Public companies rarely hand back government grants they don’t need but that’s precisely what Super Retail Group did yesterday morning when it unveiled a surprise doubling of net profit for the December half and disclosed it was voluntarily going to return $1.7 million of second half JobKeeper payments.
Super Retail is 29.8% owned by secretive Brisbane billionaire Reg Rowe, 76, who sits on the board overseeing his $766 million stake in the company which operates four retail brands: Rebel, BCF, Super Cheap Auto and Macpac Australia. Only its New Zealand operations and Macpac qualified for $6.5 million in wage subsidy payments disclosed in the 2019-20 full year results.
The $1.7 million voluntary hand back was welcomed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday and the disclosure sparked plenty of media interest from the likes of The Guardian and ABC radio’s PM program.
There was a booming 14% jump in December quarter retail sales across the board in Australia so any retailer which still had its hand out for JobKeeper part two after September 30 really has some explaining to do.
Following the lead of Toyota Australia in voluntarily returning $18 million of JobKeeper payments, the pressure is on others who participated in the $100 billion-plus program to do likewise.
There’s a very simple way for the federal government to maximise Toyota-style JobKeeper returns: they should announce that a comprehensive register of net JobKeeper outlays will be made public via a website before the end of April, plus that this will be tabled in the federal parliament and made available for a special parliamentary committee probing the biggest and most rorted grants program in Australian history.
Recipients could avoid being named by returning all that was given or reducing their number by returning some of it before March 30 when the scheme finishes.
Only about 3% — or $3 billion — in JobKeeper payments have been disclosed via public company results so most of the rorting has been occurring out of site in private outfits, foreign-owned companies such as Toyota, and the not-for-profit sector.
What started out as an employee subsidy program quickly morphed into an employer subsidy program and the best way to measure the size of potential recipients is to look at how many people each qualifying entity employs.
For instance, the Catholic Church employs close to 300,000 Australians and not-for-profits were given the very low bar of simply having to demonstrate a 15% drop in revenue in either March, April or May last year to qualify for six months of JobKeeper payments until September 30.
At $18,000 a pop — $750 a week for each employee for the six months until September 30 — you’re talking a potential $5.4 billion if the entire Catholic Church workforce was eligible, which obviously wasn’t the case. But shouldn’t we know how much Vatican-controlled entities did get?
Church finances, with a failure to consolidate thousands of operating entities into one central balance sheet, are particularly difficult to track. Even the federal money-laundering regulator AUSTRAC demonstrated this with its embarrassing claim that $2.3 billion in cash was transferred from the Vatican to Australia over seven years. The true figure was less than $10 million.
The auditor-general should also conduct a full review of the JobKeeper program independent of whatever work parliamentary committees do, and these committees should be able to call witnesses — such as Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, Crown Resorts chief executive Ken Barton, Premier Investments chairman Solomon Lew, and Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes — to explain why their public companies received so much more in JobKeeper payments than other participants from their respective industries.
If it was good enough for Westfield’s parent company Scentre Group to decide at the outset it would not accept $1 in public subsidies, how did Seven West Media come to receive $40 million when it is controlled by a bloke worth $5 billion and didn’t seem to get anywhere near the qualification of a 50% drop in revenue for a one-month period, which is what those companies turning over more than $1 billion a year were required to show.
Given that many local councils have to disclose every last recipient of ratepayer-funded grants, why has there been so little disclosure on who tapped into the biggest grants program in history — particularly when you consider the scrutiny around the sports rorts grants and the growing anecdotal evidence of JobKeeper rorting?
By way of comparison, check out the searchable New Zealand register of wage subsidy recipients. As the Ardern Labour government explains on its business support website:
To ensure payments under the wage subsidy scheme are transparent and that the scheme is accountable to the public, you can search for companies that have received payments. The search will tell you the name of the company, the number of employees for whom payment has been made and the amount paid.
If only we had the same disclosure regime here.
To have a transparent system, like NZ, you would need a transparent government like Arderns. You don’t. You have a government that has imposed military censorship on Australia for a number of years (‘on water operations’ in case you’ve forgotten) and which has gone remarkably quiet on war crimes in Afghanistan.
Quiet !? Did you say quiet ?.The quietness is a deafening noise. It’s worse than the curfew of a country town ..The quiet silent majority Australians are being represented by a silent opposition, a non-existent Parliament, and a MSM 5th column 4th estate of white out noise..All quiet on the Western World Front ?…It’s all round quiet on all fronts..
If it goes quiet long enough, the great unwashed forget about it (just as they have forgotten Hillsong Scotty’s “performance” (lack of it) during the bushfires in late 2019/early 2020.
I certainly won’t forget Hillsong Scotty’s shameless lack of performance before Christmas 2019 (which seemed to start off as a type of “on water matter” as he just slipped off to Hawaii) and then his intrusive and insensitive performances “pressing the flesh” on his return.
I recall downloading and looking at the application form required to nominate personnel for the business to receive JobKeeper funding.
There was a glaring omission, no requirement to include employees’ tax file numbers, leaving all sorts of ‘doors open’ for the less ethical employers?
How could this be when TFNs are central to integrity and accountability in government services, taxes and funding?
Yes – add to that the joke that is the FOI system and a self-interested media (Crikey, Michael West and a few others) and here we are
Sorry meant to say those in brackets are the exception!! Too early in the morning
The Super group seem to have Honesty and Public Spirit as a core practice. They put most of Australian Business to shame.
Apart from the above instance, how good is this.
When the bushfires were raging in East Gippsland I went to buy a portable generator. Not one was left for sale anywhere. However the guy at the Auto division of Super said that his Boss had gone as far as Melbourne and picked up every available generator, and was on his way back.
I thought “I’ll bet they have a good premium on them”.
The Boss duly showed up and asked the waiting throng “who is in a fire affected zone”?
Most of the horde it seemed, “OK said the Boss that is 20% off the shelf price to you”.
HOW GREAT IS THAT? They have won me forever and I hope a lot of others.
I know how Solomon Lew & all the other crews feel..My very young child of 3 or 4 yrs old, discovered the workings of an ATM one day..She came running up the street full of terrible excitement & happiness, and loudly exclaimed “You don’t have to work anymore !..People are getting Freeeee money out of a hole in the wall ! ” Aaah, out of the mouths of babes, and into the very very deep pockets of some…..
It wasn’t a design flaw to be an employer directed payment. It should always have gone straight to employees once certified as having been laid off by their employer. It wasn’t, it was just a slush fund for business.
No surprise that it was then rorted. You can’t get between a business and a government handout. No robodebt notices will go out for this group, more the pity.
Of course it wasn’t a design flaw. It’s operating exactly as intended.
Thank you Stephen for another well-researched article. yes, I’d also like a register similar to the New Zealand model. I am going to write to Christian Porter, to see if he can arrange it.