Labor’s assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh says Premier Investments, the retail giant chaired by billionaire Solomon Lew, should repay more than $45 million it has received in JobKeeper payments after the company booked an 80% increase in first-half sales.

In a trading update, Premier Investments revealed its first-half sales had soared by roughly 80%. Premier’s share price hit all-time highs on the back of the news.

Mr Leigh has told Brooke Corte that “it beggars belief that they can have their hand our for taxpayer’s cash,”

“We’ve got a million people out of work, we’ve got another million who would like to get more hours, peoples unemployment benefits are being cut and the unemployment rate isn’t expected to return to pre-pandemic levels for a number of years,

“We don’t have the spare government cash to be subsidising big dividends to billionaires and bonuses to multi-million dollar CEOs,” Mr Leigh told Brooke Corte.

Click play to hear the full interview: