JobKeeper

This was published 3 years ago

JobKeeper kept them afloat during lockdown, so what happens now it’s over?

May 29, 2021

Corporate events freelancer Brett Cooper says the shutdown of JobKeeper has left people in his industry behind. Credit: JOE ARMAO

JobKeeper was one of the defining economic policies of Australia’s response to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Its end in March prompted a number of warnings about the consequences for those it had sustained.

In this special series The Age and the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism speak to those who qualified for the unprecedented support to find out what it meant to them and how its end has affected them. Each of the case studies will be published in this one article over several days with the most recent at the top of the story so come back to read for updates.

Brett Cooper

By Ashleigh Barraclough

Brett Cooper was in Perth conducting an International Women’s Day lunch for NAB on March 13 last year when Australia started shutting down. He recalls sitting backstage and anxiously eyeing his coughing, sweating technical operator.

His phone lit up. Lockdowns were beginning across the country and companies were cancelling long-planned events in a panic.

Corporate events freelancer Brett Cooper says the shutdown of JobKeeper has left people in his industry behind. Credit: JOE ARMAO

“I had pretty much all of March booked up and part of April. Within 24 hours, it was all gone,” he says. “Everything just disappeared.”

Since then, the 52-year-old corporate events freelancer has had only about four weeks of work.  His wife, who has spent her career in the same game, also lost all of her work.  But the couple were well-prepared. Given the ups and downs of freelancing, they’ve always been careful with money, paying off their home and putting aside savings.

The Preston couple were already dipping into that rainy-day fund when the federal government introduced JobKeeper subsidies in April last year.

The payments “took the pressure off a bit”, covering household bills. Through lockdown, with little opportunity to splurge on luxuries such as meals out, the couple even managed to restore some of their savings.

Now, with JobKeeper gone, they’re drawing on that nest egg again. They’re still pulling in their belts, but are happy to be in a position to keep their 10-year-old daughter active with her gymnastics and netball.

They’re working on the assumption that they need to make the money last. As other workers around the country started swinging back into gear in recent months, Mr Cooper finds his industry and opportunities are still stalled. It will be months, even years, before businesses have the confidence to start scheduling big events.

“The businesses want to spend the money, but they’re scared of another lockdown,” he says. “If they’re comfortable the borders will stay open, they’ll start spending.”

Mr Cooper got a taste for what would become his lifelong career working on the crew of high school theatre productions. Then came a stint behind the spotlight at Expo ’88 in Brisbane, a six-month extravaganza attended by millions and “a hoot of a time”, and he was hooked.

“From there I just sort of worked my way up: a bit of theatre, a bit of rock’n’roll through Darwin, then discovered corporate theatre where you fly everywhere and you stay at five-star hotels. It’s much nicer hours than rock’n’roll and you get paid better.”

He’s travelled around the country running corporate events for the past 20 years for the likes of BHP, Kmart and Officeworks, mostly staff conferences and awards nights.

His role is backstage – “the conductor of the show” – and he’s invisible if all goes well. But there’s plenty of scope for things to go wrong, and Mr Cooper enjoys solving the technical and logistical problems that arise during his 12-to-14-hour working days.

He suspects COVID-19 will change his industry for good. Companies have discovered webcasting conferences is considerably less expensive than flying people about.  Mr Cooper is  adapting, co-ordinating some online events and working with a friend on technologies to improve the virtual conference experience, which they hope to license.

He’s optimistic that his business will recover in some form. “It’s still the same thing, just that our audience isn’t in the room.”

But many of his peers are not so confident. A survey by industry group Save Victorian Events in February found 35 per cent of events freelancers had left the game since the pandemic began. Many never qualified for the JobKeeper wage subsidy because they were casual workers.

Of the freelancers who did receive JobKeeper, when asked what the end of payment would mean for them, 69 per cent of respondents said they would need to look for work in other industries.

Mr Cooper is indignant at the shut down of JobKeeper, accusing the federal government of leaving people in his industry behind.

Given their contribution to the economy, he argues they deserve more support until the events scene recovers. A report from the Business Events Council of Australia found business events contributed $35.7 billion to the national economy in 2019 and employed 229,000 people.

Despite his optimism, Mr Cooper is hedging his bets and plans to train as a teachers aide – a job he could juggle alongside gigs.

This past pandemic year hasn’t been without its advantages, he says. He has “looked at it as a bit of a rehearsal for retirement”, spending time with the family, building garden beds, draught-proofing the house he’s feeling grateful to own.

He’s worked a few days this month and has more jobs pencilled in for the coming months, but this won’t cover the gap left by JobKeeper. “That’s enough to cover our bills, but not enough to live on,”  he says.

Whether he remains in events or changes course entirely, Mr Cooper is confident things will work out.

“I have a theory the universe will always bring something up for me.  Something always comes up.”

Robert Cooke

By Nell Geraets

Some might call his decision crazy brave. Robert Cooke puts it down to his “grab it by both horns” philosophy of life.

In March, the businessman upped stakes from his life on the Gold Coast to purchase a restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD. He arrived in a city struggling to shake off the harshest lockdowns in the land.

Just a few months after taking the plunge to buy Vapiano – a cosy inner-city pizza and pasta franchise popular with young families and tourists – he reported business was buzzing.

Some nights the tables are full and bookings are at capacity. Through March and April, as Melburnians revelled in their freedom, turnover and profits grew stronger.

As it emerged from a 10-month shutdown, Vapiano was beginning to look like its old self, Mr Cooke says. Many of the old staff are back. Even the olive tree in the centre of the restaurant, which had also been looking like it had a hard year, was showing signs of renewed vigour.

The wages of some of the returning workers – those who qualified – were subsidised by the federal government’s JobKeeper wages scheme for the year it lasted. This assistance has allowed Mr Cooke to hire new staff, and he’s looking for another 30.

“In many ways, the stars aligned for us,” says Mr Cooke. “[COVID] has been a chance to reset.”

But it has also been a rollercoaster. The erratic nature of the hospitality industry’s recovery becomes evident as The Age checks in with Mr Cooke over several weeks.

When the pace of trade wobbles, his tone becomes more apprehensive. With the virus still out there, he’s not taking anything for granted.

“We’re still quite far from being on track,” he says. Despite some bumper weeks, he says business overall is “only at about 60 to 70 per cent of where sales were pre-COVID. We need to get that to 100 per cent, or even beyond.”

The end of JobKeeper assistance in late March left the business exposed to fluctuating circumstances. At the same time as payments stopped, the pandemic pause on expenses such as rent, loan repayments and liabilities ended.

“JobKeeper paid our workers. Even though it wasn’t technically the business’ money, it meant that we could maintain our employee base and keep the restaurant afloat at a time when nothing was coming in,” Mr Cooke says. “It was Vapiano’s lifeline.”

And despite the return of local diners, the restaurant is still keenly missing big segments of its pre-COVID market.

In 2020, foot traffic in Melbourne’s CBD was down by about 90 per cent. Although the tempo on the streets was rising as state borders reopened, with international visitors still missing and returning office workers dragging their feet, it is still not where it was two years ago. A big slice of Vapiano’s trade historically has come from city workers and the lunchtime crowd.

“We’re by no means out of the woods yet,” Mr Cooke says. “So where is the process to catch the fall of those last few industries that are still struggling to find their footing?”

The latest of the University of Melbourne’s ongoing Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) surveys reveals that industries forced to shut down during Victoria’s lockdown, particularly hospitality, have been hit hardest regardless of any fiscal stimulus.

Mr Cooke says the federal government should have provided an alternative support package targeted specifically at hospitality and retail to replace JobKeeper, echoing an unsuccessful campaign by the Restaurant & Catering Industry Association of Australia for a ‘HospoKeeper’ wage subsidy scheme.

“Support for industry is all over. Hospitality is back to square-one,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, however, the man who decided to buy a business in the midst of a global pandemic is not ready to give up. “If the olive tree can come back, then we can too.”

Caitlin Lavery

By Josh Nevett

For university student Caitlin Lavery, all the difficulties of COVID-19 and 2020 also came with something of a financial windfall.

When JobKeeper’s $1500 fortnightly payments started landing in her account in April last year, the then 19-year-old student’s income from her part-time job at McDonald’s effectively doubled. The hasty deployment of the emergency program meant that, initially, even part-time workers qualified for the full payment.

By September the payments were scaled back to reflect hours worked. But in the meantime, she’d never seen so much money.

“It was definitely a lot more than I had usually been getting,” says Ms Lavery. “I was not expecting to get that much since I don’t think I’ve ever worked enough to even earn the fortnightly $600 payment that we were getting.”

Now 20 and in her second year at Deakin University, the psychology student is relishing being back in the world. With classes still mostly online, she takes a break to walk the short distance from the home she shares with her parents to St Kilda Library to speak to The Age and reflect on her pandemic year.

Income and job security were at the top of many people’s list of anxieties during lockdown. Ms Lavery’s stable 15 hours a week of work, which continued throughout Melbourne’s 2020 restrictions underwritten by JobKeeper support, meant that she had enough peace of mind to put herself on a savings regime.

Which is not to say that she got through the pandemic unscathed. “I was just at home by myself all the time and it got very, very lonely,” she says. Like so many others in locked-down Melbourne, she invested in a pandemic puppy.

Mable the sausage dog provided much-needed companionship during the COVID-19 restrictions. “I bought a dog with what I was paid, because emotionally getting a dog made me a lot happier person.”

Online shopping also became a means of coping with the chaos outside her window. Nonetheless, she still managed to stash away a JobKeeper nest egg, which she credits to her organised nature and a determination to be independent.

Ms Lavery’s experience is reflected in the University of Melbourne’s Taking the Pulse of the Nation survey. In her age bracket (18-44) financial stress was affecting almost 50 per cent of respondents in mid-February, but by mid-March – even with the end of JobKeeper looming – that had dropped to 30 per cent. The proportion “making ends meet” was similar, while 39 per cent were feeling comfortable.

While grateful for the payments, Ms Lavery is ambivalent about the policy that delivered her windfall. The criteria for payments meant older teenagers like her, who still lived at home and were supported by their parents, were eligible for similar payments to those who were independent and dealing with significant financial distress.

“There were a lot of people in my position … that didn’t really need it,” she says.

Ms Lavery is still working her regular shifts at McDonald’s and still trying to put away some money. Her priorities are putting essential spending first – food, university costs and pet insurance. “I try to allocate at least 75 per cent of my pay into savings and the rest for spending, whereas when I was getting JobKeeper it was kind of just whatever,” she says.

With a stable part-time job and the security of parental support, she’s looking forward to getting on campus, having some real-world university lifestyle and – hopefully – doing some travel when it’s allowed.

David Silvester

By Joy Braddish

It was St Patrick’s Day 2020, and lighting technician David Silvester was backstage at Melbourne University’s Union House, working on a production of Oedipus Schmoedipus, a “comedy bloodbath” of death “as portrayed in the world’s great theatre classics”.

But then the show was itself suddenly dead in the water. More than a year on, Mr Silvester vividly recalls the production manager walking in and announcing “show’s cancelled”. “It simply stopped. It was like a cliff.”

Lighting technician David Silvester has been been getting by on savings and casual work since JobKeeper payments dried up.

Along with the rest of the crew, Mr Silvester was abruptly stood down when the pandemic pulled the plug on the arts and entertainment sector in Australia’s cultural capital.

At 29, Mr Silvester was hitting his straps in Melbourne’s thriving live events scene. After completing a bachelor’s degree at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts, majoring in lighting, he’d clocked up gigs including major concerts for the likes of Pink and Coldplay. He’d worked major festivals and boutique shows, lighting Bob Dylan at the Forum Theatre.

About 600,000 Australians work in the arts and entertainment sector, and one in five of them – like Mr Silvester – found themselves on JobKeeper payments when the pandemic hit.

And they were the lucky ones. Many didn’t qualify, despite pleas from across the sector to open up access to the payment to short-term casuals and contract workers, but Mr Silvester did because he was on the books with a production company.

While some arts organisations have received financial assistance from the government via various rescue packages, many backstage crew were almost entirely dependent on JobKeeper.  He initially received $1500 a fortnight, which dropped by half when the scheme was adjusted in September.

How that compares to what he might have earned in an ordinary working year is hard to say, he says, given the vagaries of his industry.

When the $90 billion job subsidy program ceased at the end of March, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg argued that there were strong signs of jobs coming back and recovery in some sectors – notably retail and wholesale trade, financial services and manufacturing. But the arts sector continues to lag behind.

There is “no way” his gigs were going to return any time soon, Mr Silvester says. It’s not just a question of lifting restrictions. The industry turns on public confidence and return on investment.

Even with the pandemic largely under control in Australia, companies and organisations are still reluctant to plan new events due to the risk of further outbreaks, he says.

It has profoundly changed Mr Silvester’s life plans. He’d been house sitting when the pandemic hit, and saving to get his own place. He had to move back with one of his parents but that arrangement has “a finite amount of time”.

Since the JobKeeper payments dried up, he’s been getting by on savings and a little casual work. He’s grabbed any events work he can but with the industry still in the doldrums it’s slim pickings.

“Because there’s not enough happening, it means that there’s only enough [work] for a certain number of people,”  he says.

Mr Silvester is aware that many in the industry are wondering whether they need to give it up. “I know someone, she has completely exited the industry, and she doesn’t look like she’ll be coming back.”

Others are trying to keep their hand in while taking whatever other work they can get. But he’s hearing that for some it’s proving “just too hard to try to juggle two different sorts of lives and two different sorts of ways of working”.

For now, at least, Mr Silvester is keen to stay in the job. To do otherwise would be to give away years of determined effort. But as he watches others walk away, he wonders if he’s only delaying the inevitable.

Reluctantly, he has started a JobSeeker application. But it requires him to “apply for a crazy amount of jobs”, increasing the likelihood he may be obliged to accept work not suited to his skill set and nudge him further away from the job he loves.

“I did a year or so of data entry work, effectively admin work, and by the end I couldn’t do it any more. I don’t think I could be stuck in a cubicle,” he says “Nine to five for weeks, months, years on end. That would make me go around the bend.”

Jessica Binion

By Chloe Macmillan

Jessica Binion had built a life around her passion for cheerleading. “Being thrown in the air is like nothing else I have ever experienced,” she says. Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdowns cut her off from that world, in which she worked as a coach, and forced her onto a new path.

Her passion for the sport was not all about the adrenaline. What kept her turning up for training and performances for 11 years of competitions was the bond she felt with her teammates.

Jess Binion from when she was on DreamTyme All Stars.

Cheerleading went from being a recreation to a way of life for Ms Binion, who moved into coaching the sport six years ago. When Melbourne was thrown into its first COVID-19 lockdown last year, she was working full time at a cheerleading gym.

Coaching and administration staff continued to work throughout the year of pandemic restrictions, beaming online classes to athletes from their homes. The abrupt switch from live to remote training was challenging, requiring rethinking of techniques and approaches that would work in the virtual world.

“It was a complete whirlwind and there was also the challenge of teaching a sport that can’t really be done on your own, let alone on Zoom in your living room,” Ms Binion says.

The 26-year-old started receiving JobKeeper from the gym at the beginning of April 2020, and the payments continued through to the end of the program in March.

Reflecting on the subsidies scheme and what it meant to her, she describes some mixed feelings.

“I was very, very grateful that I did have an income, but it was hard to not resent it in the end,” she says.

“I would be working really hard and doing 25 hours a week and pushing myself to do that, and then there were other employees who were doing an hour a week and getting the exact same pay.

“It happened that way through no fault of anyone, but it was just the way that worked out.”

“You shouldn’t have to feel guilty for wanting a day off during a pandemic.”
Jessica Binion

When JobKeeper was hurriedly launched as the emergency escalated, all employees eligible for the scheme were entitled to receive the full payment of $1500 per fortnight. This was changed in September, when the amount of money an employer could receive was calibrated to the hours an employee had worked.

Ms Binion says that while the payments provided her with financial security they also gave rise to conflicting emotions.

“I kind of started to feel guilty if I wasn’t working,” she says. “You shouldn’t have to feel guilty for wanting a day off during a pandemic.

“Obviously it was only 25 hours a week, but even that by August, mid-stage-4 lockdown, was exhausting.”

On the upside, assisted by the fact that she spent Victoria’s lockdowns at her parents’ place in the Yarra Ranges, Ms Binion says she “was able to take control of her finances and “save a lot more than I had in the past because I wasn’t out spending”.

Australian households saved more than $200 billion during the pandemic, likely due to increased economic support and fewer spending opportunities.

When JobKeeper came to an end and Ms Binion considered her options, that nest egg gave her some choices. In December, she and her partner found a new place together.

And instead of returning to her previous work life, she’s started working part-time as a classroom support assistant in a junior school and returned to university to study education.

A report from ING group published in March found that one in three Australians had chosen to focus on their career goals and education after the pandemic, with lockdowns providing the perfect opportunity to reflect and think through life decisions.

“That’s kind of a positive that came out of COVID,” she says.

“I had a bit of a forced pause after a decade of going non-stop, and had the chance to be like, ‘Oh no, it’s time to relax a little bit and take the time to concentrate on things like uni and slow down a little bit’.”

Lisa

By Rebecca Pridham

In the video Lisa* proudly shares, her two young children sit on the wooden floorboards of their home in one of Melbourne’s new, far-flung suburbs, happily scooping birthday cake into their mouths.

The cake, made from a 75-cent packet mix, testifies to Lisa’s determination to rise above the week-to-week struggle of running a single-parent household on a budget that never goes the distance. The trick, she says, is to treat it “as a game”.

There have been plenty of moments when Lisa has found herself reflecting on how such hardships were formative for her grandparents. She sees this period in her life defining her in a similar way. She’s cooking economical meals in big batches. Scooping spoonfuls of Nescafé instead of buying barista coffee. Putting the sidelined health and household insurance policies to the back of her mind.

“I’m learning all these really important lessons ... I feel like I’m living through what my grandparents lived through in the depression,” she says.

Lisa recalls her grandmothers and their ability to make full family homes with little money, and she’s determined to do the same for her children.

“I’m not really on my own. I’m part of this tradition of women trying to keep it all together.”

Lisa has a PhD, a sessional university teaching gig and was developing a fledgling communications business when coronavirus hit. With universities excluded from JobKeeper subsidies, and more than 17,000 full-time equivalent jobs lost to COVID-19, many academics found themselves in dire straits. Lisa qualified because of her business.

“JobKeeper was just a lifesaver, because it meant I could cover my rent, keep my business ticking along, and keep us afloat.”

When the payments ceased at the end of March, her financial situation plummeted. She’s had to get by without child support, with the fathers of both children out of work and one of them now requiring support from her.

She’s largely scraped by on sessional teaching and marking. “I think if I hadn’t have got that, then I’d be really rooted,” she says.

While she questions her former partner’s financial claims, she won’t confront him, she says, for fear it would only cause more grief. “[My child] is so sensitive and doesn’t miss a thing ... I don’t want them to have to carry anything extra.”

The year of JobKeeper payments provided more than just financial security for Lisa. “Getting JobKeeper helped me make the shift in my mind from academia to business and take myself seriously as a business owner ... it sustained me in the business sphere,” she says. But while the subsidy has gone, the business has yet to generate any income, and likely won’t for a while.

And so for now she is heading back into academia. Lisa’s just been offered a short-term university research position, which means she can stop relying on her parents to help her cover rent and bills – a huge relief.

“I just feel like I’m going to be able to better support [the children]. Knowing that I’ve got that work coming in gives me a bit more certainty, at least for the near future, and makes me feel more confident that we’re going to pull out of this pandemic period.”

She celebrated by buying a lamb roast, albeit the smallest one on the shelf.

It occurs to her that she can probably afford the odd flat white now. “[But] I’m happy with my Nescafe,” she laughs. “So maybe I’ve changed. Learning how to really watch my money, like almost every cent, I don’t know if I’m ever going to change that.”

*Lisa requested not to be named.

Stav Hatzipantelis

By Angus Thomson

It was Australia’s last big recession that led Stav Hatzipantelis into the casual gig that became his career and a thriving business. In 1990 he was fresh out of high school and gearing up to start a chiropractic course. But the economy was struggling, student numbers were cut, and he got pushed into the intake for the following year. He was enjoying an unscheduled gap year as a DJ when then Treasurer Paul Keating’s “recession we had to have” hit in earnest.

With youth unemployment peaking at 17 per cent, many reconsidered their dreams and ambitions. Mr Hatzipantelis started a business hiring DJ equipment to nightclubs.

“If it wasn’t for the recession, I probably would’ve stuck to school,” he says.

He is less optimistic about his prospects this time around. Mr Hatzipantelis, 52, was one of thousands of employers who used the federal government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy to keep employees on their books during the coronavirus recession. With the closure of the program at the end of March, and little sign of recovery as yet in his sector, he’s facing a tough reality.

‘Years from now, we’ll be looking back and saying: “look at how much was lost”.’
Stav Hatzipantelis

“With JobKeeper gone, that means our employees must be gone.” His manner is direct and his voice gravelly, as might be expected of someone who has spent decades making himself heard backstage at some of Victoria’s biggest events.

Nonetheless it’s tough, he reflects, because many of those losing their jobs are his friends.

“It’s a very close-knit community,” he says. “The events industry is really tough but … it’s a lifestyle people enjoy – they like the late nights, they get the satisfaction of building things together and creating things together.”

He worries that people will struggle to find alternatives. “It’s very difficult to go find a job when you’re 40 years old.”

Before the pandemic shut down festivals, weddings and corporate events, Mr Hatzipantelis’ sound and lighting business employed eight full-time staff and an army of “weekend warrior” casuals.

Within a month of JobKeeper finishing, he says there will be only two full-time staff left: himself and his wife, Renata.

“We’ve been through a lot, my wife and I,” he says. “This is just another one of those things that we’re going to have to get through.”

He gets frustrated hearing the Prime Minister and Treasurer talk about economic recovery as the events industry struggles, and believes state and federal governments should be doing more to encourage local government and the private sector to host events.

He’s concerned that important skills and years of experience will be lost as people seek out other, more stable opportunities. The fallout won’t be noticed until “summer kicks in and everybody’s going to want to do events”.

In September, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a $50 million “injection” into the business events sector, but Mr Hatzipantelis says it is not enough for an industry worth $36 billion a year. “That trickle-down mentality hasn’t worked ... years from now, we’ll be looking back and saying: ‘look at how much was lost’.”

While the Andrews government did respond to an industry rally at the steps of Parliament House in March by raising capacity limits for events, Mr Hatzipantelis says the lack of engagement by government has been disappointing.

“I would’ve loved to see the government take a more active role and more of a leadership role,” he says. “There’s just so much disappointment in our federal – and state – government, that we’ve been left high and dry.”

Mr Hatzipantelis knows how to adapt to the prevailing winds. As well as changing tack in the ’90s recession, he weathered the 2008 global financial crisis by moving into weddings when the corporate scene collapsed.

And it’s the resurging wedding scene saving him now. “Pre-COVID, people didn’t get married in [winter] months,” he says. “So, we’re lucky in that respect that we have got weddings during that period of time which would normally have been our corporate events.”

Despite the upheaval and uncertainty in his industry, Mr Hatzipantelis points to his own unexpected career trajectory as a source of optimism. “It’s during interesting times that careers are made.”

This special reporting project is co-published with The Citizen, a publication of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.

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