Sure you can live on $40 a day; just make these minor modifications …

Of course, job seek­ers also need to main­tain per­son­al hygiene and get them­selves to job inter­views. I’ve been spend­ing about $40 a month on basic clean­ing sup­plies and hygiene prod­ucts, so let’s add anoth­er $9 a week.

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On trav­el, let’s assume I ditch my car (which costs me about $260 a month just for insur­ance, rego and main­te­nance) and spend a min­i­mal $20 a week on pub­lic trans­port instead. Which would get me to the shops and a few job inter­views, maybe, but that’s about it.

OK, so now we’re at $159 a week, before any hous­ing costs.

How does that com­pare to Job­Seek­er? Well, the cur­rent base rate of Job­Seek­er, includ­ing the ener­gy sup­ple­ment but not includ­ing any coro­n­avirus sup­ple­ment, sits at $287.25 a week. Renters get anoth­er $69.80 a week max­i­mum assis­tance, bring­ing the week­ly total for an unem­ployed sin­gle renter to $357.05. So, after sub­tract­ing basic liv­ing costs, I have $198 left a week to find a rental place to live.

Because pay­ing my mort­gage isn’t an option any­more. Nor are any of the oth­er asso­ci­at­ed costs of home own­er­ship, such as water, sew­er­age, repairs, insur­ance and stra­ta fees.

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And in addi­tion to ditch­ing my home and rent­ing a bed­room in a share­house, pos­si­bly quite far out the city and away from jobs, I’d just need to make a few oth­er minor mod­i­fi­ca­tions to my lifestyle.

I could­n’t get sick, need med­i­cines or require any spe­cial­ist health inter­ven­tions. Unable to afford health insur­ance, I’d be out of pock­et for any den­tal or opti­cal ser­vices, which might have to wait. I def­i­nite­ly could­n’t afford any of the pro-active health-relat­ed expens­es I cur­rent­ly invest in, such as gym fees or trips to the psy­chol­o­gist, which help make me a ful­ly func­tion­ing and flour­ish­ing .

Oh well.

And I guess there’d be no week­ends away, hol­i­days or trips inter­state to see fam­i­ly. No hob­bies or sport­ing pur­suits. There’d be no presents for loved ones for birth­days or Christ­mas. Nor could I meet them for a few drinks or a meal out on the week­end.

Which is just as well, because there’d be no bud­get for new cloth­ing or hair­cuts.

And what would I do with all those nights at home alone? It’s a good thing I enjoy free-to-air TV, because there’d be no mon­ey for Net­flix, books or news­pa­per sub­scrip­tions. And I’d be stone cold sober. All the time.

Could I do it and sur­vive? Yeah. Is it a life I would choose? No.

Is it a stan­dard of liv­ing we’re hap­py to watch our fel­low Aus­tralians endure? Not me. But then, my heart has been known to bleed, on occa­sion.

Even if none of the above con­vinces you of the need for a per­ma­nent increase to the cur­rent base rate of Job­Seek­er, ask your­self this addi­tion­al ques­tion. Is this the kind of lifestyle you think will best pre­pare job­less Aus­tralians to be job-ready?

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Is a life of restrict­ed access to trans­port, health care, edu­ca­tion­al resources and the sim­plest of plea­sures in life, such as hob­bies and hol­i­days, the kind of life that will keep our unem­ployed in tip-top employ­able state? No.

This counter-pro­duc­tive aspect of Aus­trali­a’s woe­ful­ly low job­less allowance is per­haps the most com­pelling argu­ment of all for a per­ma­nent . It does­n’t need to now – not while the coro­n­avirus sup­ple­ments are in place. But a per­ma­nent increase must hap­pen.

Even before the coro­n­avirus struck, Aus­trali­a’s base rate of job­less allowance had reached an inter­na­tion­al­ly low lev­el. Why? Because for decades we’ve only pegged increas­es in the job­less allowance to con­sumer price infla­tion, not wages.

Why is that sig­nif­i­cant? Because wages gen­er­al­ly faster than prices.

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Effec­tive­ly, we’ve left liv­ing stan­dards for the unem­ployed frozen at lev­els from decades ago. Mean­while, the sin­gle age pen­sion has climbed to $472.15 a week – almost dou­ble the base pay­ment of Job­Seek­er.

Sure, when are set too high, it cre­ates a dis­in­cen­tive for the job­less to take on actu­al work. But we are far from that point. Even the min­i­mum wage of $754 per week still far exceeds Job­Seek­er.

And you know what also cre­ates a dis­in­cen­tive to work? Liv­ing in a con­stant state of finan­cial stress and depri­va­tion.

Which you could get away with, maybe, for a cou­ple of months. But even before COVID-19, half of job­less allowance recip­i­ents had lived on the pay­ment for two years or more.

So yes, we need to per­ma­nent­ly raise Job­Seek­er. And no, a one-off, ad-hoc raise isn’t good enough. We need to per­ma­nent­ly index Job­Seek­er to rise in line with gen­er­al liv­ing stan­dards and wages, like all oth­er sup­port pay­ments.

It’s time.

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