Politics

The Australian Government Continues To Punish People On JobSeeker

A $3.50 per day "raise" is a punch in the face for unemployed people.

by Joshua Badge  24 February 2021
JobSeeker Raise

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The Morrison government yesterday announced a $3.50-a-day raise to the JobSeeker payment, confirming that it will push up to 1.3 million recipients further into poverty when it ends the COVID supplement in March.

The government was forced to temporarily increase the rate in the early weeks of the pandemic but, for reasons incomprehensible to anyone with a conscience, it has decided to plunge people further into deprivation.

The unemployment benefit hasn’t seen a meaningful increase in decades. When adjusted for inflation, it has, in fact, declined in value. With this negligible increase, unemployed people will still be forced to drudge it out well below the poverty line.

Kristin O’Connell, spokesperson for the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union, said that the announcement was “a punch in the face”.

“There’s no question that this isn’t enough money to live on,” she told Junkee, “I have so many people telling me that they feel like they have no hope, that they’d be better off dead.”

This is a return to pre-pandemic starvation rates, which saw the vast majority of job seekers skip meals. Likewise, it won’t surprise you to learn that rentals are universally unaffordable for people on the payment. After rent, unemployed people might be left with just $7 a day to live.

The administration that brought you robodebt and cashless debit cards plans to tighten eligibility, increase mutual obligations, and ‘audit’ jobseekers in yet another bid to terrorise people barely scraping by.

Meanwhile, the base salary of an MP is more than $200,000 a year. That’s $550 per day. On top of that, federal politicians receive a $290 allowance for every day they spend in the capital to cover accommodation and meals.

In other words, lawmakers forcing hundreds of thousands of people into destitution receive as much money in fringe benefits per day as unemployed people will receive per week. The fact is that no politician could survive the rates they approve.

They have never sat at the kitchen table late at night, faced with a choice between fixing the car and paying the bills. They have never had to soothe a child in pain from an empty stomach. They have never known the terror that gnaws at you when you have no idea how you’ll make it to through the week.

This “raise” to JobSeeker is an insult. An extra three dollars per day won’t buy you a cheeseburger from a fast-food chain, let alone a decent shot at a dignified life while you’re in between jobs. Of course, the empty husks which haunt the halls of parliament are well aware of this.

Last year, Morrison claimed that the boosted JobSeeker rate was a ‘disincentive’ to finding work. This is standard rhetoric and no-one made much of it at the time. Still, it was a confession that the government uses poverty, hunger and the threat of homelessness as weapons against poor people.

If an army withheld humanitarian assistance to civilians, we would call it a war crime. However, when the government does the same to its own people, it is merely policy. Not only is this horrendous and inhumane, but it’s also futile.

Starving people can only hurt their chances of landing a job and only serves to make their lives miserable. What’s more, there are a dozen job seekers for every vacancy right now; there aren’t enough jobs to go around. The government is punishing poor people for the hell of it.

Government ministers also announced a new hotline for businesses to dob in unemployed people who reject a job offer, but failed to provide evidence that is a real issue. ‘DobSeeker’ (not its actual name) encourages employers to spy on the unemployed, and reinforces the government’s attitude that poor people are criminals.

This is window dressing in the LNP’s narrative that poor people are poor because they refuse to work, implying they deserve poverty. It’s also a way to bludgeon people into accepting underpaid or unsafe work, such as fruit picking, which the government can’t currently import people of colour to do.

In a display of sheer spinelessness, Labor has refused to name a dollar amount for a JobSeeker increase, yielding power to a government that despises its citizens. God forbid the opposition, y’know, oppose the government. The fact that $3.50 is the only increase in 20 years is an indictment of both major parties.

The existence of hardship has always been a deliberate, political choice. We could end poverty anytime. The government proved so when it increased welfare payments overnight, after years of bleating about ‘debt and deficits’.

There’s no difference between people starving before, during or after the pandemic. The solution is simple: give people enough to live. No matter if you’re poor, a student, unemployed or all three, you deserve better than packet noodles and avoiding the doctors because you can’t afford the bill.

One half of parliament cares more about numbers on a page than its people. The other half is a pathetic excuse for a worker’s party. The government will continue to raze people’s lives, and the opposition will keep watching them do it — so long as we let them.

Joshua Badge is a queer writer and philosopher living on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne. They tweet at @joshuabadge.