NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet is promising 99 per cent of businesses struggling with Sydney’s extended lockdown will be able to get up to $100,000 a week from the government.
The state and federal governments on Wednesday expanded the JobSaver program after non-essential retailers, dine-in restaurants, pubs and nightclubs were banned from trading until at least August 28.
This saw the maximum weekly payment increased from $10,000 to $100,000, with grants starting at $1,500 a week.
Businesses can claim the payments, based on 40 per cent of a seven-day payroll bill, on the proviso staff are not retrenched.
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NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet (pictured with Premier Gladys Berejiklian) is promising 99 per cent of Sydney businesses struggling with the extended lockdown will be able to get up to $100,000 from the government
To qualify, businesses with a turnover of between $75,000 and $250million must prove they have experienced a 30 per cent or more decline in revenue.
Mr Perrottet, the state Liberal Party’s deputy leader, said almost every business in New South Wales would qualify for some help from the government.
‘Now in New South Wales, every single business – 99 per cent of businesses will be able to access some form of payment,’ he told 2GB broadcaster Ben Fordham on Thursday.
‘The substantive increase to that JobSaver program in conjunction with the Commonwealth will provide businesses up to $100,000 per week, which will help them obviously with their fixed costs, their overhead costs.’
Before Wednesday’s announcement, Mr Perrottet had unsuccessfully joined Labor and the trade unions in calling for a revival of JobKeeper wage subsidies.
‘JobKeeper has proven to be successful in keeping businesses in business, and workers connected to their job,’ he said on Sunday.
Under the old JobKeeper scheme which finished on March 28, staff via their bosses were given $1,000 a fortnight if they had worked 20 hours or more a week and $650 a fortnight if they had put in fewer hours.
The new NSW-Commonwealth JobSaver scheme is giving workers, affected by Sydney’s extended lockdowns, more generous payments of $750 week or $1,500 a fortnight like the original JobKeeper scheme of March 2020, if they lost 20 hours or more of work a week.
The state and federal governments on Wednesday expanded the JobSaver program after non-essential retailers, dine-in restaurants, pubs and nightclubs were banned from trading until at least August 28. This saw the maximum weekly payment increased from $10,000 to $100,000, with grants starting at $1,500 a week (pictured is a chemist at Lakemba in Sydney’s south-west)
Those losing eight to 20 hours of work a week qualify for $450 a week.
Unlike JobKeeper, the JobSaver scheme doesn’t specifically require bosses to pass on the payments to workers.
Pilates class business owner Anne-Maree Jones, whose revenue has plunged 98 per cent as a result of the lockdowns, said the old JobKeeper scheme was better because business owners were familiar with it.
‘It’s not enough. The JobKeeper worked,’ she told the ABC’s 7.30 program.
Pilates class business owner Anne-Maree Jones (pictured), whose revenue has plunged 98 per cent as a result of the lockdowns, said the old JobKeeper scheme was better because business owners were familiar with it
Since Sydney’s lockdown to combat the more contagious Delta strain of Covid began on June 26, Ms Jones has dug into her personal savings to pay her staff as Zoom classes failed to plug the revenue shortfall.
‘Very stressed. I’m not sleeping. I am very, very, very stressed,’ she said.
‘So I keep asking them the question – how can we pay our wages when for five weeks, nearly six weeks, we have had absolutely zilch in the way of income but our overheads haven’t gone down?’
JobSaver payments are due to arrive in business bank accounts from August 2, via the federal government.
Police have new powers to shut down workplaces after NSW had a record 239 new daily, locally-acquired Covid cases.