For Angela Finch, prime minister Anthony Albanese’s retelling of his story about growing up as the son of a single mother in Sydney’s public housing is wearing thin.
“His mum could not do what she did today, like she just couldn’t,” Finch told Guardian Australia, adding that soaring costs and restrictions on how much she can work before losing her welfare funding were terrifying her.
“It’s really great for you to have that story, and for you to tell kids in this country, ‘I’m from [public] housing, I could do it, so can you’,” Finch, a single parent of three children under 14 in Hobart, said. “We could when there was safety in the safety net, but it’s not there any more.”
Finch’s financial woes aren’t made any easier by costly rents taking up half the support her family receives under the parenting payment and family tax benefits.
And while the Albanese government used last week’s job summit to grant age and veteran pensioners the ability to earn an extra $4,000 up to $11,800 this financial year without losing any of their pension, there was nothing in it for people like Finch. She, and others on disability and Jobseeker support, want an easing in penalties if they can work more hours.
“It’s a situation where I’m really terrified,” said Finch, who works in medical retailing. “I have to sit down and do the maths really accurately because if I lose my healthcare card, I’d be really screwed.”
Without the healthcare card, which offers a concession on medications, one child’s medicine for asthma and scoliosis would alone add $100 a month to bills, while money would have to be found for another child’s skin-care needs – and to cover Finch’s $40 a month for medication. Gone, too, would be concessions for electricity and transport.
“It’s not that I don’t want to work, or that I don’t want to pay for myself or my children or anything like that,” she said. “How do I do it? I just can’t.”
Jacqueline Phillips, deputy CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss), called on the government to use its 25 October budget to make income supports more uniform. She said the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, should also lift payments for Jobseeker and other allowances to address “the acute crisis people are in”.
“Earnings are treated very differently across income support payments for no good reason,” Phillips said.
“For example, the Jobseeker income test sees people lose some Jobseeker payment as soon as they earn more than $75 per week,” she said.
“This compares with an age pensioner who won’t lose any pension until they earn more than $322 per week under the increased Work Bonus announced by the government at the Jobs Summit.”
Jobseeker and Youth Allowance had also fallen behind wages over time, worsening inequality. Jobseeker, for instance, was now only 40% of the minimum wage “leaving people in a state of destitution”, with Youth Allowance at just 33%.
“In the ‘90s, the unemployment payment sat at around 45% of the minimum wage,” Phillips said. “It was also around 90% of the pension 30 years ago, and it’s now 66%.”
Chalmers this week stressed the budget priorities would be increasing childcare and TAFE, and even helping more people buy electric vehicles. Easing pensioners’ working rules was also important.
“What we’re hoping that does is incentivise more, particularly older Australians, to maybe work a day or two without being penalised in the pension system because we need more people to do a little bit more work,” Chalmers told Adelaide’s 5AA radio on Thursday.
“We’ve got these skills and labour shortages, we believe older people have got a big contribution to make if they want to make it in the workforce so we want to make it a little bit easier to do that,” he said.
Guardian Australia sought comment from the government, opposition and the Greens.
Tony Konjarski, a part-time cleaner in Wollongong who is receiving Jobseeker payments, says he faces a constant battle to stay financially afloat. If he works more than 15 hours a week, he loses $77 in fortnightly Centrelink benefits.
Aged 57 and enduring “crippling disability” from chronic arthritis, Konjarski is trying to pay off a $100,000 mortgage that gets more costly with each interest-rate rise. His 1993 Apollo sedan gets more expensive to service each time.
He said it was “great” people on the age pension were able to work more without having their support reduced, but it didn’t make sense that similar provisions weren’t extended to people in his predicament.
“I find it a bit astonishing,” Konjarski said. “We not only get the lowest rate of government allowance but also we sort of seem to get penalised if we work more hours.”
To make ends meet, he has all but given up fresh fruit – except when supplied by a local food bank – and necessary repairs at home just don’t get done.
“My oven and stove are not working,” Konjarski said, nor does the hot water service. For washing, he heads to a nearby public pool.
“At the least I can get in there, have a shower and get changed and all that,” he said. “And then I’m right for the rest of the day.”
