Anthony Albanese has accused the federal government of failing to understand how badly small businesses are hurting during the Omicron wave, as the Coalition resists calls to provide extra economic support.
The Labor leader said businesses were suffering from a “void of national leadership” after the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, declared the government could not say yes “every time someone turns up and says I want money”.
The New South Wales Coalition government announced on Sunday it would roll out a $1bn economic support package to help small- and medium-size businesses, but the payment will be capped at half of what was offered during the Delta wave.
The state treasurer, Matt Kean, said he was “very disappointed” that the federal government had declined to pour in funding.
“In their absence we’re having to step up to the plate and do our bit to preserve those businesses and help our national economy,” Kean told the Nine Network on Sunday.
Joyce said the federal government had “paid billions and billions and billions of dollars out” for pandemic-related programs including jobseeker, jobkeeper, stimulus to the airline industry and “it goes on and on and on”.
“So I don’t think it’s penny pinching,” Joyce told Sky News on Sunday.
The deputy prime minister argued the government could not “keep putting things on the credit card” and had to make “hard decisions”.
But Albanese said the federal government was leaving business behind.
“One of the things you notice around any shopping centre in the country is the number of empty shopfronts and business is really doing it tough,” Albanese told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
“You’ve had consumer confidence in decline. You’ve had people essentially imposing their own restrictions on their activity and that’s really hurting small business.”
Pressed on whether businesses should be getting more federal support now, Albanese said: “I would like to see, where the conditions are there that were the same for giving support before, why is it that this support has been completely withdrawn?”
The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, argued on Friday Australia was “transitioning to a new phase of our pandemic response” and “we’ve actually seen credit card spending in aggregate terms, 19% higher right now through January than what we saw during the Delta period”.
But Albanese dismissed that argument, saying that is “because people are buying things online”.
“It says it all about the treasurer and how out of touch he is, the fact that he doesn’t seem to understand how tough small business is do doing at the moment,” Albanese said.
Albanese said Labor’s pledge to provide free rapid antigen tests would be subject to “limits based upon the health advice”.
That could include a cap on the number of tests a person could receive each month, in order to “control supply”.
“What you’ve had from this government is a ‘let it rip’ approach when it comes to the market delivering and the market hasn’t delivered.”
The Labor party released a new policy on Sunday to increase Australia’s sovereign manufacturing capacity in medical essentials including testing equipment, masks, personal protective equipment and ventilators.
The party is pledging to “give first priority to Australian-made medical technology for government purchases in consumables and equipment”.
It also says it would instruct Labor’s promised $15bn National Reconstruction Fund “to make medical technology a top priority and work with the A Future Made in Australia Office to develop a national investment plan for healthcare essentials”.
Albanese said Australia needed immediate supply “so some of that will obviously need to be overseas purchase”.
“But the truth is that there’s one company in Brisbane that’s currently exporting 100,000 tests a day to the United States,” he said, referring to Ellume.
“And they wanted to establish a manufacturing facility, they wanted to ramp it up here. They approached the federal government and the federal government wasn’t interested but the US government was.”
When the Insiders host David Speers pointed to the fact that certain batches of Ellume’s Covid-19 home test kits had been recalled by the Food and Drug Administration in the US because of “higher-than-acceptable false positive test results”, Albanese said it was important to respect regulatory processes.
“But the point here is, David, we need to manufacture rapid antigen tests here. One of the lessons of this pandemic is that we need to be more self-reliant.”
The federal finance minister, Simon Birmingham, accused the Labor party of failing to do its “homework” before announcing “thought bubble” policies. Birmingham said the Coalition would act on advice from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
“We saw today that Mr Albanese was spruiking a provider who has not yet received that TGA approval and who has faced a significant recall of products in the US,” Birmingham told reporters in Adelaide.
“Now, of course, we urge that provider to continue to engage with the TGA, and if its case stacks up, it will receive approval.”
The government also issued a statement claiming that Albanese’s comments about monthly limits on free free rapid tests represented a “backflip”.
The health minister, Greg Hunt, and the industry minister, Angus Taylor, said Albanese’s “vague, sound-good pledge has collapsed”.
Earlier, Albanese also indicated a Labor government would increase funding for aged care, without committing to specific amounts.
Albanese pointed to the ongoing wage case before the Fair Work Commission, in which aged care providers and unions have quietly reached consensus on the increased complexity and value of aged care work.
“The federal government should be making a submission to the commission supporting an increase in wages,” Albanese said.
The Health Services Union – which is seeking a 25% wage increase for aged care – welcomed Albanese’s “hugely significant” comments.
“In the short term it will lift the spirits of aged care workers,” the HSU national president, Gerard Hayes, said.
“But in the longer term we need to lift wages to allow more workers to stay in the industry and stem the short staffing crisis.”
