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The long queues outside Centrelink and the crashes on the website have fuelled the fears of many people, including myself, that one wrong sentence in the application means we will be denied relief, or worse, that even if we are eligible, the money could take weeks to come in, way past the point of financial solvency.
After taking account of housing costs, it is estimated that 3.24 million people, equating to more than one in eight people, are estimated to be living below the poverty line in Australia. For children, it is estimated to be one in six.
The uncertainties are not ended by last week's announcement. The statement only vaguely signals that the Department will 'work' with recipients to identify 'further proof points'. What constitutes a 'proof point'? The government needs to disavow its past conduct in a much deeper, detailed and clear way. Instead, it has gone silent.
Adam Smith wrote 'no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable'. Poverty and inequality lead to non-participation in work and inhibit social mobility, which negatively affects economic growth. The concentration of economic power is bad for democracy.
If government is concerned for citizens' wellbeing, it should properly resource services — drug and alcohol support, parenting support, subsidised childcare, education and so on. Instead, it is generating a system of social credit: rewarding those who toe the line and punishing those whose 'score' falls below that of the 'good citizen'.
I was heartened by the announcement Gordon Legal is pursuing a class action for robodebt victims. I am one of hundreds of thousands of people who has gone through the robodebt process. I too felt the exercise of a reverse burden of proof; guilty until proven innocent.
A policy genuinely in support of moving into employment would not seek to capitalise on the ambiguity of accounting in the year of transition from welfare to work — which is effectively what robodebt does.
It's not just government departments that are making life difficult for those without internet access. Many elderly people have the time and inclination to volunteer for different organisations and causes, but come up against a number of rules that block their ability to give their time.
My JAP informed me I was required to do 21 hours per week of Mutual Obligation activity, in addition to looking for work. They assured me the 21 hours would help me remain focused on the task of finding work. I replied I would now have to stop doing the things that were keeping me motivated to satisfy my Mutual Obligation requirements.
There is one type of family that consistently is omitted from pro-family government rhetoric: that of the single mother. Instead of making life easier for single-mother families, the government has imposed additional requirements as a pre-condition to their receiving the payments they need to support themselves and their children.
Australia’s income support system and employment services have shifted to an ever harsher regime of compliance and penalty, while failing to find work for hundreds of thousands of people.
Day by day, home owners in this Canberra street scout out potential wealth and children walk to school, unaware of who they've attached their names to. Mick Shann wasn't just any public official and his legacy lives on in other places. In scars carved into the backs of miraculous survivors. In empty coffins and overflowing graves.