100bn program undoubtedly saved jobs and companies. And it had to get rolled out at great speed to do that as the pandemic struck. That necessary haste, though, has led to some firms happily putting millions of taxpayer dollars in the pockets of Australia’s richest. Businesses accessed the payments based on a “reasonable estimate” of what they thought would happen to their turnover, and can keep getting it for a while once their turnover has recovered.

So it’s legal, and separate to outright fraud or overpayments. But is it right, and is it fair?

JobKeeper was meant to be a lifeline, not a pipeline of cash.

Labor MP Andrew Leigh has been pumping out a series of tweets about who got what, and where it went.

At least a dozen billionaires have benefited from JobKeeper, after a year when their collective wealth rose more than 50%. Billionaires don’t need taxpayer handouts #PayItBackGerryhttps://t.co/bIrqFvNLlq#auspol#DividendKeeper#BonusKeeper@abcsydney@wendy_harmer@robbie_buckpic.twitter.com/QVDSkZwuP5

— Andrew Leigh (@ALeighMP) March 3, 2021

He points to Premier Investments (the owner of chains including Just Jeans and Dotti), which pocketed tens of millions in subsidies, despite making a healthy profit.

Mr Leigh says the company paid almost $60m out in dividends, including $20m to billionaire boss Solomon Lew.

Chief executive Mark McInnes got a healthy $2.5m bonus.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Bank predicts 110,000 jobs will go once JobKeeper ends towards the end of the month. Those positions will go from areas that are not thriving, and are only surviving because of the support.

Others agreed to pay it back. Toyota, for example, paid back about $18m.

But the Australian Taxation Office says the number of those giving the undeserved cash back was “not a large number”. In February it estimated about $50m had been repaid.

Mr Leigh wants a public register, a naming and shaming of the profiteers.

The Federal Government is calling that the “politics of envy”, implying that it’s both cynical and sinful to question why so much money ends up with the rich.

More accurate, perhaps, to call it the politics of fairness. Or even just fairness.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks to Johnny Jackson as he is shown around his work area during a visit to the DisplayWise workshop in Miranda, Sydney. Picture: Mark Kolbe / Getty Images

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked what he would do to get companies to pay the money back, he said JobKeeper saved 700,000 jobs.

“I’d say that’s pretty significant and I’d say that made a big change. Now, the law is the law. The law that we put in place and passed through the parliament ensured that those funds were provided into the corporate sector,” he said.

“Now, if there are some companies that feel that they want to hand that back, great! Good for them. But let’s not lose sight in some sort of envy narrative that that program did not change the course of the nation.”

If we’re to accept that questioning why the richer keep getting richer is the politics of envy, then we need to start talking about the flip side.

About the greed for money, the lust for worldly goods, the gluttony for worldly goods, vainglory of the super-rich, and their wrath at being questioned.

It’s enough to make a royal flush.