2021-06-01
The Greens are calling on the Government to ensure all workers impacted by the snap Victoria lock down have urgent access to the JobSeeker payment.
The Government ended JobKeeper much too early despite warnings of second and third waves,” Greens spokesperson on Family and Community Services Senator Rachel Siewert said.
We know that casual workers, those in hospitality and services roles are the ones that will lose a week's wage going into lockdown.
Many people on low incomes in highly casualised sectors are already living from week to week and missing a week’s pay has a huge impact.
The Government needs to take responsibility and ensure that people who won't be able to go to work this week and who won’t get their pay can call up Centrelink and be granted an emergency JobSeeker payment, with the waiting period waived, for the period of the lockdown.
There also needs to be support provided to small businesses.
It's outrageous that those who can least afford it have to bear the brunt of the costs because the Federal Government has fundamentally messed up the vaccine rollout and failed to get quarantine facilities up to standard.
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