Urgent action needed to reduce welfare deaths amid high costs and interest rate rises

Rapidly rising petrol prices and food costs, coupled with the latest punishing interest rate rise, require urgent intervention from government to protect people in poverty from further harm and deaths.

Included below: Comments from Antipoverty Centre spokesperson Jay Coonan, key statistics and crisis line contact information.

The Antipoverty Centre is calling on the Albanese government to:

• Immediately pause penalties for welfare recipients with compulsory activities, which add unnecessary costs and stress to 1 million people on poverty payments.
• Increase Centrelink payments so that no one is living below the poverty line, including people currently in low paid jobs who cannot access income support.

When the Morrison government briefly implemented these measures in response to the COVID pandemic, disturbingly high suicide and other death rates recorded among welfare recipients went down.

People on the lowest incomes have been hit the hardest by rising petrol prices and repeated interest rate increases, which do nothing to stop war- and profit-driven inflation but force more people to rely on Centrelink payments to live. Welfare recipients are the least equipped to bear the additional cost increases that will come as a result of today’s interest rate increase and ongoing disruptions to fuel supply.

At the same time as the RBA hopes to throw more people into unemployment, the Albanese government plans to reinstate penalties in October for 1 million people who are forced to engage in compulsory activities to keep their welfare payment. This will cause 10s of 1000s of people to have their Centrelink payment cancelled without human oversight,¹ regardless of whether they are still in need of income support.

People on Centrelink payments, particularly disabled people and those in regional areas or suburbs with insufficient public transport, are being forced to either drive or pay for taxis to attend compulsory activities that can last 5 minutes. In forced labour programs like Work for the Dole people must spend money to attend activities such as sorting through soiled clothing and doing meaningless busy work just to avoid complete destitution. People who do not attend risk their payment being stopped.

It is an indictment on the morality of this government that it hands out $22.5 billion a year in tax breaks to people with the highest superannuation balances, but will not increase payments for the poorest people in Australia, despite the fact that doubling JobSeeker would cost only half of that.

KEY STATISTICS

• 1 in 5 working age adults who die by suicide are on the JobSeeker payment²
• People on welfare (excluding the age pension) are up to 10 times more likely to die when compared to those not on welfare³
• The JobSeeker payment is $412 a week – $290 below the poverty line⁴
• 18 per cent of people on the JobSeeker payment are owner occupiers (data is not available on how many are mortgage holders)⁵
• People on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, Parenting Payment and the Disability Support Pension can be subjected to compulsory activities. There are currently 974,000 people in compulsory programs across Workforce Australia, Inclusive Employment Australia and the Remote Area Employment Service.⁶

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

We’re in a crisis where people in poverty under 65-years-old are extraordinarily over-represented in suicide deaths and all deaths. Rising interest rates, high prices and ongoing punishment of people with compulsory activities only make this worse.

This should be treated as a national emergency, not an acceptable human cost to save a few billion dollars in the federal budget.

The Albanese government’s rhetoric of “no one left behind” couldn’t be further from the truth. After more than four years in power, they’ve done nothing meaningful to reduce poverty for people on Centrelink payments, and are sitting by as the RBA pushes more of us into unemployment while living costs go up.

When we wrote to employment minister Amanda Rishworth about the impact of spiralling fuel costs on people with compulsory activities, she didn’t care. She kept compliance penalties in place and forced people who are unable to get paid work to spend what little money they have on wasteful and harmful activities.

Lives must matter more than this. We once again implore the Albanese government to take action that meets the scale of the despair felt by people in poverty. Keeping welfare compliance activities in place and forcing people to try and survive far below the poverty line is social murder.

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