With growing anecdotal evidence of rorting, it’s way past time companies were forced to disclose how much public money they’ve received.
Public companies rarely hand back government grants they don’t need but that’s precisely what Super Retail Group did yesterday morning when it unveiled a surprise doubling of net profit for the December half and disclosed it was voluntarily going to return $1.7 million of second half JobKeeper payments.
Super Retail is 29.8% owned by secretive Brisbane billionaire Reg Rowe, 76, who sits on the board overseeing his $766 million stake in the company which operates four retail brands: Rebel, BCF, Super Cheap Auto and Macpac Australia. Only its New Zealand operations and Macpac qualified for $6.5 million in wage subsidy payments disclosed in the 2019-20 full year results.
The $1.7 million voluntary hand back was
welcomed by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg yesterday and the disclosure sparked
plenty of media interest from the likes of The Guardian and ABC radio’s PM
program.
