Subsidy forecast blunder revealed

TOM MINEAR

THE Morrison Government’s JobKeeper budget forecast missed the mark by a whopping $60 billion and at least 2.5 million workers will not receive the $1500 fortnightly subsidy.

The embarrassing error means the unprecedented $130 billion program – which was tipped to support six million Australians through the coronavirus crisis – will now cost $70 billion.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg argued the lower cost of the debt-funded program was “good news for the Australian taxpayer”, but Labor leader Anthony Albanese said it was “a mistake you could have seen from space”.

Labor, the Greens and the unions immediately ramped up the pressure on the Government to use newly-discovered savings to expand the scheme to ineligible workers, such as casual staff who have been in their jobs for less than a year.

The forecasting stuff-up has been compounded by about 1000 businesses making “significant errors” on their enrolment forms, according to Treasury and the Australian Taxation Office.

Half of those mistakenly said they each had 1500 employees, instead of just one.

Those businesses are eligible for a combined $9.7 million over the six-month lifespan of the scheme but they had applied for a total of $14.6 billion.

Treasury and the tax office realised the error on Thursday, after calculating that the 910,655 enrolled businesses had about 3.5 million workers – not 6.5 million staff indicated by their forms.

While almost $9 billion has already gone out the door to businesses, Mr Frydenberg maintained no workers were overpaid or underpaid as a result of the errors.

“There was no money that was sent out that shouldn’t have been sent out,” he said.

“I’m not blaming Treasury and I’m not blaming the ATO.”

In a statement, Treasury and the tax office said the revised forecast was partly due to “the level and impact of health restrictions not having been as severe as expected and their imposition not having been maintained for as long as expected at the time”.

“This has been reflected in some improvement to the outlook for the economy since the original estimate was developed,” the departments said.

But Mr Albanese said it showed the Government “couldn’t run a bath, let alone be good economic managers”.

“(It) blows any previous mistake when it comes to economic figures in Australian history right out of the water,” he said. “The idea that we will ever again listen to Josh Frydenberg and think that he has any credibility at all is gone.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt said: “Wow. Now Scott Morrison has no excuse not to extend JobKeeper to all who need it.”

Mr Frydenberg quickly pushed back on calls to expand the scheme, saying it was “not an invitation to spend more money”.

Businesses still have until May 31 to apply for JobKeeper if their turnover has crashed by more than 30 per cent during the pandemic.