People are losing their jobs. We need to give more support to individuals as well as to small businessess. I don’t care what they call it. They can call it something else but we need more support because, if you don’t get it, if you lose those businesses, it ends up costing you more because, to build back after something’s destroyed, costs more than keeping something going. That’s the basic principle here…
Scott Morrison, I think, one of the things that characterises him is he never acts until it’s too late and then action’s too little. It doesn’t matter whether it’s bushfires, it doesn’t matter whether it is the introduction of JobKeeper originally only occurred after the queues were wrapped around Centrelink offices around the country. He dismissed it when we supported wage subsidies and said they’d be necessary as a dangerous idea.
There is something about that reluctance that he has. We saw it last week with the reluctance to say sorry. He just waits and waits, whether it’s actions about gender and the treatment of women, including in Parliament House. The action is always delayed until it’s forced to happen.
I think there will need to be more support but the sooner it happens, the less businesses will go to the wall.