JobKeeper end puts 50,000 on unemployment queue: Miles

Queensland’s Deputy Premier has issued a pointed warning about the state’s unemployment rate ahead of JobKeeper winding up.

The end of JobKeeper will force 50,000 Queenslanders onto the unemployment line and send the state’s jobless rates skyrocketing, Deputy Premier Steven Miles warns.

JobKeeper is set to finish at the end of the month despite hundreds of Queensland businesses continuing to struggle in the face of ongoing international border closures.

Mr Miles said Queensland “can’t afford” for its tourism businesses to collapse.

“JobKeeper ends at the end of the month and we anticipate 50,000 Queenslanders will lose their job at that point,” he said.

“The withdrawal of JobKeeper as well as the COVID supplement represents something like a three per cent withdrawal of GDP from the Australian economy, and if you go to places like Cairns and the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast that 50,000 jobs lost represents something like 15 or 16 per cent of their pre-COVID employment levels.”

Deputy Premier of Queensland Steven Miles says 50,000 Queenslanders will become unemployed once JobKeeper ends. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

The tourism industry’s pain is expected to continue after Health Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday announced a three-month extension to the international border closure.

Mr Miles said Queensland needed its tourism businesses ready open once international travel returns.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have been engaged in a month-long tit-for-tat battle over the future of the federal government program.

The Premier has repeatedly called for an extension of JobKeeper, describing Mr Frydenberg as “completely out of touch when it comes to the issues affecting Queensland”.

But the Treasurer hit back, insisting the Morrison Government had delivered more than three times the amount of economic support to Queenslanders than the Palaszczuk Government had committed to.

“In less than 12 months, the Federal Government has provided more than $28.5 billion in economic support to Queensland households and businesses, from Brisbane to Bundaberg, Toowoomba to Townsville and Cairns to Caboolture,” he wrote in Tuesday’s The Courier-Mail.

“In contrast, the Premier has only committed to spend $8.8 billion across the next four and a half years.”

The Treasurer, who claimed Ms Palaszczuk was “entitled to her own opinions but not her own facts”, accused the Premier of grandstanding and petty politicking.