‘Billions wasted’ on Covid JobKeeper payments

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says “billions of dollars” were wasted in poorly targeted relief payments during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Poor policy planning across federal and state governments wasted billions of dollars in unnecessary Covid payments, a new report has found.

Australia’s “poorly planned” pandemic response added billions in government debt and put everyday Australians into a poor financial position.

The inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic showed Australia fared well compared with many other countries, although much of the financial pain being felt now is due to unnecessary Covid payments.

Speaking on the wide-ranging economic impact of the pandemic, Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged many of the “extraordinary policy measures” were “some very good ideas, badly implemented and poorly targeted”.

In particular, he pointed to sweeping JobKeeper payments that the report found excluded temporary migrants and were too wide ranging, as well as early access to superannuation, which “should not” have been considered as an “appropriate policy measure”.

Treasurer Chalmers gave an update on Australia’s Covid response Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Chalmers said the views that the then Labor opposition made at the time had been vindicated by the report.

“(The report) says that the exclusions made it less effective, disproportionately impacted women and casual workers, including the care economy, early childhood education, in universities and also for workers in aviation,” Mr Chalmers said.

“At the same time as JobKeeper overcompensated some businesses, which resulted in a lot of ways, the lack of planning, the delayed rollout and the design choices of JobKeeper exacerbated skill shortages and inflationary pressures in our economy.”

The government has previously published reviews which revealed 38 per cent of the first $70bn in JobKeeper payments went to businesses that experienced no falls in sales.

“Labor called for and supported programs like JobKeeper, but we were very, very clear at the time that the support should have been rolled out faster and that it should have been better targeted,” Mr Chalmers said.

Mr Chalmers said while it was easy to criticise after the fact, it was important Australia learned the lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic.

These include the lack of planning Australia had prior to the pandemic with no plan for quarantine, workforce demands and as a result leaders were put in the inevitable position of having to build a plan on the go.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Health Minister Mark Butler relesed the report into the Covid-19 response on Tuesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“We should be incredibly proud of the remarkable resilience shown by our people, our workers, our businesses, and we owe it to them to learn the important lessons which are clearly and comprehensively detailed in this report that we are releasing today,” Mr Chalmers said.

The Treasurer also said the consequences of the economic policies were still being felt today with the mistakes adding two percentage points to the peak inflation rate.

“Big decisions were made and big mistakes were made. Those mistakes were costly and they were inflationary.

“Now a big, substantial economic response was warranted by the pandemic. It was essential, but the report says, and I quote, ‘there was excessive fiscal and monetary policy stimulus provided throughout 2021 and 2022 especially in the construction sector, combined with supply side disruptions, this contributed to inflationary pressures coming out of the pandemic’,” he said.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has defended the former coalition government under Scott Morrison had saved lives with its Covid response. Picture: Christian Gilles / NewsWire

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the Albanese government was trying to score political points out of the report.

“If Labor had their way at a federal level there would be an additional $81bn that was spent. We know they were opposed to JobKeeper and then they were for it,” Mr Dutton said.

“We saved lives and livelihoods and I think Australians should be proud of what happened here in WA and what happened with the federal government’s financial support that kept businesses alive.”

Mr Dutton said he wouldn’t take any financial or economic advice from Jim Chalmers.

“The treasurer who has overseen three budgets that have all been inflationary,” Mr Dutton said.

“The Prime Minster and the Treasurer want everyone to look into the past because they don’t want to look into the present.”

Originally published as ‘Billions wasted’ on Covid JobKeeper payments