8th Apr 2020, 8:05 PM – Senate Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Bill 2020 and related bills - Second Reading - Extend accessibility of JobKeeper Payment

The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion "that the bill be read for a second time" (which is parliamentary jargon for agreeing with the main idea of the bill). This mean that the amendment failed.

This amendment was introduced by Queensland Senator Larissa Waters (Greens) and, if it had been successful, its text would have been added to the usual second reading motion as a note. In other words, it didn't seek to change the actual text of the bills.

Senator Waters explained the rationale behind her amendment in her contribution to the debate.

Amendment text

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that the Government's proposed eligibility rules for the JobKeeper payment exclude millions of workers; and

(b) calls on the Government to extend access to the JobKeeper payment to everyone who needs it, including:

(i) over 1 million casual workers who have worked for their current employer for less than 12 months,

(ii) everyone who relies on insecure, short-term, contract and gig-economy work,

(iii) people on temporary visas, including work, skilled, protection, student, and non-protected special category visas, many of whom are also ineligible for Medicare,

(iv) universities and their highly insecure and casualised workforces who are crucial to our recovery from this crisis and deserve full access to JobKeeper, and

(v) charities that largely rely on government grants and specific purpose funding and will not meet the 15 per cent threshold as a result".