JobKeeper payments likely to be overhauled after June review

Hundreds more Tasmanian businesses have signed up for the $1500-a-fortnight JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme this week, but changes to the payments loom.

JOBKEEPER payments are likely to be overhauled, with a review next month set to consider which sectors still need the $1500-a-fortnight wage subsidy.

Federal Treasury boss Steven Kennedy confirmed there could be changes after his department’s review in June, when he appeared before a Senate inquiry into the government’s COVID-19 response on Thursday.

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The business community has been pushing for the payment to be extended for the industries hardest hit by coronavirus, while urging the govern­ment to not scale it back before the September 27 cut-off date.

Secretary to the Treasury Dr Steven Kennedy appears before the Senate inquiry. Picture: AAP/MICK TSIKAS

About 18,000 Tasmanian businesses are now using the $130 billion scheme to pay employees’ wages, with hundreds more signing up in the past week alone.

JobKeeper now supports 6.4 million Australians through 900,000 businesses nationwide — a massive jump since April 26 when 505,932 businesses were enrolled.

More than $8 billion has been paid out since May 1.

Dr Kennedy on Thursday confirmed Treasury’s review of the payment would look at whether it was working and if it needed to be more targeted.

“If sectors were recovering strongly and others weren’t, that would be a very relevant consideration to the review of JobKeeper,” he said.

But he said it would be difficult to make it more targeted because there would be “messiness around the edge” of how to define sectors that were eligible.

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Dr Kennedy also told the inquiry the official unemployment rate of 6.2 per cent was actually closer to 9.6 per cent in reality.

He said the data did not take into account about 489,000 people who were not actively seeking work.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison moved to reassure businesses last week the Job-Keeper payment would not be wound back before its six-month time frame, but he did indicate there could be changes.

“The timetable of the program has been well set out,” he said.

“We’re only seven weeks into that time frame, and so it would be very speculative to be considering anything other than the time frame that has been set out.”

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About 10,660 Tasmanian businesses have also received cash flow boosts of $20,000 to $100,000 from the Federal Government, totalling about $196.6 million.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the payments were a “lifeline” for small businesses as they were the “backbone bone” of the Australian economy.