Christian Porter says Labor’s JobKeeper 2.0 amendment will ‘cost jobs’

Attorney-General Christian Porter has rejected Labor’s key amendment to the JobKeeper 2.0 package to help low-income workers, warning the proposal would cost jobs.

Christian Porter rejected Labor’s amendment to JobKeeper 2.0 after the opposition warned low-income earners would be worse off. Picture: AAP

Attorney-General Christian Porter has rejected Labor’s key amendment to the JobKeeper 2.0 package designed to help low-income workers, warning the proposal would cost jobs and “be the tipping point for the survival of many businesses”.

Opposition industrial relations spokesman Tony Burke on Wednesday warned Australians on the minimum wage who were kicked off JobKeeper in late September stood to lose $300 per week.

Labor’s substantial amendment would see a “safety net” set so that so-called legacy workers who received JobKeeper 1.0 but not 2.0 and are on the minimum wage or a low income cannot earn less than $1200 per fortnight.

The minimum wage is $753.80 per week, while the JobKeeper rate will reduce from $1500 per fortnight to $1200 ($600 per week) from September 28.

Under JobKeeper 2.0, businesses that become ineligible for the wage subsidy will continue to have access to emergency industrial relations changes if they can show a 10 per cent turnover reduction in relevant quarters this year compared to last year.

Those employers would only be able to reduce employee hours to 60 per cent of the time they were working in March.

Labor said for people on the minimum wage, this would mean a weekly income of about $450, which was too low.

Mr Porter, who is also Industrial Relations Minister, said Labor’s proposal ignored the fact that any reduction in hours could only occur in circumstances where the employee cannot be usefully employed for their normal days or hours because of the impact of COVID-19.

“It is only available to businesses which were previously eligible for JobKeeper and who have a continued impact from COVID-19,” Mr Porter said.

“It is not available to any wider group of employers. So, whilst a business’s situation may have improved to the extent that it has come off JobKeeper, it has not recovered enough to be operating at full capacity. If Mr Burke’s approach was adopted, it could be the tipping point for the survival of many businesses and that would cost jobs.”

It is unclear whether Labor will insist on the amendment passing in order to support the JobKeeper 2.0 package, although on Tuesday the party decided it would vote for the legislation regardless.

Mr Burke urged the government to “work their way through” the “anomaly” affecting low-income earners.

“(If) the bill as drafted goes through, this parliament will have voted for people on the minimum wage to be allowed, without their agreement, to get a pay cut of $300 a week,” Mr Burke told the House of Representatives.

“But we’ll be providing support for people on JobKeeper and as businesses improve this parliament will have said, ‘as the business improves it’s okay for you to be paid less because your boss is doing better’. Now that is an absurd situation. That is what the bill currently says.”