When we are in times of need - caring for children and others, unemployed or underemployed, unable to work due to disability, study or age - income support is supposed to… support us. It’s a pragmatic decision as well as a moral one - our nation functions better when all its members can feed, house and maintain themselves.
The current rates of income support are not fit for this purpose. Why not?
The rates are given modest indexed increases every year, but they aren’t keeping up with the costs of living. As a result, some income support is now as low as 52% of the poverty line.
No-one can manage to live on this little.
The number of private rental properties in major cities that are affordable is zero. The wait list on public housing is more than a decade. Without options, Australians are forced into sleeping in their cars, staying in abusive relationships, using their entire payment on rent, and other unsafe and unhealthy situations.
People on income support skip meals and medications often, which leads to health complications. (We know of one person who acquired scurvy. Scurvy!)
All of these problems are devastatingly expensive for both individuals and the public system. Saving money in the Budget from inadequate welfare is paid out in ten thousand other ways as vulnerable Australians suffer.
This is deeply immoral, and lacking in all practicality.
Income support rates must be raised immediately to the Henderson Poverty Line
There isn’t a good measurement of poverty in Australia, but the HPL is the least worst - it at least attempts to base its calculations on the real cost of food and necessities.
Why do we recommend the HPL?
We know it works. During the early pandemic, the COVID Supplement was set at the HPL and the effects on alleviating suffering were dramatic.
We need to make the base rate high enough to not become instantly inadequate again as soon as costs of living raise a smidgen.
We’re facing a number of massive systemic issues (a national housing shortage, few bulk-billing GPs, increasing natural disasters) that will require years to improve. At an individual level? With enough money, these are problems. Without enough money, these are catastrophes.
Poverty kills
Financial stress is now the leading driver of suicidality, with a shocking average of 8.6 deaths every single day.
Poverty also leads to deaths which are harder to quantify but still very real: heart attacks from poor diet, road accidents caused by brake pads the owner could not afford to replace, pneumonia acquired while sleeping rough, self harm, self medication, violence from staying in unsafe circumstances, a thousand other terrible harms caused by lack of resources and lack of options.
Raising income support to the HPL will reduce these deaths. Dramatically.
Punitive Rates Do Not Work
The logic of an inadequate Jobseeker payment goes like this: we make the rate unsustainably low so that recipients are desperate to get off it. That motivates them to find a job quickly.
This does not work even in times when there are not 15 applicants for every entry-level job.
Job seeking requires:
a stable address
a working phone with credit
work clothes
relevant tickets and certifications
reliable transport
child-care
What do all these requirements rely on? Money.
The inadequate rate of Jobseeker is now proving to be a barrier to finding work. Raising income support to the HPL will give people the money they need to get their car serviced, their hair cut, new shoes purchased… everything they need to have a reasonable chance at finding employment.
Saving money on income support is false economy
We all still need housing and food and health care and that has to come from somewhere. Currently, it comes from federal, state, council, and charity funding for shelters and food banks and emergency rooms and other stopgap measures. It often costs far more to prevent the problems poverty causes than to solve them.
Raising income support will save the government and taxpayers money.
Every dollar put into the pocket of someone who lives in poverty will be spent
Not because they are bad at budgeting - the poor are generally extremely skilled at money management - but in order to fix the massive backlog of unattended necessities. During the Covid supplement, people on welfare were finally able to attend to getting their brakes fixed, their teeth cleaned, their appliances upgraded, their shoes replaced…
Money given to the least wealthy is spent multiple times over - up to six dollars for every dollar spent. Back into the economy, stimulating growth, jobs, and tax income.
Food, shelter, safety: all of these things are precarious when you are poor.
To live in poverty is to live in constant survival threat.
Poverty robs you of the capacity to think about almost anything else. To do almost anything other than stay afloat.
This is a problem when you also need to be searching for employment, or keeping the employment you already have, or studying, or caring for a child or loved one. It is extraordinarily difficult to do that well when your brain is running on empty and has been for months or years.
It’s also impossible to do most of the activities that make life meaningful. To read a complicated novel, or learn a foreign language, or volunteer at your kid’s school, or join the SES, or learn to sketch, plant a garden, be a good sibling, a good friend, a good neighbour, a good citizen.
Being disabled, unemployed or a carer isn’t a crime but we have delivered this punishment: no joy. No connection. No meaning. All of these things require a capacity poverty has denied you.
And we deny the nation as well. How much better off would we be if these hundreds of thousands of people were free to contribute in every way they currently cannot?
Raise income support to the Henderson Poverty Line and we will benefit.
