Disaster payment forever lays to rest ‘wasteful’ JobKeeper program

Scott Morrison has been right to resist calls to reintroduce JobKeeper. Picture: Gary Ramage

Calls for JobKeeper to be reinstated should now end.

Anybody who says an estimated $1bn a week pumped into the NSW economy via the feds and the state is not enough is either misguided, trying it on, or playing politics.

The $750 Covid disaster payment is as generous as the largest JobKeeper payment, and captures casual workers employed for less than a year as well as visa holders – two groups who missed out last year. It’s also quicker, more flexible, and is paid directly to workers.

Expanding the income support scheme to include a $200 weekly payment to recipients of social assistance – parenting or unemployment benefits – who had lost more than eight hours’ work was sensible and plugged a gap that welfare groups had rightly flagged as a shortcoming.

Under the new commonwealth-state package, businesses are now eligible for a maximum $100,000 per week to replace up to 40 per cent of their labour costs.

Crucially, this requires recipients to maintain their headcount of long-term, part-time and permanent staff – a key design measure to keep as many workers attached to their employers as possible and hopefully securing the rebound once restrictions are lifted.

The PM is correct to say JobKeeper was a solution to last year’s problem. JobKeeper was an $89bn fix for an open-ended threat of unknown proportions. Covid remains a massive danger to lives and livelihoods, particularly with Delta, but the contours of the challenge are much clearer now.

We know we can eliminate the virus with lockdowns – Victoria is the proof and is now the national standard under Delta. Last year, Treasury designed a massive wage replacement scheme for a six-month national lockdown that never happened.

We now know the economy bounces back once restrictions are lifted, and Australians have adjusted to working and living with health measures. Most importantly, we have an effective vaccine.

JobKeeper was incredibly successful and incredibly wasteful. Holding those two facts in your mind at the same time can be a struggle, but doesn’t make them any less true. A time may come for a national wage subsidy – only if Delta becomes a national crisis.

Hopefully, we will never see another JobKeeper.