There was a booming 14% jump in December quarter retail sales across the board in Australia, so any retailer which still had its hand out for JobKeeper part two after September 30 really has some explaining to do.
Following the lead of Toyota Australia in voluntarily returning $18 million of JobKeeper payments, the pressure is on others who participated in the $100 billion-plus program to do likewise.
There’s a very simple way for the federal government to maximise Toyota-style JobKeeper returns. It should announce that a comprehensive register of net JobKeeper outlays will be made public via a website before the end of April, plus that this will be tabled in the federal parliament and made available for a special parliamentary committee probing the biggest and most rorted grants program in Australian history.