With JobKeeper axed this week, at least one home-based business owner feels she’s being forgotten.
Leisa Crotty is a travel agent with 21 years experience and pre-Covid she was taking 20-30 bookings each month.
For the first quarter of this year, she’s taken six bookings in total, spending her time managing credits on behalf of accommodation providers, tour operators and airlines.
From today, she’ll be paying for the privilege.
A grant scheme has been announced by the federal government to help the travel industry, but Ms Crotty says travel agents have fallen through the cracks.
She says half-price airfares are great for the airline industry; travel subsidies great for operators; but nowhere does the assistance package apply to agencies.
“I need to look after my customers, and to do that I have to process credits and refunds – and in some instances arguing with operators in order to receive credits for my clients,” Ms Crotty says.
“I don’t get paid for any of that, and JobKeeper has been keeping me going.”
Ms Crotty works from her Rochedale South home, a licensed agent – and therefore sole trader – for Queensland-based agency MTA Travel.
“I have clients who have been booking through me for 20-30 years,” she said.
“I don’t want to lose my customers for when the borders eventually do open. But I don’t know how. The government seems to be tone deaf.”
There are 10,234 Logan workers registered for JobKeeper, and 3355 local businesses, which equates to about $5 million a week to the local economy.
Member for Rankin Jim Chalmers, who is also shadow treasurer, said getting either the vaccine rollout or the economic response wrong was damaging.
But getting both wrong simultaneously could damage and delay our recovery, he said.
“The small business owners that I regularly speak with are becoming increasingly anxious and tell me that both of these things will have big consequences for jobs in our community,” he said.
“What these hardworking families and workers want from the federal government is certainty beyond March 28 and I’m increasingly worried the LNP just isn’t listening, and just doesn’t get it.
“Nobody is saying that JobKeeper should go on forever, but it should be tailored and targeted to what’s actually going on in our local community.”
