It's not uncommon for politics to annoy me, but to hear the Prime Minister refer to a possible raising of the the Newstart Allowance as 'unfunded empathy' almost made me feel sick. All the data, regardless of the source, is clear: the allowance hasn't been raised in real terms since 1994, and the amount of money it offers people leaves them perilously close to the poverty line.
It takes means to achieve ends. Try buying a house without a bank loan if you don't believe me. Keeping people on a level of support that effectively corresponds to subsistence is a surefire way of ensuring their circumstances will never change. And to think, our former Deputy Prime Minister is struggling to make ends meet on over $200k a year. If he's struggling on $200k, I wonder how he'd feel on $12k. Because on people on Newstart have children, too. And they need to try to get to interviews, and buy the clothes and get the haircuts to have a chance. And get their kids looked after to get there.
It's pretty well documented that the demands placed on people in order to receive a Newstart payment consume a dispiriting amount of the payment itself. This is why people fail to 'meet their obligations'. It's not bludging. It's the unfairness of the expectation. It isn't welfare to do this to people. It's cruelty.
And it's illogical. If people were paid enough to be able to change their circumstances, the overwhelming majority would choose to do so. Why? Because all the world over, there is a direct statistical correlation between paying people enough to change their lives and them choosing to do so. The countries that best support people when out of work have the fewest people out of work. Naturally, over time, this saves the state a great deal of money, both in payments saved and taxes earned. So, not only is the present circumstance a cruelty, it's an economic fallacy.
But rather than wind this back, the Prime Minister doubled down, arguing that "the harder people work, the more they earn." Seriously? It staggers me that we have a Prime Minister either with the ignorance or the amorality to say such a thing with a straight face. Clearly, he's never been a teacher, or a nurse, or a farmer, or a firefighter, or a police officer, or a stay-at-home parent, or a shift-worker, or a soldier. Perhaps he's spent too much time with people like Tony Abbott, who was still quietly earning his $200k a year salary despite being so drunk that he couldn't be roused to attend a parliamentary vote. (Nice work if you can get it.) Perhaps, if the government persist in their plan to drug-test Newstart Recipients, they could find it in their hearts to breathalyse themselves from time to time?
Politicians lie, omit, spin and obfuscate. For better or worse, it's part of the job. I'm not so idealistic that I expect this to change. But I take serious issue with the Prime Minister - the Prime Minister of ALL Australians - when he uses such offensive nonsense as the reason to hold tight to our entrenched inequities.
This is not how you govern. It's how you preside. And in lieu of actual leadership, social inequality continues to grow in line with the voracious moral indifference of economic forces.
The Prime Minister earns $550k a year. For the record, that's the same amount of money needed to provide a year's worth of Newstart Allowance for 43 people. I hope he's taken this into account when determining whether or not he's working hard enough to earn his stipend.