Page 2625 - Week 09 - Thursday, 16 September 2021
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all businesses eligible for the grant in industries still significantly impacted by the health restrictions. They do not need to apply again.
We will also be providing one-off top-up payments for larger businesses of up to $30,000, depending on their turnover, and further one-off grants in the tourism, accommodation provider, arts, and events and hospitality industries, recognising that these industries have been particularly hard hit, including before the current lockdown. These grants will range up to $20,000, depending again on the business structure and turnover. The level of support is continually being reviewed in conjunction with the commonwealth government. As well as the increase in support yesterday, there will be a further review of support in conjunction with the commonwealth on 1 October, the midway checkpoint.
It is worth reminding the chamber that these supports while funded jointly, which is very welcome, are administered solely by the ACT government. There is no JobKeeper this time. JobKeeper is and would have been the most efficient delivery model. And perhaps if the commonwealth government had not wasted $13 billion of taxpayer money to firms with rising revenues, we might be in a different position—an existing program could have been stood back up. But in the absence of JobKeeper this is what we have because this is what the commonwealth was prepared to work with us on, and it is not optimal.
It is worth also reflecting that the commonwealth’s co-contribution to the grants was dependent on the Commonwealth Chief Health Officer declaring the ACT as a COVID hotspot. Despite what Ms Castley would have us believe, we announced those business support grants 13 hours after lockdown commenced. I want to commend the public servants who have stood this scheme up in record time. In doing so, the eligibility was negotiated with the commonwealth government and we rapidly engaged industry and business leaders on the guidelines and the requirements. The first payments were made within a week of applications opening.
This grants program is a massive undertaking. It is the largest program in the territory’s history. It is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And, as the Chief Minister said, we are focused on properly assessing applications to get this money paid as quickly as possible to eligible businesses while making sure the scheme is not defrauded. This is not your usual grants scheme, and we are not treating it as such. We have pulled in a huge amount of resources, but that has also to be commensurate with some of the risk.
We have supported business owners to submit quality applications by: providing detailed guidelines and regularly updated FAQs, hosting and participating in webinars, publishing e-newsletters, providing an online tutorial, and answering bespoke inquiries by phone and by email. We have also made a fact sheet available in multiple languages.
I have heard some calls in the past few days, including from those opposite, that we should just pay everyone quickly, not do the checks and balances, and chase down the fraudsters later. I need to take the opportunity to thoroughly reject this approach. It is important that we do this as quickly as possible, but it is important that we do it right.
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