We can’t call ourselves a fair country until we fix JobSeeker

A budget is coming. Much of the talk – in the idioms that typically surround the event – is of spending pressures and lack of revenue. But there is a blunter way of describing the current situation which we rarely hear: life in Australia is getting worse.

It has become harder to see a doctor and our kids are doing worse at school. I have written before of the way our workforce issues now span the entire life cycle: in childcare centres, schools, GP surgeries and aged care homes we are short of staff. As a nation, we work more than we used to, productivity has fallen, and wages are stuck. Houses are too hard to buy. When commentators talk of revenue shortfalls what they are really saying is this: life in Australia is going to get worse still.

Illustration by Jim Pavlidis.Credit:

This should prompt at least one large question: at what point does a nation accept that what it’s accustomed to thinking of as its identity is no longer an accurate description of its reality? Or to put this in simpler, more confronting terms: is life here still “easy”? Do we really have a “good lifestyle?” Are we any longer “laidback”? And perhaps most important: is Australia still, in any meaningful sense, “fair”?

The same question – about whether one’s longstanding self-conception still matches reality – might be asked of a political party. And so it was interesting, this past fortnight, to hear Labor ministers respond to questions about what their government might be planning to do for our poorest Australians, not, as one might hope, by answering the question, but by referring to Labor’s identity. “We’re a Labor government and we look for every opportunity to help the most disadvantaged people,” said Tanya Plibersek. “A Labor government will always look for ways in which we can provide assistance to those in need,” said the prime minister.

“Look for” is an odd phrase to have settled on, because actually not a lot of searching is required: there is a very clear consensus on the best way to do this. Recently a formal committee reported back on precisely this issue. The committee’s creation was prompted by independent senator David Pocock – but the government nonetheless established the body and was very happy to describe it as “The Albanese Labor Government’s new Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been non-committal when asked about raising Jobseeker in the budget.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

When asked about the committee’s recent recommendation to raise the JobSeeker payment, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has taken to saying it was one of 37 recommendations. Well, yes – but it was also, very deliberately, the first recommendation.

A “substantial increase” should be, the committee’s report states, the first priority. One of the committee’s members, Ben Phillips, described it in the media as “the most pressing concern” because of the “urgent need” to fix the “precarious financial situation” of those on the payment. In the budget, the government will almost certainly begin to act on other recommendations, and it is clear Chalmers wants to make sure they remain part of the conversation. But Phillips’ piece makes the committee’s position clear too: the first is by far the most important.

One of the interesting things in observing public life is how readily some connections are made and how rarely others. It seems to have been broadly accepted in much of the debate, and by much of the media, that increasing JobSeeker will be inflationary – therefore poor people must be sacrificed for the broader economy.

But last week, reflecting on suggestions that JobSeeker would cause inflation and lead to interest rate hikes, former Treasury secretary Ken Henry said he doubted this very much. He pointed out too – as other economists have – that we shouldn’t discuss JobSeeker spending alone; cuts to other areas of spending can be made. Too often we see the connections that confirm our existing view of the world and reject those that don’t.

JobSeeker was increased during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, briefly lifting recipients out of poverty.Credit: Jason South

One of the reasons JobSeeker has become a more important part of debate in recent years is the fact it was briefly and significantly raised during the pandemic. It was a spontaneous experiment, and the results seemed obviously good: suddenly, people were lifted out of poverty, able to eat, buy medicines and heat their homes.

As writer and researcher Eleanor Hogan outlined last year, it also led to an unwitting social experiment in Alice Springs, where property crime “plummeted” in 2020. Some put this down to a quasi-curfew, but a “more compelling” theory, she suggested, is the rise in JobSeeker and decrease in poverty. When the payment fell again, property crime resumed. Amidst the national clamour over Alice Springs, such connections are largely ignored.

We are always selective in what we emphasise and ignore – which brings us back to the question of national identity. To call ourselves “fair”, for example, requires disregarding some important facts, like entrenched Indigenous disadvantage. One of the reasons the Indigenous Voice currently enjoys wide support is, I suspect, the opportunity it offers to close the gap between our self-conception and reality. It feels increasingly hard to call ourselves “fair” with a straight face. Simply asserting you are a particular thing does not make it so.

Labor learnt this not so long ago, back in 2010, when it postponed its emissions trading scheme. The scheme was increasingly under fire, but postponing it did political damage to Kevin Rudd because of the perception, fair or not, that he had failed to act in accordance with the beliefs he had fervently claimed to hold. He had defined himself in one way; now his actions seemed not to match that definition.

It is clear the government does not believe a huge increase to JobSeeker would be popular in itself. But if Labor continues to assert it will always seek to help the most vulnerable – if it insists this is central to the very definition of what it is to be Labor – then at some point it must do so, or come up with a different description of itself.

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