How JobKeeper is propping up your suburb

Calls for the JobKeeper payment to be extended have increased as new data shows how every postcode in Australia is affected.

Calls to extend the JobKeeper payment, which gives $1500 a fortnight to employees of eligible businesses, have heightened after new data revealed the extent to which it is propping up Australian suburbs.

A website set up by the Labor Party allows Aussies to search their postcode to see how many businesses in their area are relying on JobKeeper and how much it could cost the country if the payment was taken away.

The site is based off Treasury data released last month that shows how many businesses in each postcode have applied for the JobKeeper payment.

A search for Sydney, 2000, reveals “up to 10,290 businesses” could be forced to close down if the payment ended, which the site estimates “could mean approximately 39,102 local workers may be forced into unemployment, and up to $58,653,000 could be ripped out of the local economy each and every fortnight”.

Labor has created a website allowing Australians to see how JobKeeper is helping out their suburb as they fight for the subsidy to continue after the September deadline. Picture: Supplied

The message ends in a call to sign a petition.

“Thousands of businesses are at risk of going under and tens of thousands of workers are at risk of losing their jobs because of Scott Morrison’s secret plan to cancel JobKeeper too early. We need your help to stop him,” it reads.

“Will you join our campaign and tell Scott Morrison that Australians don’t want him to cancel JobKeeper too early?”

JobKeeper was announced on March 30 for businesses with a turnover of less than $1 billion that have lost 30 per cent of their income as a result of coronavirus and associated lockdown measures.

The $130 billion program was intended to last for just six months, but with border closures, enduring gathering restrictions and returning lockdown measures, many businesses have claimed they are not yet ready to stand on their own two feet.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said the Government needed to provide a clearer plan for late September when the JobKeeper subsidy is set to end. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

The Labor website asks visitors to sign a petition requesting JobKeeper be extended.

“You can‘t pretend that it’s all OK because it’s not,” Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said on Friday.

“What we need to do is have a transition and a strategy for jobs, a strategy to maintain jobs that the Government also has to be clearer about (and) what its plan is for economic growth and jobs into the future.

“Because at the moment, we’re not seeing that from this government, and that is creating so much uncertainty and anxiety in the community.”

The Federal Government received the final report of a review into JobKeeper last month but is yet to release the information to the public.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has routinely denied there would be any early cancellation of JobKeeper and promised to deliver a “targeted” and temporary income support measure to help those affected when the subsidy ends, though no details are yet available.

The JobKeeper report is expected to be released when Treasurer Josh Frydenberg gives the economic and fiscal update on July 23.