Small Business Grants

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (15:02): Supplementary arising from the original answer: when was the first of these payments made? On what date? I get that there was $35 million paid as of 12 noon today, but when was the first payment made?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:02): I would have to check for you. I think there were a small number of grants paid maybe two to three weeks ago perhaps. The bulk of the grants have been paid in the last two weeks so, no, the first grants were probably paid about three weeks ago—a very small number of grants because it was prior to the formal eligibility being established.

I made some decisions in relation to groups that applied for assistance of a larger amount than $10,000. In saying no to that, the work we had done demonstrated they had had more than a 30 per cent reduction in turnover and had been eligible for JobKeeper, so we in the alternative made grants of $10,000 to a small number of businesses. But the bulk of the 3½ thousand have been paid in the last two weeks.

What I should have said is that, because of the large demand, we have at varying stages had to put in up to 20 additional staff into this particular section of RevenueSA to try to ensure that we get the money out as quickly as possible. It was this particular group, I think, to which I referred earlier in response to a question when I indicated that in the early days the existing staff were working until late in the evening and over the weekends to try to get the scheme up and going, get the first grants out, but we have now added up to an additional 20 people there on occasions to assist the manual processing of the grant scheme.