Your salary shouldn't determine whether you have the right to survive

One of the most powerful social ideas that has driven our policy, community values and public discourse is the idea that the right to life is earned through a paid contribution to society.

As a careers counsellor, I have a lot of clients asking me if skills learnt through homelife or volunteering count as "real" skills; as if somehow managing a project budget only counts if you are paid to do it.

I also see clients who have been full-time carers and are looking to return to work, but have been conditioned to believe that the years they've spent raising their children or caring for a sick or elderly relative have created a career chasm that has sucked their capabilities into the void.

I bring this up because, like everyone else at the moment, I am worrying about the rapidly increasing cost of living. Food, petrol and utilities are becoming luxury items - so much so that I expect the GST to suddenly apply to fruits, vegetables and electricity in the coming weeks.

Why are we so OK with people rationing their medicine and skipping meals? Are we so wrapped up in the idea that if you work harder, you'll earn more (hint: it doesn't work like that), that we assume that poverty equals laziness and thus you don't deserve your insulin? Your dinner?

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is one that has floated about for many years. UBI is a payment made to all adult individuals which allows them to meet their basic needs without mutual obligations, work or activity tests (and regardless of need). There are a number of UBI models that range in application and generosity, but the fundamental theory underpinning it is that it is a good thing to provide a means for every citizen to survive.

Besides the costs involved, one of the biggest issues with the idea is that as a society, we seem to fundamentally recoil from giving something to someone for nothing, assuming that people won't "work" if they don't have to. This reaction is amplified when, as with UBI, such a program would involve changes to the tax system that would undoubtedly end up with us paying more tax to fund it.

It's a highly complex concept, but the complexity should not disparage the serious consideration.

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The COVID supplement paid during 2020 highlighted the impact that a boost in welfare payments can have on individuals under financial duress. The maximum rate for a single JobSeeker payment for someone without children during the period when the COVID supplement applied was $1124.50 a fortnight. Over a full-time fortnight of 80 hours, that's a pay rate of $14.06 an hour. Frankly, if businesses are claiming that people didn't want to return to work because they received more money on the supplement, then perhaps they need to look at the hourly rate and benefits they are offering their staff. In July 2020, the minimum wage was $19.84 an hour, and with the government claiming that employment levels are better than they were pre-pandemic, I find myself scratching my head at the claim that the boost in JobSeeker payments had a detrimental impact on people's willingness to work.

The fact remains that paid work is not the only kind of work of value in this country, and thus the money we earn should not be the determining factor in the "worth" of someone. Raising children, caring for sick and elderly relatives, volunteering for various charities and community groups, busking on the street - all of these things make our community what it is. Where along the line did we start thinking that some people were more worthy of survival than others?

As a society, we seem to downplay the value of our unpaid labour. And yet, when crises and natural disasters descend upon our nation, our governments are quick to call on the "volunteer spirit" of Australian communities to come together and help the recovery process while they sit on over $4 billion of emergency response funds.

How much we are paid for what we do should not determine whether we have a right to survive, and the value that we offer is not defined by the pay we may or may not receive.

We need a value overhaul in this country, and we need to remember we are populated by people, not numbers.