Covid-19 payments to end for Aussies

AUSTRALIANS who catch Covid-19 and need to miss work are no longer eligible for emergency financial support from the federal government.

The pandemic leave disaster payments of up to $750 have been scrapped as of Thursday, but infected people are still required to isolate at home.

Unions have railed against the decision, arguing the change will force frontline workers and thousands of other people to make an “impossible choice” between paying their bills and obeying the rules.

The peak union body’s president, Michele O’neil, said the decision would mean a return to the earliest and most costly mistakes of the pandemic.

“If we are asking people to isolate to keep the community safe, then we need to ensure that they are supported to do that,” she said.

“No one should suffer such a big financial penalty for doing the right thing.”

The unions seized on comments made by Health Minister Mark Butler earlier on Friday, when he said Australia was still “in a very serious phase of the pandemic”, with almost 200,000 new infections and 300 deaths recorded in the past week.

Mr Butler argued that Australia’s “trillion dollars of debt” meant the government simply didn’t have the financial capacity to fund the emergency measures forever.

“At some point in this pandemic, and we are reaching that point, we are going to have to start lifting emergency measures,” he told ABC radio on Friday morning.

“There’s not the ability of the taxpayer to continue to fund every gap in the labour market for people who don’t have access to sick leave.”

He noted the pandemic payments were always due to end on June 30.