Effectively doubling the JobSeeker rate from about $565 to $1115 per fortnight was both Scott Morrison’s smartest and dumbest move during the pandemic.
It was smart because it helped keep millions out of poverty — defined as $1100 per the Henderson rate or $816 by ANU — which in turn kept the economy from tanking. Deloitte estimates that winding down and removing the $550 coronavirus supplement would reduce government spending by $23 billion over two years but shrink the broader economy by a whopping $31.3 billion.
It was dumb because it proved beyond all doubt that impoverishing Australians is and always has been a political choice. It’s a choice apparently made on the belief that feeling entitled to survival while un/underemployed is a moral failing.
“In this new normal that we’re living in, it’s no longer about entitlement. It’s about need,” Morrison said when announcing a related policy, temporary free childcare.
Of course it had been obvious for some time that JobSeeker (formerly Newstart) is not designed to be able to live on. A good chunk of the Coalition either actively despises the unemployed (see: robodebt) or believes poverty is genuinely the best catalyst for seeking employment (see: the maze of horrifically-funded bureaucracy at Centrelink; the massively-over-funded, punitive and privatised jobactive scheme).
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has recently been scolding unemployed people to “turn off Netflix” and take up fruit picking. Weirdly, the prospect of $3 an hour and complete travel/housing dependency doesn’t have poor people rushing out the door to leave home for weeks or months at a time.
But the current plan to send 740,000 Australians into poverty amid a global pandemic (at a net loss to our still-recovering economy) provides an opportunity for what can generously be described as a flaccid opposition.
Both the pandemic and residual trauma from the 2019 election loss have, somewhat understandably, turned Anthony Albanese into a quiet reactionary. Other than complaining, Labor’s only action under Albo has been pitching a wage subsidy it’s doomed to never receive credit for, ditching a (vital) franking credits policy, and managing a very loud climate denialist worried about losing his daddy’s seat.
However as Guy Rundle put it after Morrison’s Australia Day comments, merely criticising the Coalition’s failings paints the left as impotent.
Look at Albo’s Twitter account and it’s nothing but complaints and cringeworthy “jobs jobs jobs” memes.
You know what would upend that perception? Promising voters that, unlike the current government, Labor will end poverty for a good chunk of Australia.
Unlike Bill Shorten, Albanese has at least committed to raising JobSeeker. But, frustratingly, he refuses to name a rate. This has led to an “opposition” strategy played entirely on the government’s terms.
“We want the government to actually move on this,” Albanese told The New Daily. “On a range of policy issues, us announcing something that we can’t implement before the election doesn’t advance the change.”
When, in any part of human history, has this worked for an opposition party?
Either Morrison makes some slight rate increase in the months ahead and takes all the credit (which, according to murmorings today, seems likely), or he doesn’t and Labor keeps telling us to just give him space.
This isn’t to say Labor isn’t still pushing the issue. Just yesterday, Jim Chalmers leapt at Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe’s latest call for an increase. But literally no voter will remember this when the election rolls around.
Albo needs to name and campaign on a JobSeeker rate above $816 if he is to make any headwind with voters. It would be a simple, digestible (at least relative to franking credits) and deeply humane message.
Sure, there’ll be the McCormacks and News Corp hacks of the world crying about dole bludgers, but what even remotely possible Labor voter could fall for that right now? After everything Australia has just been through?
There is nigh-unanimous support from business for a higher rate and the economic benefits are undeniable. Even before the pandemic, an increase was supported by the Business Council of Australia and John Howard.
Besides, look to the US’ recent, vital run-offs in January: the Democrats pushed for $2000 survival cheques and, against the odds, won both seats in Georgia after falling behind on primary votes in 2020.
Voters like being told their leaders want to keep them alive. It’s not only morally right, but an easy, fiscally responsible, and time-limited way to win an election.
I will never understand how it’s politically expedient to leave large numbers of people in poverty, either through the pittance that is welfare, or by the conditions that keep workers in low-paying insecure work.
We don’t have to keep people in poverty, we choose to, and do so with moralising superiority about lifters and leaners, and that those who give a go get a go. It’s putting hardship and heaping misery onto millions with a moral fervour that it’s the right thing to do. I just don’t get it!
And it rebounds onto the next generation who’ve already got vastly more tragedy on their plates than is reasonable. It’s partly that Labor has never been a party for the poor, just the workers, and partly because they daren’t show that they understand an alternative to neolib economics in case they have to defend it. After Lowe’s speech, Albo has to provide a figure or a formula.
And by thus restricting the spending power of these many hundreds of thousands of desperate people the chances of keeping the economy ticking over decreases, dollar by dollar.
One major flaw with Labor and the dole and their current lack of policy. Albo, Bill, Tanya and Co, in 2013, voted for
(a) a non-increase in the value of the dole — which hadn’t changed for 19 years and is normally one of the lowest in the developed world — (b) the tightening up of the DSP requirements and (c) moved the legislation to off load sole parents from their pension onto the dole when their child turned eight. (Albo was actually reared by a sole parent, his mother, on a sole parent pension). Some sole parents, mainly women, then had to couch surf, sleep in their cars, work in massage parlours and some committed suicide, according to Centrelink. On this, the then and current ALP, plus the Coalition, has their blood on their hands with suicides still occurring. At the same time (2013), of course, the ALP supported a 35% pay increase for MPs. No wonder there is poverty then and now — not amongst MPs of course.
The ALP leadership class also knew, then (and now), that the real unemployment figures, according to Julia Gillard and Penny Wong at the time, showed two million unemployed chasing around 150,000 vacancies or one vacancy for every twenty unemployed, plus underemployment of around 1 million, but ploughed on putting their class boot into those on welfare, particularly the dole.
To fess up to this is the real reason why Labor is all over the place on what figure the dole (and other welfare payments) should be.
Marcus, it was Howard who brought in the policy of forcing single parents on to Newstart after the youngest child turns 8 in 2006. I know because I was one of them. He grandfathered existing pensioners, Gillard levelled the playing field for all. I just wish she had overturned the policy completely.
Gillard’s attack on single parent benefits will forever blacken her name.
Couldn’t get much blacker than it already is.
Totally correct, but also stating the bleeding obvious to everyone but the Labor front bench.
Have often wondered why so many politicians are so lousy at politics.
Once you’re on the front bench, you’re living a very nice life and if you’re in opposition, one with apparently very little responsibility. MSM doesn’t want change so why bother? When Albo became leader, all I can remember he did was expel Setka. What was the point? If you’re going to lose, for god’s sake let it be for trying to serve your country, not your property portfolio, and for setting a line in the sand cogently with progressive economics. And if you’re not cutting through, innovate or let someone else try.
He’s probably afraid for his parliamentary party that all those people that were never going to vote for Labor won’t vote for Labor because of this?
The low unemployment benefit is all about the ‘punishers and straiteners’ having the upper hand in the social debate. As our demographic age pushes higher this is exacerbated as those who did manage to work for 45 years, aided by much better social conditions and pay, now complain about others ‘having it easy’.
Everyone’s entitled these days, except for the unemployed and single parents. They make up the underclass for everyone else to shoot down.
Raising to $816 a fortnight is the best cost-effective economic stimulus, and perhaps leaves us a nominally fairer society. And nobody seems to want that anymore.