Home buyers, small businesses receive COVID relief grants

Queensland homebuyers and small businesses will be offered more money under a series of State Government COVID-relief packages announced this morning.

QUEENSLANDERS will be offered more money to build a house and small businesses will get another $100 million in grants under new COVID-relief packages to generate thousands of jobs.

Millions of dollars will also be pumped into securing airline routes across the state in a bid to support more than 4000 jobs over the next year.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk today announced a new $5000 regional home building boost grant for any newly built home outside of southeast Queensland.

The grant will come on top of the existing $15,000 first homeowners grants, which Ms Palaszczuk confirmed would also be extended.

The announcement comes as Queensland again recorded zero new cases of coronavirus overnight.

A $5000 regional home building boost will come on top of an existing first homeowners grant. File picture

“This will mean that first home buyers in regional Queensland could be eligible to receive a grant of up to $45,000 for a newly built home when combined with the Federal Government’s grant support,” she said.

“To provide additional support for tradies and to respond to the homelessness impacts from COVID-19 we are committing another $100 million to accelerate a program of works for tradies’ housing projects to be commenced over the next six months.

“This will support 240 jobs in the construction industry.”

Ms Palaszczuk also announced today that there would be another $100 million worth of grants of up to $10,000 for small businesses.

It comes after the initial $100 million package was used up in just five days.

“To support the regions, over half of these grants will be for small businesses outside southeast Queensland,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

“Our support for small business won’t stop here with work already under way on additional measures.”

Ms Palaszczuk also revealed the Government would spend an extra $10 million to fund airline route development, on top of the $5 million that had already been announced.

The Premier said the move was about encouraging Queenslanders to holiday at home.

“This funding is estimated to support 4500 jobs over the next year,” she said.

“This will help deliver more flights to our tourism destinations to support Queenslanders to holiday in Queensland.

“The Queensland Tourism Industry Council and airports across Queensland have been working closely with us to secure this support.”