Indexation is no increase: Albanese government spin hides entrenched poverty crisis

Albanese government boasts of “increase” to Centrelink payments harms welfare recipients and perpetuates the same myths as Morrison

Welfare recipients will be no better off despite claims that indexation is an “increase” to Centrelink payments.

As Albanese, Chalmers and Rishworth condemned millions to continued poverty last week by refusing to respond to desperate please for higher welfare payments. They are now further perpetuating the harm by falsely equating payment indexation to a payment “increase”.

Included below: comments from the Antipoverty Centre; background statistics and data sources; crisis line contact information.

The government is weaponising labour market shortages, refusing to support people despite the structural barriers to work faced by the vast majority of welfare recipients and continuing of workfare policies that make it harder to get a job. This feeds relentless media poor bashing.

The Jobs Summit offered nothing to respond to the barriers to paid work created by poverty and “mutual” obligations, or to give us meaningful prospects of our lives improving.

$1.78 a day indexation for the base JobSeeker rate offers no relief for the millions of people subjected to poverty payments and the treatment we receive in the media. Indexation is designed to ensure that payments do not fall behind CPI, however CPI is an inadequate measure of rising living costs for people on low incomes in urban areas – it doesn’t even attempt to measure the pressures facing those in remote areas.

The reality is that people on welfare are suffering each and everyday and we will continue to suffer unless politicians stop justifying cruelty and stop forcing us to try and survive in poverty. People are being forced into homelessness, with the maximum rent assistance of $72 a week a pittance compared to median rent of $508 per week. Some properties have increased by $100 a week between tenancies.

More people will starve themselves, more people will become homeless, and more people will die for as long as the government refuses to spend money and use its vast resources to help us.

Quotes attributable to Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and DSP recipient Kristin O’Connell

Every time this happens we receive an influx of messages from people in extreme distress – psychological and financial.

The welfare system is killing people and it’s only getting worse. These choices politicians are making directly harm us.

It is not “financially responsible” to leave millions relying on poverty payments. It is not “financially responsible” to deny us the ability to pay for food, healthcare, rent and bills.

Welfare recipients are the best budgeters in the country and we can tell the government one thing: If you are forced to choose between luxuries and essentials, you have to prioritise basic needs. And Albanese is failing in his duty of care to ensure everyone can afford to have their basic needs met.

Quotes attributable to Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and JobSeeker recipient Jay Coonan

It’s clear this government doesn’t want to do a thing about the poverty crisis. In fact, they are politicising it.

The unemployment rate doesn’t tell the story about what’s happening in reality, but it’s a perfect scapegoat they use to justify doing nothing for the millions who can’t afford to eat, who have no secure place to live, or are at risk of losing their home.

Poverty is by design and Albanese has committed to keep millions below in poverty line while we face a cost of living crisis.

The prime minister seems more interested in spinning the truth, hoping no one will notice he’s forcing people to survive on payments as low as half the poverty line. It’s farcical for Labor to claim they’re the party of the working class when they are happy to crush the poor just as much as the Coalition.

We are constantly at breaking point. We can’t take anymore pathetic government virtual signalling or platitudes from paid advocates.

Not only does Labor punish us with “mutual” obligations and refuse to make Centrelink payments liveable, they are more aggressively chasing so-called debts from the poorest while giving tax cuts to themselves.

They pat themselves on the back for the Jobs Summit “consensus”, but all it means is they agree with the millionaires and billionaires that our lies are worth nothing. It would have been inconvenient to heed the calls of unemployed advocates and ACOSS to allow our objections to be heard, either inside or outside the building.

Media contact: email media at antipovertycentre.org or call/message 0413 261 362 via Signal

Background and key statistics

Click here to download a more in-depth background document compiled earlier this year containing additional statistics and links to all data sources.

• After September indexation is applied, the base rate of the JobSeeker payment is 45% below the latest poverty line (as at March 2022) of $611 per week. Youth Allowance is 56% below the poverty line.
• The cost of basic necessities increases at a dramatically faster rate than optional items, having risen by 61.4% and 38.6% respectively between 2005 and 2020. The cost of some vegetables has more than doubled in the past two years.
• About 200,000 people on unemployment payments, or 1 in 5, are employed.
• While the unemployment rate has not been this low since the 1970s, the number of people relying on JobSeeker to survive is 47% higher than before the pandemic.