Treasurer Josh Frydenberg emphasised the need for the banks to provide the support struggling businesses, while revealing more than half a million Aussies have now accessed their superannuation early to cope with the financial pressure of COVID-19.
Following a phone hook up with the big four banks, Mr Frydenberg delcared the sector needed to keep up the support to customers and businesses.
“We emphasised the need for the banks to provide the support to businesses,” he said.
“They have agreed to set up – each of these four major banks – a dedicated hotline for their customers to call to receive the bridging finance necessary to pay their staff ahead of receiving that money under the jobkeeper program.
“They have also agreed to expedite the processing of all those applications to the front of the queue.”
Mr Frydenberg urged businesses who needed to pay their staff ahead of getting the JobKeeper payments – due in next month – to ring their bank’s hotline and ask for support.
“That support will be forthcoming.”
Applications for JobKeeper and early superannuation access surge
The Treasurer also revealed more than 900,000 businesses had so far registered to receive the JobKeeper payments, which will deliver $1500 a fortnight per employee.
Meanwhile, the ability to access superannuation early – which has been vocally opposed by Federal Labor – has seen almost half a million applications so far.
The Australian Tax Office has approved 456,000 applications, which total $3.8 billion of withdrawals.
Australia making “good progress” on the road out of COVID-19, but PM urges Aussies to download the controversial contact-tracing app to help future containment of the virus
Speaking alongside the Treasurer, Scott Morrison said the nation was making “good progress” on the four weeks set aside to battle the virus under current restrictions and with amped up testing and contact tracing
“As I say, we are one week down almost and we are making good progress,” he said.
“That also making good progress on things like testing kits, personal protective equipment, respirator supplies, the status of those and the supply lines are in place and they are strong and that is enabling us, I think, to make a lot of progress. We are on the road back.”
Of the three steps needed to be achieved in the four weeks though, there has been apprehension about a tool used to achieve one of them – contact tracing.
The Government earlier this month announced an app that Australians would soon be able to download on their phones to pinpoint their location and alert them to any contact they had had with a COVID-19 positive person.
Today, Mr Morrison urged Australians to take up the app, playing down privacy concerns.
“The commonwealth government has no access whatsoever to the information in that data store, none, zero, zip, nothing,” he said.
“That information can only be unlocked by the health officer at the state and territory level in direct communication with the person from who has contracted the coronavirus in releasing that information into the data store.”
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