Coronavirus: Jim Chalmers on attack over JobKeeper

Labor has accused the Morrison government of ‘fumbling’ the implement­ation of its $130bn JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers. Picture: AAP

Labor has accused the Morrison government of “fumbling” the implement­ation of its $130bn JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme, with opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers branding official statistics showing a slower-than-anticipated uptake of the program a “stunning admission of failure”.

On a day the government had been due to hand down the federal budget, before it was postponed to October due to the COVID-19 ­crisis, Dr Chalmers also criticised Josh Frydenberg for not providing more detail on the budgetary implicatio­ns of the ­unprecedented fiscal support measures.

The Treasurer said on Tuesday that those emergency commitments had meant $25bn was ­provided to struggling households and businesses over the past month, with a further $30bn ­projected to be spent in May.

Branding it a “budget day without a budget”, Dr Chalmers said: “The Treasurer had a big opportunity today and he missed it.

“When Australians wanted a policy program or a detailed economic­ outlook, all he gave them was a speech cobbled together from old press releases.

“But when the IMF, RBA and private sector forecasters have release­d expectations for Australia’s recovery, the Treasurer has no excuse. Delaying a budget is forgivable­, delaying a plan is not.”

Anthony Albanese said the government’s post-crisis plans looked suspect and were simply a reheating of an old ideological agenda which would not provide the platform for growth the country needed.

The Opposition Leader described the government’s stated expectation of an economic “snapback” as a return to “insecure work, to stagnant wages, to contracting­ out essential services, to ignoring the need for an energy and climate change policy”.

“They had no plan going into this crisis and clearly they have no plan going out,” Mr Albanese said.

As news emerged that Liberal backbenchers were pushing for an early end to the $130bn JobKeeper program, Dr Chalmers said evidence­ of a lower-than-expected take-up of the wage subsidy scheme was a “stunning failure”, meaning “too many Australians are left out and left behind”.

“The Treasurer has conceded again today that the Morrison government has undershot its own JobKeeper enrolment targets by hundreds of thousands of Aust­ralian workers,” he said.

“This is a stunning admission of failure. This is not a saving to be celebrated. It is hundreds of thousands of breadwinners heading off to Centrelink instead.

“It made obvious what we already­ suspected, that this Treasurer and this government is fumbling­ the implementation of this crucial program.”

Dr Chalmers warned of the workers the Treasurer would “abandon if he withdraws this support too soon or without factoring in the long tail of this recovery”.

Labor pushed back against the government’s narrative that the economy was in good shape before the pandemic, saying government debt had doubled since the Coal­ition had taken power.

Dr Chalmers pointed to GDP “barely growing faster than the population” leading into the crisis, alongside record underemployment, “the worst run of wages growth on record” and climbing household debt twinned with falling levels of business investment.

“And don’t forget the record deficits forecast by Deloitte this week wouldn’t be the first, second or third deficits recorded by this government, but the seventh, eighth and ninth,” he said.