Deloitte Access Economics’ Chris Richardson has labelled the Commonwealth’s JobKeeper program as a “bloody beautiful” scheme which highlighted Australia’s aptitude at crisis management.
Figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia showed the wage subsidy scheme helped saved at least 700,000 jobs nationwide.
Despite its flaws, Mr Richardson said he would welcome the reintroduction of the program “in a heartbeat”.
“I said 'bloody beautiful' and it was,” he told Sky News Australia.
“People now are pointing out there were flaws in JobKeeper, and there absolutely were and if we have another crisis in the future, we would do it better in a bunch of ways.
“There are all sorts of lessons that we can learn and that’s fine, but I’m worried that the sustained campaign against JobKeeper that we’re hearing at the moment is giving the wrong message to the public.
“Australia is great at crisis management, we did it beautifully in the Global Financial Crisis under one side of politics, arguably we did it even better in this crisis under a different side of politics.
“It was thrown together in a handful of days and it did its job beautifully, it was not perfect but I would have it again in a heartbeat.”
