Labor hit for union JobKeeper payments

Josh Frydenberg slams Labor hypocrisy over its demands that businesses and religious institutes return JobKeeper, claiming unions collected $22m.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Gary Ramage

Josh Frydenberg has accused Labor of hypocrisy over its ­demands that businesses and religious institutes return JobKeeper payments, claiming that unions collected $22m under the $90bn wage subsidy scheme.

Amid a push by Labor MPs for companies to reimburse taxpayers for JobKeeper payments, the Treasurer said the ALP was staying silent on “unions who have made donations to the party”.

Using Australian Taxation Office data, the government says about 200 entities classifying themselves as unions had received JobKeeper payments.

The ATO data, based on ­“labour association services” that captures trade unions, industrial unions and employee associations, listed entities with unique ABN’s that received JobKeeper. The Australian understands there are likely to be fewer organisations, as the data captured multiple entities within the same group.

Mr Frydenberg said “Labor’s hypocrisy knows no bounds”, with unions providing the ALP with about $5m in political donations and $2.4m on campaigning in 2019-20. “On one hand they call on businesses who have complied with the law to payback JobKeeper, yet on the other hand they stay silent on unions who have made donations to the party,” Mr Frydenberg said.

“Last year Treasury feared the unemployment rate could reach 15 per cent and the economy could contract by more than 20 per cent. The fact is JobKeeper kept businesses in business and Australians employed, with the RBA finding it saved 700,000 jobs.”

According to the ATO breakdown of JobKeeper payments to unions, the largest flow of payments was in Victoria ($9.1m), Queensland ($6.7m), NSW ($4.4m), Western Australia ($1.1m) and South Australia ($380,000).

Under the JobKeeper program, which ran between April 2020 and last March, not-for-profit entities including unions were eligible to receive payments.

Under the first phase of the scheme, eligible non-profits were ­required to demonstrate an ­expected 30 per cent fall in aggregate turnover. Over the second phase, they needed to demonstrate an actual 30 per cent fall.

The government said about $7.4m in JobKeeper payments were provided to unions between April and June last year, as millions of Australians were forced to rely on wage subsidies.

The ACTU did not comment on the ATO data.

Labor MP Daniel Mulino on Monday said JobKeeper should have been better designed.

“The impacts of the Covid ­recession have been very uneven, and that some firms actually did very well throughout it. What we’ve seen is that some firms came out of this with higher profits and actually paying corporate bonuses,” Mr Mulino said.

“We’ve said right from the start, that firms should look at their actions and look at whether they needed JobKeeper and pay it back if they didn’t need it.”

Opposition assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh last week told the ABC that religious organisations who maintained surpluses while receiving wage subsidy payments should reimburse taxpayers. “I also think that the Morrison government needs to be held to account for running a scheme which continued to hand out money to firms with rising earnings,” Mr Leigh said.

Liberal senator James Paterson defended JobKeeper on Monday, saying three million people were supported under the scheme and “as a result of the successes of this program a million new jobs have been added since the end of it”.

“Now, of course, I’m someone who very much cherishes taxpayer dollars and doesn’t want them spent anywhere that they’re not necessary,” he said. “But … what else could anyone have done in that period of uncertainty that we were in?”