Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has conceded that businesses will shut and jobs will be lost when the government’s JobKeeper wage subsidy program ends in March.
While not explicitly ruling out an extension of the program, Mr Frydenberg told ABC's Insiders program on Sunday that the plan was for it to end when it is currently legislated to do so at the end of March next year.
"Treasury does not calculate the number of businesses that will be created or the number of businesses that will close," the Treasurer said.
“There will be businesses that will fold, we can’t save every business and we can’t save every job.
“Some businesses will not get through, but what we are focused on is getting every business and every job the best chance to get through to the other side,” he said.
There are some 900,000 businesses reliant on JobKeeper at the moment, but Mr Frydenberg said Treasury modelling hadn’t been done on how many of those would go under when the program ends.
He said unemployment, which is expected to peak at eight per cent by the end of this year, was forecast to come down to seven and a quarter per cent by the middle of next year, after the JobKeeper program had ended.
“The Morrison government sees government as the catalyst for economic recovery, not the solution. The solution lies at every kitchen table, on every factory floor, on every farm and every shop front,” Mr Frydenberg said.
The Treasurer also declined to reveal what would happen to the government’s unemployment supplement JobSeeker, which is currently scheduled to end in December, sending unemployed Australian back on to the old New Start rate of $40 a day.
