PAUL MURRAY:
Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar joins us from Melbourne. Nice to see you, Michael.
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Great to be with you, Paul. Thanks for having me.
PAUL MURRAY:
So, we read today, it could have been 15 per cent, it might end up being 10 per cent. We’re not fully there yet so I’ll just ask you straight up. How many people have signed up to the JobSeeker payment – essentially the dole – since all of this started?
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Well Paul, those numbers haven’t been released yet because we’re going through a process now where we are simultaneously working through JobKeeper applications as well and, as I’m sure many of your viewers know, there’s been people who have applied for both. So, the JobSeeker numbers haven’t been released, they will be in time by the employment minister and the ABS but there have been over 830,000 JobKeeper applications to the ATO, an organisation that I administer. Quite unprecedented, 830,000 big businesses, small businesses, sole traders and the ATO is working through those as we speak.
PAUL MURRAY:
So, the last numbers that we got was the Treasurer saying something like 370,000, but that it was a progressive number and that obviously it would be bigger on the JobSeeker. But on JobKeeper, have you been able to extrapolate that of the 830,000 businesses, how many workers are going to be covered by that?
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Well look, our best estimates are around the six million, Paul. But no, we haven’t got to that point yet. So, employers have nominated, they will now, over the next couple of weeks, go through a process of nominating their employees. The ATO will get a pretty good idea in the next few weeks as to the number of employees that are covered by those 830,000 separate businesses but we estimate around six million and as you said at the outset, treasury estimates were that unemployment would go to around 15 per cent, we think around 10 per cent. If you look at other economists, Bill Evans at Westpac has said that their view was that it would go to 17 per cent, it would now peak at around 9 per cent. So, we’re not too far apart in that respect but either way you look at it, it shows that the JobKeeper payment is going to keep many, many Australians in work, many businesses viable and that’s what the Morrison Government has intended it to do.
PAUL MURRAY:
Now I think one of the smartest things that the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, Finance Minister, yourself and the Assistant Finance Minister, that core economic team have done, is that by pushing this through the ATO, essentially to falsely claim through the ATO in and of itself, is a crime. Is that the best way to make sure that the rorting, look, somebody is going to try it somewhere, but that the consequences are pretty obvious if somebody does that?
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Absolutely, Paul. As the Prime Minister has said from day one, we’ve tried to tailor all of our economic responses through existing systems. So, this is a system where, just like your tax return, you declare it, so here we’ve got people who will declare that they are eligible for JobKeeper i.e. that they have had the reduction in turnover of 30 per cent for small businesses, 50 per cent for large businesses. They will self-declare that and of course it’s open to being audited down the track and I think anyone that’s had anything to do with the ATO will know that you can’t cheat them for very long, they will catch up with you. So, it’s a self-assessment system so you’re not relying on a government department to stamp a form for you and say that you are eligible for JobKeeper. Yes, there is some administrative process that you’ve got to go through as far as nominating and nominating who your employees are and then obviously, nominating where you want the money paid, but that is about as simple as we could humanly make it and we did that very deliberately.
PAUL MURRAY:
Just finally – because I know you’ve got plenty of things to do and if nothing else, that means rest, fine by me because there’s a lot going on – is there any Treasury modelling – and if so, can you give us a little peak at it – about when the bounce-back happens, of that 10 per cent unemployment, how long does is take us to get back to where we were of 5 per cent unemployment?
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Well, Paul, look obviously we’ve given these sorts of issues a lot of thought. I don’t think anyone – either the Treasurer or the Prime Minister – would thank me for airing that with you…interrupted.
PAUL MURRAY:
I thought I’d try. I went the nice way.
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Of course, and you always do, Paul. But I think there’s still a lot of water to go under the bridge as far as the health issues that have led to this economic crisis and until we get a bit of a better sense where the health outcomes are likely to go, it might be a bit hard to give great certainty to it. But what we’re trying to do either through the small business cash-flow package, through JobKeeper, through keeping people able to meet their essential costs of life through JobSeeker, is to make sure that individuals, businesses and therefore the economy more broadly, are in as good a shape as possible at the end so that we can see a really, really significant recovery. Those economies and those countries around the world that aren’t able to throw as much at this as the Australian Government has been able to, I think will find it a bit harder and we’re hoping that we can lead the pack on that recovery on the way out.
PAUL MURRAY:
Thank you, mate. Housing Minister, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar, we’ll talk to you again soon.
MINISTER SUKKAR:
Thanks Paul.