PM’s cash for Sydney exposes billions of dollars wasted though last year’s JobKeeper 1.0

The extra cash for locked-down Sydney that wasn’t forthcoming for Victoria makes basic sense but let’s be crystal clear what’s driving it – the seats in the city’s west crucial to the next election.

An empty cafe in Circular Quay, Sydney, as city’s lockdown is extended. Picture: NCA NewsWire / James Gourley

The real story hiding in the bigger bucket of taxpayer money being handed by the prime minister from and for Sydney to his ‘favorite (political) daughter’ is the appalling waste of taxpayer money through JobKeeper 1.0 last year.

It was fiscal profligacy which makes the school halls and Pink Batts of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan look like petty fiscal cash in comparison.

The justification from both the said PM, ScoMo or, now more clearly, ‘Sydney’ Morrison and treasurer Josh Frydenberg for the extra money going to NSW compared with Victoria in its lockdown a month ago, is that NSW’s lockdown is going to last longer.

Victoria’s lockdown mostly ended after two weeks and completely after three.

Entirely coincidentally, the higher payments to NSW kick in after three weeks.

Gee, Victoria, you missed the extra Canberra cash by just thatmuch: if only your lockdown had dribbled into a fourth week, or even better a fifth week, buckets of extra cash would have flowed south of the Murray.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Sydney this week. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

Hmm.

Apart from the inconvenient fact there’s never been the slightest suggestion that was ever in contemplation, much more pertinently, how come then, Victoria didn’t get extra-cash NSW-style last year, when its specially curated Chairman Dan lockdown didn’t just go into a fourth week, but indeed a fourteenth week and a few more after that?

Or rather, put it around the other way.

Why did Canberra keep paying out JobKeeper 1.0 at the very generous $750 a week – and the same super-generous $750 a week even to party-timers - to all the other states and territories even after they had come out of lockdown in the September quarter?

The short answer is because a panicked PM and treasurer - advised by an equally panicked and, frankly, completely incompetent Treasury - committed upfront in March to pay JobKeeper for six months, when as it turned out it was only really needed at the super-generous level for three months.

No, Victoria did not get anything extra last year; the other states did – like continuing to pay someone the dole after they’ve got a job and gone to work.

The great unexposed story of last year is how a lot – and I mean a lot – of SME’s, outside Victoria, got seriously rich, with the Federal government effectively paying most of their wages bill when they were back operating normally or near-normally through the September quarter.

And I do not mean the Solomon Lews and the Gerry Harveys, who’ve been targeted because their JobKeeper payments are public.

But thousands of SMEs which have quietly pocketed the cash.

I hasten to add, there’ve also been thousands of SMEs bludgeoned and bludgeoned again by lockdowns, falling between the cracks among all the tens of billions of dollars of free – your - money being printed and handed out.

Yes, more money now to locked-down Sydney makes basic sense; but let’s be crystal clear on what’s driven it – all those seats in western Sydney which are crucial to the next election and deciding who gets to sleep rent-free in two rather nice houses, one with a harbour view.

This week’s challenge though, was getting more money into the hands of workers and employers in Sydney – and especially western Sydney - without an “embarrassing” contrast with the very recent tough line taken with Victoria.

So we got the higher payments kicking in after week three where Victoria’s lockdown ended. But why not the fifth week, or indeed the third week?

Frydenberg was trying the lame claim that Victoria got more money per capita than other states.

Maybe, but they weren’t getting any extra payments.

No, Josh, the fiscal crime was not in paying Victoria extra, but in paying the rest of Australia extra.

Like tens of billions of dollars extra.