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Treasury Secretary Steve Kennedy has defended the rollout of stimulus payments to businesses and individuals, while praising the ATO for paying out $4.5 billion in cash-flow boost payments a week early.
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Treasury boss hails ‘rapid’ ATO stimulus delivery
28 April 2020
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10 minute read
In his testimony to a Senate select committee looking into the government’s COVID-19 response, Mr Kennedy said $10 billion in stimulus measures had been paid out over the last three weeks, with three times that amount expected over the next month.
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However, he pushed back on a line of inquiry that suggested that the design of measures, including the JobKeeper payment scheme, had seen money roll out too slowly to Australians who were in financial strife.
“We have not seen a shock hit this fast in any period and making literally billions of dollars of payments within four weeks of their announcement — which I appreciate is of no comfort to the broader community that has been hit by these shutdowns — I would regard as a rapid payment of money,” Mr Kennedy said.
“I really can’t see what the alternative would be.”
When pressed further if more could have been done to get money to people faster, Mr Kennedy responded by saying, “I can’t tell you that Treasury’s advised on this in a perfect way, but I think from an administrative perspective, I’m incredibly impressed by what the ATO and Services Australia have been able to achieve.”
Mr Kennedy also revealed that the ATO had begun paying out over $4.5 billion in cash-flow boost payments to businesses, a week earlier than expected.
“These monies are running out remarkably quickly because we’ve got a high-quality ATO and ATO system and a very capable social security system,” Mr Kennedy said.
“They had told us they would pay them from April 28 and they began last week.
“From my perspective, those parts of the public service have done exceptionally well.”
JobKeeper update
Treasury Deputy Secretary Jenny Wilkinson also revealed that 540,000 businesses had formally enrolled for the JobKeeper payment scheme as of Monday.
Early Treasury estimates place the enrolments to cover around 3.3 million employees.
Over 900,000 businesses had expressed interest in the scheme in the weeks before enrolments began.
Ms Wilkinson said the ATO’s extension of time for businesses to pay employees for the first two JobKeeper fortnights to 8 May and the additional time to 31 May to enrol was down to the late introduction of the alternative tests and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s announcement of the change in rules late last week.
“The extension was provided because it had taken a few extra days than we had expected in order to land the detailed alternative turnover test, and as the Treasurer announced on Friday night, there are some administrative changes to the rules in order to address some issues which have arisen over the course of the last two weeks,” Ms Wilkinson said.
“The rules and the new legislative instrument were put in place late last week — our view was that it was reasonable to give those businesses who had felt that it wasn’t clear whether they were going to be eligible or not extra time to assess their eligibility and then to participate in the scheme.”
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