Four Corners: July 1
Four Corners looks at what it’s like to live on $35 a day on the Newstart allowance.
- Published by David Knox
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This week Four Corners looks at what it’s like when you lose your job and your home and you’re forced to live on the Newstart allowance -just $35 a day for single unemployed people on the Federal Government’s Newstart allowance.
Australia’s economy – and unemployment rate – might be the envy of countries around the world, but it doesn’t mean poverty and unemployment have been eradicated.
Welfare agencies say that many individuals and families are just one or two pay cheques away from financial disaster and homelessness. Worse still, with the mining boom coming off the boil, experts predict more people will find themselves out of work.
This week on Four Corners, reporter Geoff Thompson finds out what it’s like to lose your job, your home and find yourself dependent on welfare. What he discovers is sobering. Ironically, while economic growth is generally good news, it’s also pushed up the cost of living, making life for the unemployed even tougher. A Senate Inquiry report released this month concluded the current unemployment benefit is set too low. For many of the people Four Corners spoke to, accommodation absorbs most of their money, even with additional payments for rent assistance. Running a car and eating nutritious meals becomes close to an impossible dream. The result? Their world contracts and they can find themselves cut off from society.
Spending time with private charitable organisations, Four Corners profiles five people across Australia who are struggling to survive. One of them is John. A few months ago he lost his job. He became ill and was forced into hospital. Now he searches for work and barely survives on the Newstart allowance. John lives on one meal a day of two minute noodles, and his only chance for a good meal is to line up at a food kitchen.
Like so many people, John doesn’t want sympathy, he simply wants support that allows him to survive while he looks for work – and he’s not an isolated case. Those on the frontline of welfare delivery warn that, based on the figures they are seeing, the problems associated with unemployment will increase in the near future.
Pastor Marty Beckett, who runs an emergency food and accommodation charity, told Four Corners the problem of poverty associated with unemployment isn’t getting better:
“No, it’s growing. It is growing, unfortunately. I always say to people it’d be great to put ourselves out of a job. I don’t see it happening soon though unfortunately. It, it’s getting worse.”
8:30pm Monday on ABC1
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5 Responses
I was on Newstart for a bit, I’m a non smoker, and a non drinker, so wasn’t ‘wasting’ money as some of you put it.
The only reason I could survive on it is that I own my own home, if I didn’t and had to pay rent, I couldn’t have done it, plain and simple.
Seriously some of you have no idea. $35/day is $245 per week. In many areas of Australia you are struggling to find share accommodation for less than around $140-$150 per week. That leaves you $100 to pay for food, transport, electricity, water, clothing, and phone (needed to apply for jobs). In Brisbane its around $10 for a round trip on public transport to the city for an interview or centrelink. You need to be able to catch a bus to the library to use their internet to apply for/search for jobs (another $10) several times a week or afford a computer and internet access at home. What if you have medical expenses? What if your fridge breaks down? What if you live rurally and need a car to get around? That is forgetting the fact that when you loose your job you have financial commitments. You might be locked into a lease with rent payments of $250 per week that costs a lot to break. I don’t know how you think people actually afford cigarettes, alcohol or luxuries.
It also takes time to find a job. It depends on you background and your experience. What if you have a prison record? What if you have been sick? What if the economy is bad and nobody is hiring? I can guarrentee that if I lost my job tomorrow that if I walked into a fast food restaurant, a retail store, or applied for a job as a cleaner nobody would give me a job because I would be considered way overqualified (I’ve been on that treadmill before) and yet the higher level corporate jobs aren’t hiring (actually nor is retail).
Until you’ve been in the position where you don’t know if you can afford your next meal pull your damn head in.
The overflowing cigarette butt bin and permanent smoke cloud outside of the local Centrelink office indicates where a lot of Newstart money goes.
Newstart is meant as an “assistance”, not a multi-generation income source.
The welfare payments were originally to help people get through the loss of a job for only a short period of time. Now there are those who expect to be able to live ‘high’ off it for ever and a day. A lot of people expect to have their cigarettes, alcohol and pizzas when ever they want and then whinge they can’t feed their kids. Its the ones paying rent I find have the worse job of balancing the money. More places from the Government to rent would defiantly help. I sometimes read of vacant houses of up to 2 years that could be bought cheaply and rented out.
It depends on your circumstances. If you own you house (which isn’t counted as an asset for welfare purposes) or are in public housing you can do it.
If you are renting somewhere like Sydney, then you get rent assistance so you get more than $35/day but it is still impossible.
The major problem is the high land prices in Australian cities so simply increasing welfare payments will deliver benefits to people who don’t need it and drive up rental demand and not help those who do.
You need welfare reform with a single payment, increased housing assistance and less high marginal tax rates on income earned combined with reform of property laws.
There are several chapters on all this in Henry’s tax reform report that the government ignored.