Labor will likely try and amend the Morrison government’s youth wage subsidy when federal parliament resumes for a week-long sitting but it is unclear whether the opposition will insist on the changes.
The legislation giving effect to the Coalition’s jobmaker hiring credit unveiled in the October budget is scheduled for debate in the Senate on Monday. Labor will not resolve its final position on the proposal until shadow cabinet meets later that night.
While the final position is yet to be inked, senior opposition figures have told Guardian Australia amendments are being worked up that would stop employers sacking older workers and replacing them with younger people on a wage subsidy.
There is also some consideration of whether to support a proposal by the independent senator Rex Patrick to insert detail of the program that the government wants to establish by regulation back into the primary legislation.
As well as pursuing its own changes, it is also possible Labor will support Greens amendments. The Greens have already signalled they will move to amend the bill to prevent employers sacking existing staff to claim the subsidies – on top of the government’s unlegislated safeguards that employers must increase their headcount and payroll to claim payments.
The hiring credit is the last outstanding component of the stimulus and income support measures set down in the October budget. Labor has already waved through personal income tax cuts and substantial business tax concessions.
Labor pursued a procedural motion that brought the bill on for debate in the House of Representatives during the last parliamentary sitting fortnight but has asked the government to delay bringing on the bill in the Senate until Tuesday so the opposition can complete its internal deliberations.
But the government has scheduled consideration of the proposal in the upper house on Monday. The government is highly unlikely to countenance any amendments to the scheme in the event the numbers are found in the Senate to change the initiative.
Jobmaker is a wage credit worth up to $200 a week per employee if businesses hire young people. The government said in the budget the initiative would cost $4bn over three years to support the employment of 450,000 people aged 35 and younger – a cohort hit hard during the Covid recession.
Treasury officials confirmed during the last Senate estimates hearings the proposal would create 45,000 “genuinely additional” jobs.
Unions have been on the warpath about the proposal. The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union says the legislation as currently drafted creates a loophole that labour hire companies could “exploit leading to widespread insecure work”.
The AMWU says any business may be eligible to access workers with wages subsidised through jobmaker, even if they don’t meet the criteria, and has called for labour hire businesses to be excluded from accessing the subsidy.
“A business that engages workers through a labour hire company can avoid the headcount, payroll, foreign ownership and major bank tests – because those tests only apply to the entity that employs the workers, not that one that uses their labour,” said AMWU national secretary Steve Murphy.
“Covid has hit manufacturing workers hard. No worker should have to worry about how they are going to put food on the table and jobmaker doesn’t go far enough”.
