Cartoon of the Week

 

Two panels of a strip cartoon by First Dog On The Moon

Cartoons of the Week

David Pope

Mark David

Cathy Wilcox

Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison relentlessly pursues his personal war on the poor and vulnerable

Australian Prime Minister Scott John Morrison
IMAGE: AAP

The Guardian, 23 February 2021:

The strategy behind the federal government’s increase to the jobseeker payment is crystal clear: Scott Morrison will say he is the first leader in almost 30 years to increase the rate of welfare for unemployed people. Never mind that it is only by less than $3.60 per day. Damned if it keeps people in poverty; too bad that it won’t even recover lost ground since the payment was decoupled from (flat) wages growth in 1997.

Already, the new figure represents a $100 per fortnight cut in the rate, as the coronavirus supplement of $150 is due to end on 31 March.

The Morrison government will consider the political issue solved and brand as ungrateful anyone who dares question it.

The prime minister thinks only in the hollow terms of political problems. Humanity does not figure into the equation. Worse, for a man who thinks he knows the answer he has never suffered the real problem. Neither he nor almost anyone in his government has ever had to do the threadbare arithmetic of blunt survival. Never had to make a decision to skip meals or medications to feed a family. Never had a single, sudden expense trigger a five-year debt spiral. There have been no back-to-back years of punishing stress which exacts its toll not only on the mind but on the body, too. His children have not been raised in the kind of penury that scientific studies have shown actually reduce the volume and surface area of brain matter in young people, by as much as 20%. These shrinkages of the brain occur not because of a lack of access to nourishing food (though these are also problems). Nor do they occur because of poorer access to health, dentistry and quality education, although these are all issues, too. I want this to sink in so read it slowly: the studies show our brains fade away precisely because of the stress that poverty breeds in the home. It is the mental and physical exertion that does it; the ambient terror of not knowing how the day will unfold or if you will make it through it. Young children absorb this persistent anxiety in their own bodies, the way our teeth collect and preserve caesium isotopes after radioactive exposure. None of these things has ever applied to Scott Morrison.

The problem is not necessarily that he has not lived this life, but that he refuses to accept the testimony of the millions who have. Millions. It reaches further down, into the public service, where often well-meaning people are forced to reduce the rich and complicated human tapestry to mere budget constraints and policy priorities. For those who have not lived the life of gritty survival, it is difficult to really understand the consequences of enduring scarcity. These aftershocks bleed into every area of government service delivery and into every budget…..

Read the full article here .

The Guardian, 23 February 2021:

Business leaders and welfare advocates have blasted the Morrison government’s decision to establish a hotline for employers to dob in unemployed Australians who refuse job offers, calling the measure out of touch with small business owners who believe “most unemployed people are not dole bludgers”.

Unions have been even more critical of what they see as the “dangerous” hotline, warning it could force women into accepting jobs from employers who treat them poorly or who make “sleazy propositions” to them during an interview.

In revealing a $50-a-fortnight rise to the base rate of jobseeker on Tuesday, the government also announced it would launch “an employer reporting line” to “refer jobseekers who are not genuine about their job search or decline the offer of a job”.

Explaining the government’s reasoning behind the measure, the employment minister, Michaelia Cash, said “you often hear, though, employers saying, ‘Joe applied for a job. He was qualified for the job ... and they said no”.

“If someone does apply for a job, they’re offered the job and they’re qualified for the job but they say no, the employer will now be able to contact my department and report that person as failing to accept suitable employment.

“This will then mean that my department can follow up with that person or alternatively, Jobactive can follow up with that person, to ascertain exactly why they said no to a suitable job,” Cash said.

Cash said unemployed Australians who were found not to have “a valid reason” for refusing a job “will be breached for that”…..

To date only around $120 million in JobKeeper payments appears to have been clawed back from ineligible business and sole trader claimants

 

On 30 March 2020 the Morrison Government announced it would provide a wage subsidy to around 6 million workers who would receive a flat payment of $1,500 per fortnight through their employer, before tax.

The $130 billion JobKeeper payment was expected to help keep Australians in jobs as they tackled the significant economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. The payment was open to eligible businesses that receive a significant financial hit caused by the pandemic and provided the equivalent of around 70 per cent of the national median wage commencing in early May 2020 with payments backdated to 31 March.

The first indication that employers were not going to abide by the rules came in April:

By 21 May 2020 media reports began to reveal that a number of employers had been quick to rort the JobKeeper system.

In June 2020 mention began to be made of ‘pop up’ businesses receiving JobKeeper payments even though these businesses were not created until after the wage subsidy scheme was announced.

By 28 August 2020 more than 15,000 businesses have been removed from the scheme after the Australian Tax Office found them to be ineligible.

In that same month it was revealed that at least 25 companies in the ASX 300 had been paying bonuses worth $24 million to executives and millions more in dividends to shareholders after claiming JobKeeper payments.

Come January 2021 and the Australian Taxation Office is still playing catchup with fraud discovered in the wage subsidy scheme and continues in its attempt to retrieve the hundreds of millions in wage subsidy payments it believes have been paid out in fraudulent employer and sole trader claims.

ABC News, 29 January 2021:

Dodgy employers have signed up jailed criminals, people living outside Australia and even the dead to receive $1,500-a-fortnight JobKeeper payments.

These fictitious employees are among thousands of people being pursued by an Australian Taxation Office (ATO) investigation into rorts of the $130 billion wage subsidy program.

"Client is in jail" is one of the categories being scrutinised as a red flag in around 6,000 cases where employers may have created fictitious employees to take advantage of the JobKeeper scheme, hurriedly launched at the end of March last year to keep the economy afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Documents obtained using a freedom of information (FOI) application show that, by the end of September, the ATO was investigating 5,974 cases of "inflated employees" in applications for the wage subsidy.

"The reality is you cannot check every application," said lawyer and corporate investigator Niall Coburn.

"So certain things may have been overlooked, but that doesn't stop the Government from now being able to go back and look at the applications in more detail, and that's what seems to be the case here."

Paying the dead

By the end of September, the ATO had 5,974 cases under investigation, with almost a third found to be ineligible. The majority were ineligible because they "involve employers applying under the wrong ABN (business number)".

It noted there "have also been instances of putting spouses 'on the books'," as well as people overseas ("has a valid visa but … out of the country").

A further category of fictious employees were the dead. "Employee in their JobKeeper application that is deceased," the report observed…..

Fraud prevention efforts

In July, the ATO told ABC News 3,000 staff would be doing ongoing reviews of JobKeeper applications.

"At any particular time, we are reviewing between 2 and 3 per cent of JobKeeper applications," an ATO spokeswoman said.

"We will identify those who are intentionally defrauding the system and we will use the full force of the law [to punish them]."

More than 6,500 applications were rejected for a range of reasons, from people making genuine errors to fraudulent behaviour.

In December, the ABC revealed the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) was pursuing criminal investigations into fraud and had issued fines to program applicants who had made false or misleading statements.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 9 December 2020:

The Australian Taxation Office has 19 active criminal investigations into fraud against the $101 billion JobKeeper scheme.

It has also issued fines to another 19 applicants to the wage subsidy program who have made false or misleading statements, and is considering penalties for another 24.

Since JobKeeper was launched in March, the ATO has clawed back $120 million in payments to applicants who made it into the system but were later found to be ineligible.

"While most businesses and employees are doing the right thing, we have identified concerning and fraudulent behaviour and claims by a small number of organisations and employees," the ATO said in a statement.

The agency declined to comment on whether the criminal investigations relate to employers or employees and would not provide details about any of the businesses involved or when the investigations began.

However, ABC Investigations understands employers and individual workers are being investigated over fraud and abuse of the scheme.

Applicants could face a prison sentence or fines if found guilty of defrauding the scheme……

The fraud investigation revelations come as the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) considers its own probe into the scheme.

According to its website, the ANAO has flagged JobKeeper for a potential audit next year that would include an "examination of the implementation of integrity measures designed to protect the scheme against fraud and other abuse."

The ATO fraud hotline has received more than 10,000 tip-offs about fraud against JobKeeper, including claims that some employers have not been passing on the full subsidy to their employees.

ABC Investigations has also spoken to workers concerned that their employers may have artificially suppressed their revenue in order to qualify for the scheme, for example by delaying invoicing customers or removing popular items from sale in retail stores.

The ATO says it has initiated 14 of the fraud investigations using its powers under the Taxation Administration Act and has referred a further five cases to the Australian Federal Police's Serious Financial Crimes Taskforce.

Smart Company, 10 December 2021:

A marketing company has been made to repay $22,500 in JobKepeer funding, after the Australian Taxation Office received a tip-off the business was misusing the stimulus payments.

The ATO said the tip-off alleged the marketing company had incorrectly claimed JobKeeper for its employees, which came to a total of $12,000 per month.

The ATO’s investigation found two of the company’s four employees were ineligible for JobKeeper, because one was on work experience and not receiving any wages, and the other was hired after March 1, 2020.

The two remaining employees were eligible for JobKeeper, however, the ATO said their employer did not pay them the full $1,500 per fortnight in some periods.

“We determined that it was not an honest mistake and required the employer to repay $22,500,” the ATO said.

The ATO says it is closely tracking the misuse of pandemic support.

Unemployment in Australia in March to May 2020

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Labor Force, Australia, April 2020, there were 832,500 unemployed persons at the end of April based on original data, which resulted in an unemployment rate of 6.3%.

That was a rise of 63,800 unemployed persons since the end of March 2020.

A number which could have been much higher if it were not that those registered to receive JobKeeper subsidised wage payments are considered employed - even those with no active job to go to.

On 14 May 2020 the Prime Minister announced a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 6.2% and the Treasurer stated that 594,000 people had lost their jobs since COVID-19 public health restrictions began to affect businesses.

However, both Morrison and Frydenberg fail to point out that those 594,000 newly unemployed are in addition to the est. 238,500 already unemployed persons‬. 

Even with JobKeeper payments now keeping unemployment figures down by an est. 3.3 to 5.5 million people Treasury expects that the unemployment rate will rise to around 10% by end of June 2020.

According to a Senate estimates hearing on 30 April 2020, an est. 400,000 more people are expected to lose their jobs by September, at which time the unemployment rate is predicted to be around 13%.

September is of course the month indicated by Morrison as the period in which he intends to start rolling back enhanced unemployment benefits - a month in which the Dept. of Social Services expects 1.7 million people to be receiving the Jobseeker payment.

According to the Morrison Government it expects to have returned 850,000 people to employment by the time all the public health restrictions have been lifted.

If in around four months time as many as 7.2 million Australians are expected to be either unemployed or in uncertain employment because their jobs depend on government subsidied wages, one wonders why the Morrison Government is boasting of so low a figure - less than 12% of that 7.2 million.