‘Billions wasted’: Big call on Covid payments

Poor policy planning across federal and state governments wasted billions of dollars in unnecessary Covid payments, a new report has found.

Australia’s poorly planned pandemic response added billions in government debt and put everyday Australians into a poor financial position.

The inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic showed Australia fared well compared with many other countries, although much of the financial burden we are feeling today is due to unnecessary Covid payments.

Speaking on the wide-ranging economic impact of the pandemic, Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged many of the “extraordinary policy measures” were “some very good ideas, badly implemented and poorly targeted”.

In particular, he pointed to sweeping JobKeeper payments that the report found excluded temporary migrants and were too wide ranging, as well as early access to superannuation, which “shouldn’t not” have been considered as an “appropriate policy measure”.

The report was particularly critical of the early release of superannuation, which was not an appropriate policy response and shouldn’t be deployed again.

“They see the existing hardship provisions as sufficient for these kinds of events. It also concludes that the slow vaccine rollout had economic consequences as well,” Mr Chalmers said.

“It delayed the reopening of our economy by months, at great cost to the economy, and overall, it highlights poorly targeted policies which contributed to Australia’s post-pandemic inflation and the dramatic decline in real wages growth, which we’ve now started to turn around.”

While it is easy to benefit from decisions after the fact, Mr Chalmers said, Australia had to learn the lessons from the chaotic Covid plans, with prior planning not adequate for a pandemic.

The pandemic also showed Australia had no plan for quarantine, workforce demands and as a result leaders were put in the inevitable position of having to build a plan on the go.

“Labor called for and supported programs like JobKeeper, but we were very, very clear at the time that the support should have been rolled out faster and that it should have been better targeted because if it was better targeted, we could have provided more assistance to those who genuinely needed it by wasting less on the businesses in particular who didn’t need JobKeeper, and we know subsequently that billions and billions of dollars were wasted,” Mr Chalmers said.

More to come