Thanks to John McCarthy for yesterday’s InQld story picking up my comments in yesterday’s QEW post regarding the need for the federal government to extend JobKeeper in some form for tourism-dependent businesses. John’s story has been noticed and shared by Premier Palaszczuk via her social media accounts, with the story taken as evidence that “Experts agree” with the Premier (check out her Instagram post below). Of course, an extended JobKeeper for aviation, hospitality, and tourism can’t last forever, but if international border restrictions will apply until at least June, then something needs to be done to avoid further economic carnage in highly tourism-dependent regions such as Cairns and the Whitsundays.
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Queensland Economy Watch 
So she want to listen to you now but continues to ignore a whole heap of other economic advice about bloated public servants etc. Crocodile tears I suspect.
Gene I have an observation, the amount of Job keeper and Job seeker are similar. So the effect to the bottom line of the Federal Government is negligible between the two. Whilst its nice to have an artificially low unemployment rate (particularly from a State Government point if view) I just don’t see that a person on job keeper doing little actual work in a business Vs doing nothing on Jobseeker economically makes little difference to the Feds.
If the businesses have no customers now they will still have no customers after jobkeeper stops so is the argument for Jobkeeper about the level of income that the person receives or is the argument about Jobkeeper about maintaining the business. Most tourism businesses I think run at about 50% to 75% staffing cost overhead. I can understand if the argument is about the level of income support, but if that comes from seeker or keeper it makes no difference. I can’t understand if its about supposedly keeping businesses open.
I would envisage many of these businesses will not survive regardless of when Jobkeeper ends, and are effectively zombie businesses surviving on Govt handouts, finance extensions and rent relief. In Cairns last week I saw many of these operations don’t even open their doors to trade, they just can’t afford it, some hotels have not maintained their properties over the last year and would struggle to trade again. Surely if any Govt assistance is to continue it must be on the provision that the business can prove it is still able to trade into the future and have sufficient funding in place to do so.