One Nation accused of ‘siding with the looters’ after Senate rejects bid to reveal top jobkeeper beneficiaries
The Senate has rejected a bid to reveal the biggest 10,000 companies that received jobkeeper wage subsidies after One Nation backtracked and opted for a weaker form of disclosure.
Pressure continues to grow on companies that kept jobkeeper despite improving earnings, after the ABC revealed that about 20,000 companies tripled their turnover but received $368m of wage subsidies from April to June 2020.
The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has staunchly defended the program, arguing that businesses would have been reluctant to claim the $1,500 fortnightly payments and retain employees if there were a risk they would be required to pay the money back.
On Tuesday retailer Harvey Norman became the latest company to succumb to a campaign to name and shame profitable companies to repay the money, returning $6m of the estimated total $22m claimed by it and its franchisees.
Data from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, seen by Guardian Australia, reveals that $8.4bn was paid to 195,000 businesses that increased their turnover from July to September 2020 compared with the same quarter the year before, on top of $4.6bn to entities that were better off from April to June.
The jobkeeper program required businesses to estimate their turnover would decrease by 30 to 50%, depending on their size, but no clawback provision was included to recoup money from those that outperformed expectations.
Some 15,000 firms doubled their turnover from April to June 2020 compared with the same quarter in 2019 yet earned about $320m in wage subsidies.
In the Senate, independent senator Rex Patrick moved an amendment to unrelated government treasury legislation to require the Australian Taxation Office to reveal companies with annual turnover of more than $10m that received jobkeeper.
As the amendment was supported by Labor, the Greens and the crossbench, One Nation held the casting vote – and Patrick claimed leader Pauline Hanson had indicated she intended to support it.
But on Wednesday evening One Nation lodged its own amendment, requiring publicly listed companies to report their jobkeeper receipts and for Asic to publish a consolidated report on these companies.
Patrick, Labor and the Greens labelled the amendment a “dud”, noting that public companies already disclose their jobkeeper receipts in their annual reports.
Patrick told the Senate One Nation had “sided with the looters”, reducing the number of companies required to disclose jobkeeper from 10,000 to just 2,090.
He said One Nation had excluded “hundreds of foreign-controlled companies” operating in Australia; the big four consultancy firms, which are structured as partnerships; clubs; private schools; political parties; and large private companies.
“There will be … big private companies clinking their champagne glasses tonight, toasting to Pauline Hanson,” he said.
Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning
On Thursday morning, Hanson explained that although she had initially said it “sounded good to hold companies accountable”, One Nation had changed course because it didn’t believe the Patrick amendment would be effective.
She argued the Patrick amendment would be rejected in the lower house, but the government had signed on to One Nation’s plan which would therefore pass.
Senator Malcolm Roberts said the party “woke up at the last minute” and realised Patrick’s amendment was an “ill-conceived dud”.
He argued that without further financial information such as statements of profit or loss one can’t determine “those who have rorted jobkeeper from those who did right thing by employees”.
“The power of shame is ineffective against the shameless,” he said.
Patrick rejected the claims, noting that New Zealand, which publishes recipients of wage subsidies, had received 5% back from companies that repaid the money, compared with just 0.25% in Australia.
Earlier, Frydenberg told ABC’s 7:30 that the Australian Taxation Office had recouped $200m of jobkeeper where payments were “not in accordance with the law”.
Frydenberg explained the program used forecast not actual revenue declines because otherwise “we wouldn’t have got the money out the door”.
Frydenberg argued the program was “well-targeted” because “the average decline in turnover of businesses that received jobkeeper in it that first quarter was 37% in April, whereas the turnover decline in businesses that didn’t receive jobkeeper was just 4%”.
Despite the government’s win on Thursday, another battle over jobkeeper disclosure looms in October when the Senate will consider a bid by Patrick to refer ATO commissioner Chris Jordan to the privileges committee.