"The coronavirus wage subsidy stimulus package is a move in the right direction — but it has imperfections", 31 March 2020

Federal Government's new Australian-style $130 billion wage subsidy will....[k]eep...as many people as possible in jobs and as many firms in business is the best way to cushion both from the economic and social costs of this crisis.

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The wage subsidy plan gives affected businesses $1,500 per fortnight to help pay the wages of an estimated 6.7 million Australians for six months.

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The wage subsidy scheme will be available for any employee — including part-time workers and eligible casuals...so it captures people retrenched or stood down in recent weeks provided firms now bring them back onto the books.

For low and middle-income households, these higher payments give them a good chance of covering the rent and bills. [...]

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The real advantage of this scheme...is that affected businesses receive the payment for all employees, including those still working.

This is in effect a $1,500 per fortnight contribution to the salaries of each staff member.

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...[S]ubstantially reducing the cost to the business of employed workers will be help them retain marginal workers who might otherwise have lost their job.
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But the scheme will generate some enforcement challenges and pockets of perverse incentives.

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But given the imperatives of speed and scale for these economic rescue packages, these imperfections are tolerable.

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The "Aussie style" package gets marks for both scale and substance.

It's not perfect. But it should give Australia a fighting chance of weathering the worst of the economic fallout.

And that's something we can all get behind in these difficult times.