No clue on Covid billions
THE Palaszczuk government doesn’t know how many jobs it created or businesses it supported through billions of dollars in Covid support packages rolled out during the pandemic.
The revelations have been laid bare in a new report from the Queensland Audit Office – which has uncovered how there is no evidence that a single cent has yet been spent on 79 Covid response initiatives worth $4.1bn.
Auditor-general Brendan Worrall said it wasn’t clear whether $3bn in job support loans and tax relief did what they meant to do, as he called for a string of changes to bolster the roll out of future initiatives. He said that for most of the support packages the Audit Office reviewed, the government did not collect
any performance data to determine if the initiatives worked.
Pointing to the $1bn Jobs Support Loan Scheme, Mr Worrall said there was no way to confirm how many jobs were actually supported through the program.
He also said there was no data collected by the government to determine how many businesses continued to operate or how many jobs were supported through their payroll tax relief package.
Meanwhile, the report revealed the government had only spent 45 per cent of their overall $17.2bn in committed funding for Covid response and recovery measures as of December 31 last year.
The report said there were 79 initiatives worth $4.1bn where no money had been spent – including the Queensland Renewable Energy Fund and policing costs for the yet to be opened Pinkenba quarantine facility.
Mr Worrall also pointed out how the government’s payroll tax relief measure was not “fully used” – with about one-third of the allocated funds not spent.
“This could be because the initiative was only open for 2 months (with no late applications approved) or because businesses did not need this support,” he wrote in the report.