JobKeeper mistake ‘is actually good news for Australian taxpayers’ Frydenberg

almost 4 years in heraldsun

Sky News host Chris Kenny says “staggering developments” have emerged following the Treasury’s announcement of a "massive" $60 billion JobKeeper mistake which he discussed in an exclusive interview with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

A significant reporting error has led Treasury to dramatically revise its projections for the Morrison government's JobKeeper program.

The scheme, which sees the government pay $1,500 fortnightly in affected workers' wages, was originally expected to cover around 6.5 million employees at a cost of $130 billion.

But late Thursday, the Treasury and Australian Tax Office were forced to admit to the Morrison government those projections were wrong.

As a result, Treasury's revised estimate of the cost of the JobKeeper program is now just $70 billion which is $60 billion less than the original forecast.

Treasury now expects the number of employees likely to be covered under JobKeeper program to be around 3.5 million, around 3 million less than forecast.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the “reality is” this was an “unintentional error by a thousand businesses”.

He said the initial forecast done by Treasury was done at a time when the number of coronavirus cases were on the rise in the nation but said this result “is good news for the Australian taxpayer”.

“It’s good news that the Australian economy hasn’t deteriorated in the way Treasury initially predicted”.

“Nobody should be seeking to blame Treasury or the ATO, we should just be accepting that this is a mistake, it was an unintentional one”.

Mr Kenny said the whole “massive” mistake has raised “a range of questions” over the government’s budget which now faces $60 billon less debt than expected.

However, “the good news was that it means we’re $60 billion better off than we thought,” Mr Kenny said.

Image: News Corp Australia

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