Dear Mr Steven Georganas,
I’m writing to you in regards to my experience and struggle with living below the poverty line, for more context, the payment made to me known as the ‘JobSeeker Payment’.
As an independent 23 year old, living with a learning disability and physical disabilities and trying my best to make a long substantial career for myself within the arts is South Australia, my biggest worry is always how I can afford to live another day, how will I afford my rent this week whilst already living in
low income housing, how will I afford to eat this week, how will I afford transport to my jobseeker meetings.
Summed up, my biggest worry in life is being able to afford to live.
Personally, I feel like I am worth less than someone who earns more than myself, how can i compete at housing inspections or job interviews when they can afford to buy new clothes and shoes for the interview, they can drive their clean and expensive car, and afford to be freshly groomed with nice hair, nails, skin and makeup.
How can I compete with that when I have to decide whether to use my
money to eat or pay my rent before even thinking about caring for my looks?
The current job seeker payment leaves me with $54 a day, this is $32 a day below the Hendersonvpoverty line. And once I pay for my rent and my bills, this leaves me with $100 to feed myself over 2 weeks. How should I pay for transportation? For further education? For clothes? For self grooming?
How should I visit my family? If I get sick, how should I pay for medication? This leaves me feeling isolated and less of a human being, and because of this I feel I have struggled for so long in finding employment and bettering my life.
During covid, although not able to leave the house, I was able to afford to live my life comfortably. My bills were paid, I wasn’t in debt and I was well fed. The government has proven lifting the unemployed out of poverty is possible, and then was taken away from us, as the rest of the world grew more and more expensive, our payments could never match.
I have accepted that I will never be able to afford the adequate medical care that I need, I will never not stress about financial insecurity and that I will never match those not living on Centrelink payments.
But should this be the case? Should I have to accept that never exceeding poverty is my future? This is where the government needs to step in, Australia is becoming a country of financial division.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s near impossible to escape poverty once you fall into it, and the rich just laugh and tell us to get a job. There’s no houses, we have no money or savings, we have no way out. So please, the government has done it before as I previously stated, please raise and support those living in poverty and lift our payments.
People don’t want to be living off a Centrelink wage, but how do we earn our own in this current situation? How do we fix this on our own? The answer is we can’t we need your help, we are crying out for help. No one should have to live this way, no one deserves to live this way.
Each and every one of us has dreams, plans, and can do such great things, all we need is the opportunity to do so.
Kindly,
Abbey
Anti-Poverty Network SA 