Anne Rushton rejects $75 a week permanent Jobseeker boost
A permanent $75 weekly boost to dole payments has been rejected by Social Services Minister Anne Ruston, who denied the federal government was considering the mooted change.
NSW
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A permanent $75 weekly boost to dole payments has been rejected by Social Services Minister Anne Ruston, who denied the federal government was considering the change.
Ms Ruston has hit back at reports the increase was a preferred option among Morrison Government cabinet ministers considering changes to unemployment benefits after the $550 fortnightly supplement for JobSeeker and $1500 a fortnight JobKeeper wage subsidy wrap up in September.
Newscorp reported the permanent boost taking the dole base rate from $565.70 a fortnight to $715.70 was expected to be unveiled by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in an economic update, slated for July 23.
But Ms Ruston said on Sunday morning there was no submission before the cabinet proposing the $75 a week raise.
“Obviously I’m not going to tell you all of the cabinet deliberations but what I can tell you is that I know of no such proposal and you can read into that what you like,” she said.
“Given I’m the Social Services Minister you’d like to think I’d be aware of (a submission).
“It’s factually incorrect and right now my focus, as is the whole government’s focus, is to help Australians to get through this pandemic.”
Ms Ruston said the government would work on “job creation” and opening up the economy by easing coronavirus restrictions.
“No-one ever said it would be easy to live on a low income or without a job,” she said.
“We’re looking around the states and territories to open up their economies so we can recreate jobs so we can get people who have found themselves unemployed through this pandemic, or on JobKeeper because their businesses had to shut down, slowdown, or step back, to make sure that those jobs are recreated so we can get Australians back to work.”
Ms Ruston said the government was in a “transition” period focused on reviewing the temporary coronavirus measures including the JobKeeper wage subsidy, and was not “looking at the long-term” yet.
“We’ve got a $550 coronavirus supplement on all income support payments, that is currently being considered in the context of the JobKeeper review,” she said.
“Clearly, JobSeeker and JobKeeper were put in place with the extra supports so they were actually working hand-in-glove as a parent pair of mutually inclusive supports to all Australians so we can make sure every Australian had the necessary support that they needed to get themselves through the pandemic.
“But at the time, we said they were targeted, they were temporary, they were measured and they still are and we are working in that environment of transition at the moment.”
Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek said people who had ended up on welfare due to the coronavirus shutdown closing their workplace were in for a shock if the JobSeeker payment returned to its pre-crisis rate of $40 a day.
“It is an inadequate payment, it doesn’t allow people to live with dignity,” she told Sky News.
“We now have hundreds of thousands of extra people joining the dole queue, people who have been working full time until very recently, that would very much struggle if what’s now called JobSeeker went back to the old Newstart rate.”
$75/WEEK BOOST FOR UNEMPLOYED MOOTED
This morning, The Sunday Telegraph reported unemployed Australians could be in line for a $75-a-week rise in benefits as the Morrison Government tries to virus-proof the community.
The permanent boost to unemployment benefits would take the base rate from $565.70 a fortnight to $715.70.
Senior ministers told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday the $75 rise was the preferred option for changes to unemployment benefits post the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rise would put an extra $3900 into the pockets of out-of-work Australians.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is expected to unveil a permanent boost to the dole as part of the mini-budget in July, when the Government outlines the next phase of its economic response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Despite pressure from economists, the Reserve Bank, welfare and business groups, the federal Government had resisted calls to increase the $40-a-day dole payment — previously called Newstart — until the pandemic hit.
At the height of the crisis, the welfare payment was lifted from a base rate of $565.70 a fortnight to $1115.70 as part of a temporary measure which expires in September. Several Government ministers confirmed the rate would be permanently lifted.
“There is no way it can go back to what it was. We have people on welfare that have never been out of work and now they are lining up outside Centrelink,” one minister said.
It is understood a $75-a-week boost which would see the daily rate rise by $10, is currently the preferred option among Cabinet ministers.
It’s estimated a $75-a-week increase would cost the federal budget $3.3 billion a year.
But a 2018 Deloitte analysis commissioned by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) found the $10 a day dole increase would boost consumer spending and help create more than 12,000 jobs.
“That money goes as extra income to a group that, on average, is the poorest of the poor in Australia. Other things equal, most of it is therefore spent. So it’s no surprise that the bulk of the dollars — some $3.3 billion a year — show up as extra spending by consumers,” the report found.
In just three months the unemployment rate has jumped from 5.1 per cent to 7.1 per cent as an extra 205,000 joined the dole queue. The National Party represents one third of the 25 electorates with the highest dependency on the Jobseeker, prompting its MPs to speak out.
First-term Nationals MP Pat Conaghan said the pre-COVID rate of Newstart was “inadequate”.
“In Nambucca and Kempsey in my electorate, 41 per cent of kids under the age of 15 live below the poverty line,” he said. “It’s disgraceful.”
The push to boost the Jobseeker rate comes as Treasury finalises its review of the $70 billion JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme which is due to expire in September.
Ministers are split on whether to roll back the scheme sector by sector, as it did with childcare workers, or stop the payment for all industries at the same time.
Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said the Government was clear all along that the measures are “temporary, targeted and scalable”.