Dear Amanda: The Ball’s In Your Court

Written by Jane (not her real name).

Dear Amanda,

Long-term constituent, first-time caller.

I have been part of your electorate and the broader Adelaide southern suburbs since childhood. I was pleased to be able to buy my first house here when I returned from interstate study and work in late 2017, and I drive past your office almost every day as I go about my daily life.

Until recently, I never had much cause to write. Then Labor was elected, and I saw what you did with the power and responsibility you had been gifted by the electorate. 

But it’s what you didn’t do that has driven me to write. 

I’m talking about Jobseeker. 

Throughout the Coalition years and in the lead-up to the 2022 election, Labor was vocal about the woeful inadequacy of this payment. The statistics and stories piled up about the 3+ million people in poverty, including hundreds of thousands of children. The evidence about how easily Labor could change, even SAVE, these peoples’ lives, began to mount and has continued to do so. 

Given how readily Labor pointed out the Coalition’s failure to keep Jobseeker at a level that would bring its recipients out of poverty as soon as the immediate COVID crisis was deemed to have passed, I (naively?) hoped this meant meaningful action would be taken to fix this once Labor got the power to do so. 

After all, Albo grew up in public housing, with a mother whose social support payments contributed greatly to her survival, right?

I know I am far from alone in my profound disappointment that Labor continues to fail people on Jobseeker. People who are some of our poorest, most vulnerable, and hardest-working, who struggle to feed themselves or their kids, pay their power bills, afford life-saving medication, or meet their rent. People who probably VOTED for Labor believing, as I did, that finally we could have a government who didn’t persecute or ignore Australians in poverty. 

I cannot understand, as Social Services Minister: what bigger responsibility or priority you could have than to take a straightforward, ready-made action that economists, social services and public health organisations, lobby groups, and the Government’s own Economic Inclusion Advisory Commission have pointed to as the most obvious and immediate solution to lift millions out of poverty? 

Indexation of Jobseeker has produced increases below wages, below inflation, below the cost of a can of diced tomatoes from Aldi – no one could ever legitimately argue that this was truly a ‘raise’ of Jobseeker. One-off injections like the Stage-3 tax cuts, and supports to pay a power bill whenever electorally convenient, is like trying to put out a bushfire with a bucket. 

It’s insulting to expect gratitude for the crumbs that our most vulnerable are being thrown. It’s insulting for Labor to tout things like reinstating the General Social Survey as a means of gathering evidence to design policies that will help people, as if Labor doesn’t already know that a meaningful Jobseeker raise would do this in a heartbeat. 

It’s insulting that you run things like the Winter Appeal out of your office, when the people who benefit from this wouldn’t even need it if Jobseeker were above the poverty line, like the overwhelming evidence shows that it should be.

Labor is willing to spend billions on submarines to defend Australians and preserve our way of life when millions of people to whom Government is accountable live in poverty? What pride is there in preserving that? 

Labor is willing to spend millions on employment providers who have been found time and again to be rorting the Employment Service Provider system, but raising Jobseeker is financially irresponsible?

Labor says that they cannot inject any money that would risk prolonging or raising inflation, but spending is a matter of priorities. There are fiscal levers that Labor could pull to manage inflation increases; Jim Chalmers is happy to trumpet these whenever the RBA mentions Labor policies that have pushed back on inflation (the aforementioned power bill subsidies). So, I don’t accept the argument that Labor’s hands are tied on this.  

I am not in poverty. I have the good fortune to be relatively financially stable, and able to pay for all the things I need to keep me alive, and to make my life worth living. My life is not dominated by the daily struggle to survive on Jobseeker, or the fear that it will be taken from me for any perceived violation of arbitrary and inappropriate mutual obligations set by people who would never have to experience them. 

But you should know that it is not just the poor people that consecutive governments have continued to ignore and denigrate, who care deeply about this issue. No one should have to live in poverty. Everyone is entitled to dignity, respect, and care from their government. 

You work for these people. You seek reelection for the privilege of continuing to work for them. None of them – NO ONE PERSON – needs, or deserves, to live in poverty. 

Treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves. Have the courage to do right by our most vulnerable. Give us all a reason to believe in the good that governments can do, if they really want to. 

Raise the Jobseeker rate above the poverty line, and change the lives of millions the way that few people will ever have the power to do. 

The ball is – as it has been since May 2022 – in Labor’s court. It’s your move. For the sake of all Australians in poverty, make it the right one.