Welfare groups slam Labor’s lack of commitment to increase JobSeeker

Labor dumps plans to independently review the rate of JobSeeker payments and will not commit to increasing unemployment benefits if it wins government, angering welfare groups.

Shadow Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh. Picture: Joel Carret

Labor has dumped plans to independently review the rate of JobSeeker payments for out-of-work Australians and will not commit to increasing unemployment benefits if Anthony Albanese wins government next month.

The policy position, revealed by assistant Treasury spokesman ­Andrew Leigh at an Australian Council of Social Service forum on Tuesday, left welfare groups “deeply disappointed.”

Dr Leigh told the forum that, while he accepted it would be “a challenge” to live on the Jobseeker payment of $46 a day, Labor was examining a broader range of policies to ease cost-of-living pressures for poorer Australians.

The move to dump an independent unemployment benefit review – Labor’s policy since 2019 – comes after Anthony Albanese ­repeatedly denounced attempts to wind down inflated JobSeeker rates during the pandemic and said recently he would consider boosting the payment in “every budget”.

Asked by ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie to clarify Labor’s position on the Jobseeker payment, Dr Leigh said: “We haven’t committed to an additional increase.”

He also revealed the review proposed by then Labor leader Bill Shorten into the then NewStart payment in 2019 had been shelved.

“We don’t have a plan for an ­independent review at this stage,” Dr Leigh said. “The focus that we have has been around our social housing commitment … which would see 30,000 additional social and affordable homes put into the market.”

Anti-Poverty Week executive director Toni Wren said Labor’s announcement was “deeply disappointing”.

“We are concerned to see this is not a priority for the alternative government,” Ms Wren said. “The evidence is clear: increasing Jobseeker is the single most effective way of reducing poverty.”

Dr Goldie told the forum, and Dr Leigh, that there was “broad consensus across the community sector about the need to fix the ­adequacy of income support, in particular Jobseeker”.

“(It’s) a key cause of the level of poverty that’s being experienced … by single parents, older women (and) people with a disability,” Dr Goldie said.

Welfare groups have been ­concerned for some time about Labor’s position on Jobseeker, and had not been able to pin down a clear answer until Tuesday’s forum.

Having campaigned to raise the pre-pandemic Newstart payment and denounced moves to wind back the Covid supplement to JobSeeker during the lockdowns, Mr Albanese has said he would like to see the current rate of JobSeeker increase.

“I understand it‘s really tough for people to survive on JobSeeker,” Mr Albanese told the ABC last August.

“I, as a member of parliament on a much higher income, get that people do it tough. And I would like at some stage in a future government to be able to make further increases.”

In January, Mr Albanese said a government he led would consider improving the Jobseeker rate in every budget it held.

“Every budget should consider whether the commonwealth’s in a position to improve the JobSeeker rate, and that would be something that we would consider,” he said.

Supplied Editorial Australian Council of Social Service CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie

As recently as last month Mr Albanese dismissed a $13-a-fortnight indexation increase to JobSeeker in the federal budget – one of a raft of biannual adjustments to welfare payments for up to five million Australians – as not enough to help with cost-of-living rises for the nation’s poor. “At the moment, families are under massive pressure. Everything is going up,” the Labor ­leader said.

“We know the government spin was out there saying how well pensioners will be from this rise. The rise in the pension will not keep up with the cost of living. And pensioners are doing it really tough at the moment.”

The Business Council of Australia has also supported further reform of the JobSeeker allowance, welcoming the most recent increase and last year urging a return to “proper indexation” of the payment.

The Morrison government permanently increased the JobSeeker payment’s basic rate in February last year by $50 a fortnight, after years of pressure to increase the basic unemployment benefit rate. Scott Morrison ended a $550 coronavirus supplement to JobSeeker in March last year, which had seen unemployed Australians receive up to $1100 a fortnight in total at the height of the pandemic.

“If we are serious about addressing poverty, parties and candidates must commit to raising income support so everyone can cover the basics.”

With ACOSS also calling for a 50 per cent increase in the amount of Commonwealth Rent Assistance, Dr Leigh told the forum Labor acknowledged there was pressure on low-income renters in the private market.