The push to raise the JobSeeker rate has been a staple of public discourse for years. Studies have been done on it, parliamentary inquiries have focused on it, countless articles have highlighted the need for it, but politicians on both sides of the aisle have staunchly refused to entertain to any meaningful level.
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Don't get me wrong. We all know that running the country is quite a difficult job. You can't make everyone happy all of the time and you have a responsibility to make sure that you are using public funds responsibly and for the greater good of the Australian public. If you have to piss off a cohort of the community, you'd probably be smart not to choose the group with more personal agency and power (and potentially donation money to burn), right? Certainly not the people benefitting from the Stage 3 tax cuts.
Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, and Federal Member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh stated that Labor campaigned for making the increase during the pandemic permanent and took the credit for the $6/day permanent increase that remained once the supplement was rolled back, because of the pressure Labor applied to the Coalition at the time. Maybe that's true, I'm not in the inner circle, but one thing I do know for sure is the 3.7 per cent increase under the Labor government in line with the CPI taking effect this week is nothing to be particularly proud of. That extra $1.77/day for people under 60 is going to go about as far as the 63c/day energy supplement.
One of the biggest problems that we face in this society is a moral superiority complex. There is an entrenched belief in our communities that if a person is jobless, then that's because there is something inherently wrong with them, that they are lacking in a moral work ethic that prevents them from doing paid work. Collectively, we seem to take issue with the idea of getting "something for nothing" even if that "something" is 41 per cent of the minimum wage and puts them 32 per cent below the poverty line. But sure, they're the problem insert eyeroll here .
The "incentive" model of social security fails to acknowledge that work is often much more than a pay cheque. It provides opportunities for social engagement, satisfaction, and purpose. This model also fails to recognise the contribution that people experiencing unemployment are making to the community outside of paid work.
People experiencing unemployment account for the second largest cohort of people who make up our community's volunteers. In fact, over a quarter of our volunteers are also jobless. When you consider that the economic benefit to the community that volunteering represents has been equated to $14 billion, this is nothing to sneeze at. One could argue that the unpaid work our volunteering jobseekers do, makes a sizeable offset to the $15 billion JobSeeker bill.
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However, at the end of the day, it is social attitudes that will always shape social security policy regarding people experiencing unemployment. Former director at the Centre for Independent Studies, Peter Saunders, for example, has argued that "there was a moral obligation for people receiving unemployment payments to participate in activities that were equivalent to the inconvenience of work so as not to be 'better off' than people in paid work." And this certainly seems to reflect community thoughts.
But, I ask you, do you really think that people experiencing unemployment are "better off"? Living 32 per cent below the poverty line, reduced access to specialist healthcare, long wait times for dental care, increased risk of mental health conditions, homelessness, malnutrition ... it doesn't sound like they are "better off" to me, despite any lack of "inconvenience" of having to go to work every day. The inconvenience of not being able to access basic needs strikes me as far greater than availability of time.
The UN's International Covenant of Economic, Social and Culture Rights (to which Australia is a party) states that access to adequate standard of living including adequate food, healthcare and housing is a human right. JobSeeker Allowance fails to reach this threshold.
If you can't afford $7 billion to raise the rate and feed our most vulnerable citizens, but you can afford up to $368 billion for submarines, then it's not a case of "can't".
It's a case of priorities.
- Zoë Wundenberg is a careers consultant and un/employment advocate at impressability.com.au, and a regular columnist for ACM.
- An earlier version of this article attributed a quote to Peter Saunders, a former director of the Social Policy Research Centre UNSW. The quote was made by a different Peter Saunders who was a director at the Centre for Independent Studies.
