Josh delivers his smart JobKeeper 2.0

It may be okay to allow JobKeeper 2.0 to be triggered if the state-ordered lockdown lasts for more than a week. but it’s just mean to exclude that first week from the payment.

A closed cafe in Hardware Lane in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Mostly – well done Josh.

Monday, I wrote that it was time to bring back JobKeeper for Victorian workers; that the Federal Government had to, and I quote, “step up with some – urgent – financial support for workers who have lost their jobs or who have lost income” as a result of the state government-ordered lockdown.

Wednesday, I told you that treasurer Josh Frydenberg would go smart by delivering JobKeeper 2.0.

Thursday, he did exactly that, albeit he didn’t call it that and it’s being – necessarily - delivered directly to workers more as a social welfare payment rather than, as JobKeeper was done, through their employers as a wage subsidy.

But it’s JobKeeper 2.0.

When the original JobKeeper ended at the end of March, full-time workers were getting $500 a week and casuals were getting $325. Under this JobKeeper 2.0, eligible full-time workers who’ve been whacked by the lockdown will get $500 a week and casuals $325 a week. It’s been sensibly modified to get the money directly and quickly into their hands. It’s designed obviously for Victorian workers, but under a general structure that would apply to any lockdown in any state in future.

Federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

It’s also, again sensibly, designed to be temporary – operating on a week-to-week basis rather than the (ludicrously over-generous: blame a ludicrously over-pessimistic incompetent Treasury) locked-in six months of the original JobKeeper. That’s the well-done. My one big quibble is the meanness of not paying the first week – effectively saying that if your state government wants to screw you, we the feds will let them screw you a little bit.

By all means do as Frydenberg has done and only allow JobKeeper 2.0 to be triggered if the state-ordered lockdown lasts for more than one week.

But it’s just mean to exclude that first week from the payment.

For heaven’s sake, considering the $90 billion splashed out on the original JobKeeper, the money saved on this isn’t even a rounding error. But it clearly could matter big-time to an individual worker or family.

I’m ambivalent on the requirement that you can’t have more than $10,000 in the bank – particularly in the context that this JobKeeper 2.0 essentially assumes any lockdowns will be short-lived, not like what happened through 2020.

Let’s assume this lockdown does only last the two weeks. If you’ve got $10,000, you are missing out on $500 or $325 – not that big a deal. But if you have zero in the bank, that’s serious money.

Further, if this lockdown or any other lockdown lasted longer, then the $10k condition would start to become punitive and indeed just plain silly – as you would be ‘invited’ to reduce your bank account to $9995.

That goes to another point I’ve been making. This must be “the last lockdown”.

Maybe the Victorian government panicked; for a “beast” that “moves at light speed”, it seems to also miss most of its targets. Maybe the virus is just moving too fast for its own good?

But panicked or not, this lockdown could be justified on the basis that we were just not close enough to sufficient vaccination levels – and not just in Victoria, but all of Australia – to run the risk. The emphatic statement that it’s all Victoria’s fault misses the rather basic point that if the person leaving that quarantine hotel in Adelaide with the virus had got on a plane to Brisbane, none of this would be happening in Victoria. The virus and the economic consequences of any policy action in one state is and always has been and always will be Australia’s problem.

The best news of the week’s been largely overlooked: the vaccinated 99-year old who got the ‘beast’ and didn’t even show symptoms. The vaccine works; sufficient depth of vaccination will utterly invalidate any panic-driven future proposed lockdown.

Originally published as Josh delivers his smart JobKeeper 2.0