E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC ADELAIDE DRIVE
WEDNESDAY, 6 MAY 2020

SUBJECTS: The impact of Coronavirus on the economy and jobs; JobKeeper.

JULES SCHILLER, ABD ADELAIDE DRIVE: I'm joined now by the Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Welcome Jim.

JIM CHALMERS, SHADOW TREASURER: G'day Jules. Thanks for having me on your show.

SCHILLER: You said the JobKeeper payment was a good idea but badly implemented. Can you expand on that?

CHALMERS: I think your introduction did a pretty good job of that. What we've got here is a very good idea to subsidise the wages of Australian workers to help them get through this difficult period and keep them attached to their employer. That's something that we called for and something that we supported through the Parliament when the Government had a change of heart said that they were up for it too. It's a good idea but as your introduction suggested, a lot of businesses are finding it really difficult to make themselves eligible. There are issues around poor communication of eligibility. Clearly some businesses there in South Australia have found it very difficult to survive for six or eight weeks between the announcement of the scheme, or the beginning of the scheme, and when the payments actually started flowing today. Then there's the people who've been deliberately excluded from the program and that's something like 1.1 million casuals around Australia. There are a few challenges in the program to say the least.

SCHILLER: But this was hastily put together, Jim Chalmers. So you can't expect the wrinkles to be ironed out that quickly can you?

CHALMERS: They've had weeks to iron out some of these wrinkles. We've been warning them that there are serious gaps in the JobKeeper program and when we supported it through the Parliament we gave the Treasurer pretty extraordinary powers to expand the rules or change the rules or clarify the rules so that he can fix up these kind of problems as they go along. But so far he's only used those powers to limit access to the scheme rather than expand it to other deserving workers, which we think is a shame.

The thing I wanted to point out from the clip you played from my opposite number earlier on, Josh Frydenberg, he talks about a demand driven program. I seriously think if the Treasurer doesn't think that there is more demand for wage subsidies in the economy right now then I think he's from another planet. There is extraordinary demand for people to access these wage subsidies. The problem is that it's being badly implemented and people can't register for it.

SCHILLER: What do you think the most fundamental problem with the scheme is? Is it that people are on JobSeeker who should be on JobKeeper because businesses just couldn't get through to this period? They didn't have enough revenue, so they just said, look we're going to have to sack you and put you on JobSeeker? Or do you think it's the fact that casuals and visa holders and people like that are not eligible, Jim?

CHALMERS: All of those problems are significant but I think perhaps the biggest one is that there are 1.1 million casuals who can't access it. Some of them might have been working in the industry for a long time but they might not have had the same employer for the last 12 months. It's common in the construction industry, in arts and entertainment, in food and accommodation, and those people have been deliberately excluded. That means when the unemployment rate spikes in the next few weeks as it will, there will be more people in the unemployment queue than is absolutely necessary than if the Treasurer did the right thing and included more workers.

SCHILLER: I'm talking to Shadow Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. I'm talking about the JobKeeper payments which started flowing to employers today. 1300 222 891 if you're receiving one, if you've attempted to receive one or you're an employer that struggled to basically know whether you're eligible or not. Sharee Ratzmer joins me now, she's a nail technician. Hi, Sharee.

SHAREE RATZMER, CALLER: Hi, how're you going?

SCHILLER: Good, are you eligible for JobKeeper?

RATZMER: Oh, yes, I have been, yes.

SCHILLER: So what's your JobKeeper journey, if I could use that phrase, been like?

RATZMER: It's been pretty simple, actually. My boss rang me and mentioned to me, would you like to go on this or are you happy to stay on the JobSeeker, because obviously I'd applied for that before the JobKeeper came out. I said to her that I'd prefer to do that. For me, being a single mom, I just thought that being on JobKeeper would be a better option for me, knowing that I probably had my job to go back to, rather than being on Seeker.

SCHILLER: Right.

RATZMER: Just a bit of security for myself, and obviously a little bit for her as well. She put it all into place for me, got the paperwork and I've signed it, and yes.

SCHILLER: So Sharee, she was able to find the money to keep paying you before this date?

RATZMER: Yes, she did. But she was lucky. I did ask her about it and she said that she had put money aside for other things. I said to her, where are you getting that money from to pay me before you actually get the money? She just said to me, I hope I get it back as soon as possible. So yes, she was able to pay me those two payments for April prior to actually receiving the money.

SCHILLER: How many staff in your business, Sharee?

RATZMER: There's only three.

SCHILLER: Okay, so you have a pretty close relationship with your boss?

RATZMER: Yeah, very much so.

SCHILLER: Okay, and obviously beauty salons you would imagine would open in the next month hopefully here in South Australia?

RATZMER: Yes hopefully, fingers crossed.

SCHILLER: So this has been a huge relief to you?

RATZMER: Absolutely. Being a single mom with three children, it's definitely been a big relief for me to be able to keep my mortgage with bills being paid and stuff like that. Without that I would have been in trouble.

SCHILLER: Thank you, Sharee. It's good to know that you're doing well. Let's go back to Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Jim, there's texts coming through that suggest that there's some rorting of the scheme going on. I know I had Rebecca Sharkie on a couple of weeks ago saying that she had a constituent who was basically being blackmailed by his employer to share the difference between JobKeeper and JobSeeker if he'd signed her up to it. Have you heard any of these stories?

CHALMERS: I have Jules, and there are rules around that in the legislation but we need to make sure that they're enforced. The Government themselves have said that they expect that there will be some rorting of the program and we need to get on top of that. Where it happens we need to make sure we understand it and see that people are prosecuted for it. I just wanted to say about Sharee, though, Jules, I think it's terrific that Sharee has had that experience. She's exactly the kind of worker that we wanted to protect when we called for these wage subsidies and supported them in the Parliament. We also commend Sharee's employer for what they have been able to do as well. That's a really good outcome. Unfortunately, it's not a universal outcome. We know from the Government's own numbers that there's about a million fewer people accessing the scheme than they anticipated and that's before you get to the people deliberately excluded. We want more people to have the experience this Sharee has had. We want more employers to be able to do what Sharee's employer has done. But unfortunately that's not the universal experience that people are having. In all of our electorate offices, no matter what side of politics we're on, we're all getting a lot of very concerned business people calling up and wondering either how they make themselves eligible, or why they've been ruled ineligible. That's an issue. We need to implement this good scheme better.

SCHILLER: I'm also joined by a Senior Associate from Maurice Blackburn lawyers. His name is Patrick Turner. Welcome, Patrick.

PATRICK TURNER, MAURICE BLACKBURN: Good evening, Jules. How are you?

SCHILLER: Good. Do you agree with Jim Chalmers? Is this legislation too complex?

TURNER: There are a number of complexities to it and perhaps it's not surprising with a scheme of this size, but it's disappointing when urgent relief is needed for businesses but also workers in what's been a pretty significant crisis. I certainly agree with Jim that it unfortunately does appear that a lot of workers are falling between the cracks. One of the statistics that was particularly shocking to me was that the ABS is reporting that one in three jobs in the hospitality industry has been lost. Now the decision not to cover casual employees other than what are called "long term casuals" has meant that huge numbers of those that have been tossed out of work and businesses that have been affected by the downturn won't receive any payments.

SCHILLER: And that's because of the eligibility? Do you think that it's too stringent, the 12 months?

TURNER: I certainly think it's too stringent. Currently a long term casual employee, someone who's worked for 12 months on a regular and systematic basis will get it. But a casual employees who has worked for the same employer for 10 months won't get it. It just doesn't make sense to me to think that there's a huge swathe of workers in Australia, particularly in a workforce that's becoming increasingly casualised and where employment is insecure, who'll be missing out on these payments.

SCHILLER: Are you hearing as well that many businesses who weren't getting any revenue over the last five or six weeks just couldn't afford to keep paying their employers up to this point to give them JobKeeper, so they've had to put them on JobSeeker instead?

TURNER: I've certainly seen reports of there being a cash crunch for businesses, that they haven't been able to get the cash together to make the upfront payments they need to in order to participate in this scheme. Anecdotally, I've had friends who've been laid off from their jobs because their employers, and a number in the hospitality industry, said that they couldn't afford to make the $1,500 payment upfront.

SCHILLER: Thank you Patrick Turner for your input. I'll end with Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Jim, I guess one of the obvious questions is that if we're not going to spend the complete $130 billion on this, isn't that a good thing? I mean, we're already going into massive debt as a nation. Isn't saving a bit of money, not a bad thing?

CHALMERS: Ordinarily that would be the case, Jules, but what we're talking about here is that every dollar saved from what the Government anticipated they'd be spending has a human face. It means fewer people maintaining connection with their employer and that is a bad outcome. When the Government came out and said, let's do what we can to maintain that connection between workers and their employers, we said, we agree with you and we want to see that happen. The Government now wants to pretend that spending less is some kind of triumph because they don't want people to understand that that means that there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who will join the unemployment queue unnecessarily because the Government is botching the implementation of this otherwise-welcome support.

SCHILLER: Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers, thanks for your company this afternoon, appreciate it.

CHALMERS: Thank you, Jules.

END