Prime Minister Scott Morrison has defended not rushing into a wage subsidy plan to help employers and their staff during the coronavirus crisis, saying it is not a case of "cutting and pasting" what other countries might be doing.
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Earlier, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann confirmed the Morrison government is working on a wage subsidy so that business can keep workers on their payrolls during the crisis.
The government, including the prime minister and Senator Cormann, has repeatedly resisted following a UK-style 80 per cent wage subsidy, saying it would take too long to introduce.
"We are going to do it in an Australian way," Senator Cormann told ABC television's Insiders program on Sunday.
"We're going to do it in a way that actually is going to be able to be delivered, using our existing systems and our existing architecture."
Mr Morrison said the government was working very carefully to ensure that income support could be delivered in a way that gets it to people as quickly as possible using the existing payment systems.
"When we do these things it is not a matter of just cutting and pasting ideas from other places," he said on Sunday when announcing a new $1.1 billion package to help with mental health and other issues on Sunday.
"We have seen in many other jurisdictions that are putting these in place, they (are) having to rapidly redesign them and change them."
Senator Cormann declined to go into the specifics of the plan but said the government intended to make an announcement "over the next few days".
Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles said a wage subsidy would be a step in the right direction.
"I think that the long queues that we've seen at Centrelink during the course of this week have been a function of an absence of a proper wage subsidy," he told Sky News.
Business groups and unions have also urged the government to pursue a wage subsidy in response to the escalating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"To cushion the broader impacts of the virus, the common goal in Australia and other countries is to keep businesses operating, reduce job losses and maintain supply," Australian Industry chief executive Innes Willox said in a statement.
More than 100 economists, social and public policy experts, unionists and business leaders have sent an open letter to the federal government and national cabinet urging the introduction of a liveable income guarantee.
They say the existing welfare system is unable to cope with extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
"The measures the government has introduced already, doubling the Jobseeker payment and temporarily lifting mutual obligation requirements are welcome but far from enough at this extraordinary moment," the University of Queensland's Professor Greg Marson said in a statement.
He said a liveable income guarantee would streamline processes as the crisis accelerates.
This would include removing conditions attached to accessing to the Jobseeker and other payments, including the coronavirus supplement, fast and simple.
Australian Associated Press
