Select figures have been released by the Parliamentary Budget Office on the second 13 weeks of JobKeeper. As reported by our economics editor John Kehoe, $8.4 billion was paid to 195,381 firms whose revenue increased from July to September last year.

To receive that money, of course, those firms either experienced a revenue decline in March of 50 per cent or 30 per cent (depending on their size) or they told the Australian Taxation Office their revenue would decline by that much in April or the June quarter. Bad forecasts happen, especially when the incentives for getting them wrong are this damn good. As for the disincentives, the government forgot to include any!