with
BRENDAN O’CONNOR MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT AND INDUSTRY 
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SCIENCE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR SMALL AND FAMILY BUSINESS
MEMBER FOR GORTON

There are 928,000 Australians who have been deliberately excluded from the Morrison Government’s new hiring subsidies in a move which will keep the unacceptably long jobless queues even longer.
 
The Morrison Government’s Budget fails to outline a comprehensive jobs plan, fails to build for the future and leaves too many Australians behind. 
 
If Scott Morrison was serious about driving down unemployment and kick starting the recovery he would not be excluding almost a million Australians aged over 35 on unemployment payments from this new wage subsidy scheme.
 
These Australians are rapidly approaching the JobSeeker Christmas cliff with no certainty about the future of their support payments and will now find themselves competing with a subsidised younger workforce.
 
This Government has a terrible track record when it comes to labour market programs, including the failed and exploitative Youth Path Program. This hiring wage subsidy does nothing to encourage secure jobs, particularly at a time when we are facing record high underemployment.  
 
Labor called for wage subsidies at the beginning of the pandemic to support vulnerable workers, businesses and communities, and we have been calling for broader labour market programs to encourage job creation and kickstart the recovery.
 
It is vital that this new wage subsidy scheme is better designed, better implemented and better monitored than JobKeeper has been.

Scott Morrison is leaving Australia with one trillion dollars of debt but unemployment is too high for too long, with the jobless rate not expected to get back to pre-crisis levels even after four years.
 
Decisions taken by the Liberals in this Budget mean that the Morrison Recession will be deeper and longer than necessary.

WEDNESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2020