Thursday 18 March 2021

Doctors Face Deregistration for Expressing Concerns About COVID Vaccines, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 19 March, 2021.

 Doctors Face Deregistration for Expressing Concerns About COVID Vaccines

By Sonia Hickey: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog.

Healthcare professionals have been warned they could be stripped of their ability to practise if they disseminate information about Covid-19 vaccines which regulators consider to be false or misleading.

The Medical Board of Australia and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) have issued a joint directive warning members they risk disciplinary action for providing ‘false or deceptive’ advice or information that could undermine the national vaccination program.

The statement has been supported by national health professional boards across the nation, including the medical, nursing and midwifery, pharmacy, dental, chiropractic, Chinese medicine, paramedicine and osteopathy boards of Australia.

The directive encompasses the provision of information to patients, as well as the publication of information on websites and social media, raising concerns that medical experts could be prevented from sharing genuinely-held concerns about Covid-19 vaccines.

The directive states: “Any promotion of anti-vaccination statements or health advice which contradicts the best available scientific evidence or seeks to actively undermine the national immunisation campaign (including via social media) is not supported by National Boards and may be in breach of the codes of conduct and subject to investigation and possible regulatory action.”

Europe suspends AstraZeneca vaccine over blood clot concerns

The directive comes as Queensland health authorities decide to delay providing the AstraZeneca vaccine to those who are sensitive to anaphylactic responses after four  recipients had alarming allergic reactions to the jab.

European nations including Germany, France, Denmark Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Ireland have also temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine over concerns its use may cause dangerous blood clots in some recipients.

AstraZeneca and international regulators say there is no direct evidence the vaccine is to blame for clots in some recipients.

Across the EU and UK, there have been 15 events of deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) and 22 of pulmonary embolism among those vaccinated. The EU’s drug regulatory agency has called an urgent meeting to review expert findings on the AstraZeneca injection and decide whether action needs to be taken.

Australia’s chief medical officer stands by vaccine

Australia’s Secretary of the Department of Health, Professor Brendan Murphy, says he has no concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine, describing it as the “workhorse” of the national vaccination programme.

He says it will the most frequently administered vaccine, brushing off European concerns about possible “side-effects”.

Concerns about the warning to health care professionals

However, the regulatory directive raises concerns that trained professionals are being pressured to toe the government line, even if their genuinely held views may differ.

The directive could hamper open discussion about the efficacy of drugs that have been developed and administered to entire populations over a relatively short period of time, which many believe runs counter to the way in which the medical profession should operate.

The warning contained in the directive has been seen as a heavy-handed way of silencing experts whose opinions may differ from the mainstream narrative.

Vaccine hesitancy

A significant number of Australians are concerned that Covid vaccines have been rushed through truncated approval processes. They are distrustful of pharmaceutical companies who stand to make millions from country-wide rollouts.

Many would prefer to wait for more information about the potential side-effects of the vaccines before being injected.

There are also questions around why so much urgency is being placed on the vaccination rollout here in Australia, where Covid cases have been relatively low, are managed well, and have been under control for some time.

Conscientious objection

Under the directive, both patients and healthcare workers – who are being ‘strongly encouraged’ to get vaccinated – retain the right to ‘conscientious objection’.

This means that a healthcare professional can refuse to provide or participate in, and a patient can refuse to receive, a legal, legitimate treatment or procedure which would be deemed medically appropriate in the circumstances under professional standards.


Sonia Hickey is a freelance writer, magazine journalist and owner of ‘Woman with Words’. She has a strong interest in social justice, and is a member of the Sydney Criminal Lawyers® content team. Other stories by Sonia Hickey published in A Sense of Place Magazine can be found here.



Wednesday 17 March 2021

The Hanging of Christian Porter, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 March, 2021

 

The Hanging of Christian Porter

The devolved state of journalism at the $1.2 billion Australian Broadcasting Corporation is now on full display.

The current witch hunt of the nation’s Attorney General over entirely unsubstantiated claims of an alleged rape 33 years ago, when he was a teenager, is a classic case in point. 

What amazes old-timers like myself is that any of it even went to air. 

The national broadcaster’s narrow range of left wing obsessions, gender politics, refugees, climate change, indigenous disadvantage and multiculturalism, entirely ignore the lived experience of mainstream Australians and are the primary reason for their declining influence and poor audience numbers.

Now they’ve taken it all to a whole new level.

The hunt for Australia’s chief law officer began in November last year with a broadcast portentously titled Inside the Canberra Bubble. It featured “investigative journalist”, the ABC’s Princess of Woke Louise Milligan, as presenter and leader of the charge.

The program’s central claim was that Parliament House has a culture toxic to women, and featured an array of well known, and yes, taxpayer funded, gender warriors, including former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Her blockbuster claim was that some men hit upon her, that is flirted with her, perhaps clumsily, at a function she attended without her husband.

Every last person appearing on Inside the Canberra Bubble had an axe to grind, not least the heavily featured former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has been as vindictive in defeat as he was self-aggrandising in office. 

If Turnbull doesn’t despise Christian Porter he’s certainly willing to throw him under a bus, perhaps because of the role Porter played in Turnbull’s overthrow in an internal party coup in 2018. 

Turnbull has now appointed himself the saviour of Australian women, claiming amid lingering shots of Canberra watering holes and entwining feet, that the governing culture shows a “lack of respect for women”. 

Turnbull is frequently quoted, never contradicted, and there is no attempt to put his manipulative spite into context.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

Christian Porter was the target of that first broadcast, and now, four months later, has been brought down by a howling media mob. 

It is another scalp for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s star reporter Louise Milligan, fresh from her Cardinal George Pell debacle, during which she led a three year “investigation” of child sex abuse, again based on entirely unsubstantiated allegations. 

“Without a doubt this is the toughest story I have ever done,” Milligan claimed. “This is a person who had immense political and cultural power so taking that on is enormous and very, very stressful. Being at the centre of this storm, it doesn’t get any harder than that as a journalist.”

Pell went to jail, only to be finally exonerated in a unanimous decision by the High Court of Australia.

But by that stage much of the nation, convinced of his guilt. would have happily seen him hang. Milligan never apologised.

She moved on to the Attorney General.

A handsome man from a patrician background, Porter’s main crimes as displayed in that first broadcast were to have been a bit of a lad at university, to have been partial to a party throughout much of his life and to have a liking for the company of women.

Shoot me now. 

Parliament House is haunted by a new and truly insane puritanism. 

Inside the Canberra Bubble was so prejudicial and so poorly based it should never have seen the light of day. 

The sight of two of the country’s most privileged women, Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens and Louise Milligan of the ABC, discussing on film how a third woman may have felt “trapped” by an affair with a cabinet minister has to be seen to be believed and epitomises all that is wrong with the public broadcaster. 

Purveying this as “investigative journalism” is a sad joke. 

Human lives are often messy. Not everyone thinks monogamy is a human ideal. So damn what? 

The unsubstantiated accusations that Porter may have been involved in raping a fellow student when he was a teenager began circulating in December last year, after the broadcast of Inside the Canberra Bubble. Journalists were alerted to the story through an anonymous letter.

Inside the Canberra Bubble

The accusations were made by a reportedly gifted but mentally ill woman who never made a formal complaint and had attempted to kill herself several times. The quasi-journalism that turned those accusations into a national issue and a major threat to the government, encased in the solemnity of theme music and lingering, atmospheric shots of parliamentary corridors, have become tantamount to fact.

Any journalist working on a mainstream outlet encounters mentally ill people on a regular basis. “They’re following me everywhere. You have to do a story.” And any normal journalist without an agenda shows them kindness but pays them no heed. 

Christian Porter, in an unwise move, outed himself as the subject of the anonymous letter at an extremely emotional press conference, allowing the media to go straight into a shark attack frenzy while providing the fodder for women’s marches around the country.

And allowing Louise Milligan to produce a followup program, Bursting the Canberra Bubble, which was just as execrable as Inside the Canberra Bubble. 

Her old employer, The Australian, has described her latest efforts on Christian Porter as plumbing “the depths of unprofessionalism”. Other conservative leaning news sites have been equally vitriolic.

What has made Porter’s demise so pivotal and his media sledging so consequential is that he was regularly touted as a future Prime Minister at a time of increasing discontent over the leadership of incumbent Scott Morrison. 

The only other real contender in a largely talentless deck is Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, whose social conservatism appeals to the traditional elements of the Liberal Party. He is loathed by the left and their media sympathisers because of his hard line stance on illegal immigrants. But don’t expect any stories about Dutton’s wild youth and partying ways. A staunch family man, he went straight from high school into the police force and has never so much as had a cup of coffee.

The Turnbull menace behind Porter’s public hanging is in plain sight. 

Scene from Bursting the Canberra Bubble

But there is strong speculation that the timing and framing of the stories targeting Christian Porter, their nature of contextualising slurs and the febrile atmosphere from which they are birthed, are related to Christian Porter’s abolition of the Family Court of Australia and its merger with the Federal Court.

I sat next to Louise Milligan for some two years when I worked as a general news reporter at The Australian. I am familiar with her work.

Almost 20 years ago I wrote a story of a major scandal within the Family Court of Australia, leaked to me by one of the court’s former judges.

The story took weeks to write and was done in close consultation with both the paper’s Editor-in-Chief and the informant. Great effort went into ensuring it was 100% watertight. 

The story involved the mass resignation and recommissioning of Family Court judges in secret in order to extend their retirement ages. 

The move was seen by my source, then still a very senior and well respected legal figure, as a breach of the Australian Constitution, which declared that judges could only serve until the retirement age set at the time of their appointment. For the Family Court that was was 65. 

The retirement age of Family Court judges was set at less than the traditional 70 years because it was felt that due to the unique nature of the jurisdiction they should be kept closer to changing social mores.

Only a very few judges, including my informant, left the court on a matter of principle – that is refusing to participate in actions they saw as a direct and serious breach of the Constitution.

Hours before scheduled publication the paper decided to get Louise Milligan, who has a law degree, to check over and rewrite the story. The thinking being that as a separated father I might be biased on the issue. 

But a staunch feminist dealing with a story on that great feminist icon the Family Court, they couldn’t possibly be biased?  

The entirely eviscerated result, published on page two the following day, barely made any sense. I had to continue sitting next to Milligan for several more months. I didn’t dislike Milligan as a person. But I certainly disliked her style of journalism. 

I later apologised to the informant judge when I ran into him at a function. “I knew it wasn’t you, John,” he replied.

To this day the documents recording those resignations and recommissionings remain secret. 

Last year details of the scandal were passed to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who headed a recent inquiry into family law. They are also believed to have been passed on to Christian Porter. 

The Palace of Lies Abolished

After decades of expensive and completely useless government inquiries, hundreds of thousands of damaged children and even greater numbers of destroyed or embittered litigants, not always fathers, Christian Porter is the first politician to have stood up to powerful interests invested in this debacle. 

The Turnbull menace behind Porter’s framing is in plain sight. 

But there is strong speculation that the timing and framing of the stories targeting Christian Porter, their nature of contextualising slurs and the febrile atmosphere from which they are birthed, are related to Christian Porter’s abolition of the Family Court of Australia and its merger with the Federal Court.

With very little fanfare, legislation passed through parliament in February to merge the Family Court with the Federal Court, effectively abolishing it.

Whether the long hidden story of the judge’s mass resignations and recommissionings fed into the abolition of the court we may never know. Certainly some people close to the story think so.

To this day I believe it is a story that should not have been killed off.

Known colloquially as the Palace of Lies, the Family Court of Australia was established in the mid-1970s, at the height of the “all men are bastards” style of feminism which was then infiltrating courts and tertiary institutions throughout the Western world.

The demonisation of perfectly decent fathers as patriarchal abusers has been one of the great intellectual deceits of the Australian public service, and caused enormous damage both to individuals and to the social fabric of the nation.

WA Law Reform Commissioner and Law Professor Augusto Zimmermann said a dark stain on the nation’s legal, social and political history is finally being removed. 

“There is speculation that the hunting of Christian Porter is simply a bit of Canberra femocracy payback for the destruction of their beloved Family Court,” Professor Zimmerman told A Sense of Place Magazine. “At the very least the timing is uncanny. There is an old saying: ‘There is no such thing as coincidence.’ ”  

Image of Canberra Bars. Inside the Canberra Bubble.

Certainly the travails of the Attorney General, who is now suing the ABC and Louise Milligan, has been met with little or no sympathy from separated fathers, many of whom have lost contact with their children on the basis of false and entirely unsubstantiated claims of domestic violence or sexual abuse of children. 

As one Facebook group calling itself Domestic Violence Awareness Australia put it: “The Attorney General now understands how damaging allegations of sexual abuse and/or domestic violence are when made against a man by a woman, no matter how powerful his position or standing. Now perhaps, and especially if you are actually not guilty of the allegations raised against you now, you might finally understand how it feels.” 

Once upon a time journalists told stories. Other people’s stories. The nation’s stories.

The turbulence of daily life, the dishonesty of councils, courts, corporations and an ever colourful parade of ne’er-do-wells were all grist to the daily news cycle.

Now we are seeing, on open ground, the full consequences of the sad devolution of journalism away from its original story telling functions.

The extreme bias of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation lies not only in the stories themselves, but in the stories they don’t run. 

Scene from Bursting the Canberra Bubble

The ABC’s incessant feminist advocacy and complete failure to investigate the scandals circling the Family Court of Australia, including the many questions over legitimacy raised by the secret resignations and recommissioning of its judges to circumvent the Constitution, has real life consequences.

While endlessly pursuing stories on minorities and victim groups the ABC has ignored the declining fortunes of Australia’s working classes and the almost complete collapse of its now ice riddled underclass, events which will prove to have profound effects on the nation’s future. 

Given the circumstances, the Australian Attorney General should have the last word.

At his press conference a highly stressed Christian Porter, in words that many Australian fathers could sympathise with, said: “I have been subject to the most wild, unrestrained, intense series of accusations I can remember in modern Australian politics. Maybe that is the new normal. I hope for everyone’s sake it is not.”


This piece was written and compiled by veteran Australian journalist John Stapleton.

A collection of his journalism is being constructed here.


The Big Grift: How the Top End of Town Rorted Jobkeeper, As Editor, A Sense of Place Magazine, 16 October, 2021.

 The Big Grift: How the Top End of Town Rorted Jobkeeper

By Luke Stacey with Michael West Media

The most rampant era of welfare rorting in Australia’s history draws to a close at the end of the month when the JobKeeper scheme ends. Luke Stacey and Michael West investigate some of the big grifters and how they pulled it off … while we await a response from Business Council of Australia.

Mirvac racked up more than $20 billion in sales over the past six years and paid not a skerrick in income tax.

It also racked up profits through the pandemic, but that has not stopped the property juggernaut from helping itself to the government’s JobKeeper scheme too; gorging itself on a public subsidy that was intended only for companies that suffered a large fall in turnover. 

Like dozens of other companies on the ASX – as demonstrated in the interim profit reporting season which draws to a close today – this profitable $10 billion company has grabbed the subsidy while having the cheek to pay large dividends to its shareholders ($305 million is the latest) and lavish salaries to its executives.

Others have paid part of their JobKeeper back; very few have paid back all of it. Yet, failing to demonstrate even a shred of integrity, Mirvac and its auditors PwC have grifted the lot, some $22 million in JobKeeper but zero paid back. 

It’s even worse than it looks. Mirvac was the first to be outed for rorting Jobkeeper here last May when the scheme first kicked off. A young manager at one of the group’s retail centres told us she was asked to fill out a JobKeeper application form after she was fired.

Mirvac claims JobKeeper
Marvellous Mirvac: $8 billion property developer rorts JobKeeper scheme

“Mirvac chose to fire contracted employees across the entire business on April 21st 2020,” she told Michael West Media. “Mirvac exploited this Covid-19 crisis as a way to fire all staff employed on contracts.” 

Mirvac is one of the more egregious examples, shaded by only a handful of rorters such as billionaire Solomon Lew and Premier Investments.

https://www.michaelwest.com.au/solomon-lew/embed/#?secret=nXX3LMYi1D

Solomon Lew. Secret Rich List.

In the case of airlines and other industries left almost revenue-dead when the pandemic hit, JobKeeper has been a lifesaver, enabling companies to stay afloat and keep in contact with their workforces. 

For others like Mirvac and Lendlease, whose income was barely affected, it’s a rort.

Should they pay it back? We put these questions to chair of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott. Usually ubiquitous in her media appearances as the champion of big business, Westacott is missing in action when it comes to the hard questions about the accountability of her members.

The Global Financial Crisis might have entailed the public propping up the banks with guarantees but the pandemic is a bacchanalian rampage of corporate welfare never seen before. The concept that business can do without government support is dead. 

Grand old department store Myer was flirting with obsolescence before the pandemic, that is until the government came along with JobKeeper and kept it alive. Not just that, Myer Holdings’ profit almost doubled and its share price almost tripled since its nadir of 10c a share last March as Covid fears swept around the world. 

So JobKeeper was not only a rort for many, a lifeline for some but also a death-cheater for others, keeping inefficient, dying businesses alive for longer, impeding the invisible hand of the free market. 

The rash of half-yearly financial accounts for ASX-listed companies shows only a small number are announcing full repayments of the JobKeeper subsidy despite a significant return to profits for many.

The New Daily conducted an extensive coverage of ASX JobKeeper recipients and the shortfall of wage subsidy repayments despite paying shareholder dividends and executive bonuses.

JobKeeper
The New Daily reveals the companies that kept JobKeeper – despite huge profits

The government has kept its corporate welfare payments a secret but TND found (among the public disclosures from the companies themselves):

  • More than 60 ASX businesses disclosed receiving JobKeeper and other handouts 
  • They recorded combined profits of $8.6bn over the past 18 months
  • They funnelled more than $3.6bn in dividends to investors since last April
  • They paid back just $72m
  • They paid out $20m in bonuses to executives.

Nine Entertainment is a classic case. Did people watch less TV and read less news during the pandemic? No, audiences were at home, more engaged than ever.

Last year’s lockdowns saw a spike in TV viewership and online activity with Nine Entertainment reporting a half-year profit of $181.9 million, up 79% on the year prior.

That didn’t stop them from putting out the begging bowl for $6.8 million in JobKeeper in the September round, of which $5.4m went to its majority-controlled Domain Group. It then received an extra $8.4 million in JobKeeper for the December quarter.

This corporate welfare is in addition to all the spectrum fees waived by the government in response to the pandemic, saving the group some $10 million, and then there’s the government-prompted deal with Google reportedly worth $30 million a year

The Nine logo
Nine agrees to join Google News Showcase in Australia for reported $30m a year

If you were to tote up the millions in government advertising received by Nine, along with the government’s pandemic subsidies, total corporate welfare attributable to Nine must be well north of $60 million.

You won’t read that in Nine’s Liberal Party-cheering publications, the supposedly free-market publications, Australian Financial Review, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

In order to salvage a modicum of decency from their feast on the public teat, Nine announced it would repay $2 million in JobKeeper received since the start of the scheme for their wholly-owned subsidiaries. 

Yet the group still managed to pay $34.1 million in shareholder dividends last financial year and is poised to issue $85.2 million in dividends relating to the FY21 half-year.

Once eligible, now accountable

Michael West Media is not shining the light on profits to argue that, some companies at some point didn’t fall below the 30% revenue threshold (50% for businesses with a turnover of more than $1 billion) and were, therefore, ineligible for the scheme. 

However, for businesses like Nine whose primary operations were not hindered by lockdowns – and only reported a 2% drop in revenue for the period – their failure to pay back JobKeeper in full is nothing more than a grift.

Not to put too fine a point on it, the public has been footing the bill for their employees and should be paid back. There is nothing in the legislation however to compel these grifters from paying back their handouts.

How do they get away with it?

Overall profits in annual or half-yearly accounts don’t specify a company’s month-by-month performance, where their income may have dropped below 30% in the months spanning the peak of the pandemic.

Each month, or alternatively every quarter, businesses are required to send a Business Activity Statement (BAS) to the ATO for them to determine how much GST each must pay. This tax legislation is what the government has used to pay the JobKeeper wage subsidy to employers. The ATO refers to a company’s BAS numbers for months during hard lockdowns against those same months in 2019 to determine how much JobKeeper the employer should get. 

This may explain why property giants like Lendlease and Mirvac, which have paid $103 million and $305 million in dividends respectively, were able to rort it. Mirvac has received some $22 million in JobKeeper despite revenue of around $2 billion a year.

For example, Mirvac issues the tax office with a BAS for each entity it controls in Australia, with some potentially reporting the requisite drop in revenue for certain months last year. 

This presents an apparent loophole in the JobKeeper scheme as it appears that businesses are able to break down their profits for each segment, disregarding their overall surplus. And even if a company returns to income that is near or exceeding pre-Covid levels, employers can stay on the scheme because according to the legislation

“The decline in turnover test needs to be satisfied before an entity becomes eligible for the JobKeeper payment. Once this occurs there is no requirement to retest in later months”.

Examples include owner of Super Cheap Auto, Rebel Sport, and BCF, Super Retail Group, which has announced it would repay $1.7 million in JobKeeper covering their Macpac Retail division. The group received $6.5 million in total from the scheme, meaning they have elected to keep $4.8 million, half of which can be attributed to bonuses paid to executives last year.

This decision not to repay the full amount is despite a profit of $172.8 million for the FY21 period, up from $109.7 million at the end of last financial year. Super Retail also paid shareholders $44 million in dividends for the six months ending June 2020, and thanks to an increase in profits aided by the government subsidy, are set to deliver $74.5 million to shareholders in April 2021. 

Another adopting this strategy is Collins Foods, which has committed to repaying $1.8 million it received from the government scheme, attributed to its Sizzler Restaurants brand. The group also owns the KFC and Taco Bell fast food franchises in Australia.

Unlike KFC and Taco Bell, Sizzler continued to operate at a loss following peak Covid restrictions last year, reporting the requisite 30% decline in revenue. Sustained poor performances prompted the board to close its remaining venues across Australia in October 2020.

Yet, with this move came a seemingly counterintuitive decision to repay its entire JobKeeper earnings. In its place, the group “topped up payments to the equivalent JobKeeper payment [Sizzler employees] would have received”. Essentially, Collins Foods matched the stimulus by tapping into its own reserves.

Their 2020 annual report shows revenue had increased by $80 million for the financial year across all brands. So despite poor performances from Sizzler operations, KFC and Taco Bell were still generating an overall profit for the group during the pandemic. 

It’s for this reason that despite a positive turnover made by ASX groups such as these, they have still benefited from the JobKeeper scheme. And so long as the government does not mandate a repayment where necessary, it leaves the door open for the stimulus to contribute to shareholder dividends and bonuses at the board level.

A notable example being retail billionaire Solomon Lew and his Premier Investments empire. Despite the pandemic, the group, which owns brands including Just Jeans and Smiggle, reported a 30% increase in profit, to $138 million, at the end of last financial year. A large part of this rise can be attributed to the $70 million they received in government wage subsidies, accounting for more than 50% of their profit for the year. The group did not disclose what percentage came from JobKeeper. 

The high turnover resulted in approximately $57 million in dividends paid to shareholders, of which Lew himself received $24 million. The retail magnate also leveraged the pandemic to operate his 1200 retail stores rent-free.

Premier is yet to release its half-yearly accounts, nor have they issued any statement with the intention of repaying their various government wage subsidies.

JobKeeper rorting by business
BossKeeper: how JobKeeper lined the pockets of top ASX directors, executives and shareholders

A report last year from government advisory service Ownership Matters revealed some of the worst offenders of ASX companies paying bonuses to key management personnel while also receiving JobKeeper.

From these findings, Michael West Media reported that “Qube Holdings (QUB) gave its … key managerial personnel $2.78 million in the 2020 financial year.” Star Entertainment Group, owners of Sydney’s Star Casino, received $65 million in government subsidies and still managed to pay bonuses to executives of $1.39 million.

Other ASX entities shown to be rorting the subsidy include aforementioned Super Retail with executive bonuses exceeding $2 million, Lendlease, NIB Holdings and retail empire Accent Group.

Image edited by Alex Anstey
BossKeeper: ports giant Qube bullies its way into Jobkeeper and plush bonuses

Other frontrunners repaying the subsidy include Toyota, Domino’s Pizza, holiday property operator Ingenia Communities and retail furniture empires Adairs and Nick Scali. Even still, many of these returns have not been made in full.

Adairs announced $6.1 million in JobKeeper repayments from a possible $21.7 million after profits rose to $43.8 million for the December-half.  

While the entire government package has not been repaid, Adairs argues the remaining wage subsidies have been retained as it covered employees who were not working or did not work sufficient hours to be remunerated.

This is still a heroic move in comparison to shipping group Qube Holdings which is in the throes of forcing almost 600 employees to pay back a portion of their JobKeeper payments. This despite Qube’s reported $940 million revenue in its FY21 half-yearly accounts.

Ingenia Communities will repay $1.7 million from a potential $5.1 million in JobKeeper. Their income for the FY21 interim period was $122 million. 

It’s not clear how the group has determined the $1.7 million from its available total. Considering they will pay $16.3 million in dividends relating to this period, full repayment of the stimulus package is well within budget.

In a free enterprise economy, the government is not allowed to contribute to a company’s dividends. Considering dividends are dictated by an entity’s profits – enhanced by JobKeeper – this is exactly what has happened in many cases.

—————

Questions for Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott regarding JobKeeper for members:

  • How many of your members are receiving the JobKeeper subsidy?
  • What is Ms Westacott’s response to businesses who are receiving the subsidy while also paying dividends to shareholders and executive bonuses despite her condemnation in September last year?
  • Does Ms Westacott believe there is a shortcoming in the JobKeeper legislation whereby businesses that have now returned to making profits are not mandated to return the government subsidy? 
  • Is Ms Westacott and the BCA at large embarrassed by the number of companies that continue to sponge from the JobKeeper subsidy when their half-yearly financial accounts show they no longer need it?

Ms Westacott’s responses will be appended if or when she responds.


Luke Stacey is a contributing researcher and editor for the Secret Rich List and Revolving Doors series on Michael West Media, Australia’s leading investigative news site. He has built their corporate database of grandfathered companies on the Secret Rich List. Luke studied journalism at University of Technology, Sydney, has worked in the film industry and studied screenwriting at the New York Film Academy in New York. You can follow Luke on Twitter @lukestacey_

Feature Image by Alex Anstey.