On the same day the Reserve Bank Board meets after its summer break, Federal Parliament resumes tomorrow.
Among the bills which will be considered is one embodying the loosening of penalties on jobseekers who “breach” agreements with employment services providers. This legislation is having its second run around the parliamentary paddock, having been rejected last year in the Senate by the Coalition and Nick Xenophon.
It’s been interesting to watch the shift in political rhetoric regarding the unemployed, now that it’s not just about the underclass in long term unemployment and those who are low skilled. With middle class types and “aspirationals” either losing their jobs or fearing that they will, all of a sudden it’s politically respectable to make a case against things like having to exhaust all your savings and redundancy pay before your qualify for benefits.
It’s intriguing to speculate on what this tells us about the real reasons for the carrot and stick stuff during the boom, though of course the developments are welcome. Part of the proof of the pudding, though, will be whether there’s any increase in benefits in the stimulus package which is widely expected to be announced later in the week.
I’d support anything that gets rid of the 8-week penalties (and by penalty I mean no income for people already struggling) for not complying with Centrelink’s vastly complex bureaucracy, even if it is from a middle-class “Oh sh*t, you mean me when you talk about the dole!” reflex.
I left my last permanent position in 2004 and was informed that I had too many assets to be eligible for assistance from Centrelink or JobNetwork, consequently I have never been considered “unemployed”. I am now able to access my superannuation but I lived very quietly for 4 years submitting spiffy resumes for positions that were available for the over 50s and hovering at the end of the phone waiting for casual work.
Not all the “unemployed” are considered “unemployed” by government agencies because their partner works or they have too many assets – shares, property or cash in bank
From my experience talking to people who rely on Centrelink I recommend you read Adele Horin’s article “You’ll work like a dog to make Centrelink happy”, http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/youll-work-like-a-dog-to-make-centrelink-happy/2009/01/30/1232818724404.html
Having lived on the smell of an oily rag for 4 years I can’t understand how people live on $227 per week and how to live on $0 for 8 weeks. I don’t know if its just me but I have found that I spent 50% more last year than previous years on food, petrol, medical, phone and utilities.
We go through these cycles every downturn when the unemployed are progressively the objects of sympathy/subjected to retraining programs/told it was time they got back to work/blamed for their own problems/despised as second-class citizens. It reflects the extent to which the employed masses fear they are about to join their ranks.
Typo I meant to say that jobs were not available for applicants over 50.
Because the conditions for getting Centrelink benefits are that you have less than $2500 in the bank, which you are expected to use at the rate of $500 per week you can see that even Centrelink doesn’t think its clients have any money to live on if they get breached.
In 1997, whilst working as a part time teacher in Victoria I filled in Centrelink forms for low income support and raced in every second Wednesday morning along with the other part time workers in the same position. The Centrelink officers at that office were slovenly in their attitude and appearance, so I was relieved to get a real job which paid well.
If this was a Labor government worthy of the name then the entire Job Network monstrosity would have been burned at the stake on day one. Krudd’s Monthly article is just wind-blowing arse-covery from a thoroughbred Neoliberal hypocrite.
One should point out here, just to be pedantic, that the definition of “unemployed” for the purposes of the unemployment statistic is not related to the enrollment for, or acceptance of, unemployment benefit.
I will join the ranks of the ‘unemployed’ in some notional sense of the term for one week in March.
The criticism of harshness in the “breaching” regime by the ALP in Oposition was strong and long standing. Is it any wonder that in Govt they should wish to change the methods? I agree, they’ve taken their time over this.
Middle class employees may not previously have been much interested in this issue, but the ALP spokespersons were.
Well, the reason they’ve taken their time, Ambigulous, was that Xenophon voted the legislation down. What interests me more is that they downplayed the proposed changes, and gave them very little publicity – until very recently.
“they downplayed the proposed changes, and gave them very little publicity”
A sure sign they actually did want to do something about it!
Yep, doing good by stealth, not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing, etc. etc.
yeti: “If this was a Labor government worthy of the name then the entire Job Network monstrosity would have been burned at the stake on day one”
and the CES reinstated. Of course, that would have put paid to Mrs Rudd’s business (or did she sell it after the election?).
Privatising unemployment? About as sick as the moves in NSW to privatise goals.
Fair point Mark, but …. ummm, please explain: I thought one limb this Govt lacked was a “left hand”
Wouldn’t that just be the usual political management? Anything that the other lot can be said to hold a rhetorical advantage in, in the public’s mind, is not something you want to fight a big, public, battle on.
So, as you’ve been hinting, until recently, the Tories are seen as being “strong on belting dole bludgers”, something the electorate liked. But now it looks like a whole bunch of middle-class toilers might end up in receipt of benefits, polling is telling them the public wants to see a kinder, fluffier, government. If you’re middle class and out of a job, it’s obviously not *your* fault, unlike those stinking lazy bludger underclasses.
I rolled my eyes a bit reading of Xenophon’s opposing of the previous version of the bill, so I did a bit of Googling to see if I could find his rationale. And so I did.
Not sure to make of that: I don’t read enough senatorial transcripts to fully understand the genre! Is he making a reasonable objection or is it a clear bit of buck-passing?
I was actually shocked when I read the current and the old rules about assests. When I was unemployed in the early 90′s I was led to believe by the staff that I not only had to drain my bank account entirely before claiming unemployment, I also had to take my super out (losing a good whack of it at the time although the desk jockies gleefully assessed the income as the whole sum before tax.)
Given some of the other indignities I dealt with (an interview in my share flat where the desk jockey not only asked me at least five different ways if i was sleeping with my flatmate but actually wanted to poke through his room) makes me think in the bad old days beofre the internet the unemployed really were at the mercy of individual branches of the old DES.
It had the disired effect though, I’ve been paranoid ever since of being unemployed.
Nick it just sounds like Labor were trying to ram through too much legislation and Xenophon told them to piss off and bring it back later when he has more time.
Stephen, that was my initial take too, but I can’t help looking for subtext — even when it isn’t there!
Xenophon ought to be bloody ashamed of himself. These are peoples’ lives he’s playing with, while he sits there on his fat parliamentary salary. I always thought he was a bit suss. Now I’m sure.
A general comment – now its the bourgeoisie who are going to face Centrelink’s plethora of rules, of course they’ll jump to make them less rigorous. You can always gurantee the bourgeoisie will de everything to protect themselves. They disgust me!
I had a visit at home from Centrelink in the 90s during my one and only dole period (thank heavens) because they had discovered I had deposited $17-00 and $13-00 in my bank over a five week period and not declared it. They wanted to know where I got the dough. They were actually the contents of two money boxes which had accumulated over two or three years.
And to think the requirements are even worse now. Shudder.
“Xenophon ought to be bloody ashamed of himself.”
You are correct, Paul. Fair enough that he might want to shakedown the government for ramming legislation through parliament without time for him to consider it.
He just should never have used this change to prove the point. It shows cruel disregard for the most vulnerable in our community..
In reply to Sans @ 19, I discovered the hard way when I first helped my mum out by depositing money in her account, despite it being a gift to help her pay off some long standing bills the department had no hesitation classing it as income and thus saving the taxpayer some more money. No wonder the poor find it hard to dig their way out of the hole they are in.
As for Xenophon…too bloddy right he should be ashamed.
If he doesnt pass it this time I fear I might develop a bad case of Xenophonophobia.
In early December my exceptionally hard working son was suddenly made redundant from his road train job, driving to Perth and back – what with the cost of diesel and lately, often not having a load to bring back to Adelaide – he was gutted, but unsurprised. What did surprise him however, (a supporting father with weekly access to his little boy), was how long it took him to receive his first NewStart payment from Centrelink – four weeks, by which time any money he had in the bank was long gone. And then, what a totally inadequate amount it was – $550 for a fortnight’s activities of daily life, i.e. $225.00 per week, plus $50 a week rent relief.
If he hadn’t had us to help him out he would have been in terrible strife, and this is a man without a credit card. Thankfully, he has been back driving since the middle of January, and in fact only received 1 payment from Centrelink. It will take him until Easter however, to get straight with us, all being well.
The government, if they are wise, will not only have to make Centrelink regulations less blaming and demeaning, they will have to increase the NewStart payment – otherwise the new times unemployed (forcasted to become many, many thousands) will very quickly lose their highly leveraged homes (mortgaged or rented), all their credit bought consumerables etc. etc. And I do not believe that they will take it quietly. John Howard’s brutal exploitation of the ‘dole bludger’ notion will not wash with these people, nor should it!
Stuff the dole – I want US-style unemployment insurance. Because then I might actually get something, after uninterrupted decades of shoveling tax into the system, when I can’t work. As it is, I will never get a government cent when I’m unemployed.
Xenophon ought to be bloody ashamed of himself. These are peoples’ lives he’s playing with, while he sits there on his fat parliamentary salary. I always thought he was a bit suss. Now I’m sure.
I’m not actually sure I agree with that. He was being honest about the fact that he hadn’t read the legislation, his staff hadn’t read it, and he hadn’t consulted key groups to know if the changes were the right ones.
Yes, it’s a tragedy that the legislation didn’t get passed the first time – assuming it was good! Xenophon felt he couldn’t say either way to be able to vote. The best he could have done is abstain.
And we don’t know it was good. Lord knows, we’ve already seen this government is entirely capable of coming up with crap policy and legislation, and the most important function of the Senate is to act as a house of review.
I also have to say politely that I don’t think I’ve ever met a lazy politician of the ones who are dedicated to the job, and there’s only 24 hours in a day, and most of them use the majority of that time doing their job. Xenophon maybe many things I don’t like, but I really doubt he’s lazy, or that his staff are.
If he’d passed it without reading it, we’d all be giving him a hard time for not taking his position seriously and instead voting blind.
Maybe Labor needs to learn to pace out their legislation and prioritise more clearly to allow particularly the minor parties and independent in the Senate to have the time to come to an informed decision – that’s a skill for any government to learn when it needs such a complex majority in the upper house to get the legislation through.
Myriad,
“Maybe Labor needs to learn to pace out their legislation and prioritise more clearly”
So can you explain why Xenophon didn’t prioritise that particular piece of legislation considering its potential impact, particularly on those most vulnerable?
What legislation might he have considered was more important that needed attention first?
Pollytickedoff @ 26 – wasn’t the fair work bill going through at about the same time? Perhaps this is an indication that independent senators who have the balance of power need more funding for support staff so they don’t end up becoming the bottleneck for legislation getting through the parliament.
Answer to # 26
“Sucking up” to the irrigators in SA, exchanging promises of water for votes.
They are able to vote for him, unemployed outside SA are not.
I doubt politicians read all the legislation they vote on: they have staff who summarise and provide position papers.
I went to the trouble of posting a comment on that parliamentary access website attached to the link above telling him (politely) how disgusted I was. (Nick Caldwell @ 14.) Just hinting.
I didn’t say Xenophon was lazy. I said he was a bloody disgrace. I know politicians work their butts off. (I have had a fair bit to do with them.)
If you think you might have to go on the dole in the next six months a word of advice, take all your money out of the bank NOW. The last time I went on the dole, I had $700 in the bank (and that’s all I had) and the bastards said I would have to wait five weeks until I would be eligible for payment because of ALL the money I had. It would have been so easy to have withdrawn it and presented them with a statement of zeros. With Centrelink you learn quickly, honesty does not pay.
This is a system designed to grind people so hard into the ground that they don’t want to get up.
When I went off the dole they had the audacity to claim I owed them $1500 dollars and a pay-up-now-or-else letter arrived in which they also claimed they would help themselves to the contents of my bank account if I didn’t pay. I have no doubt that this is completely illegal. They will try anything if they think they can bluff you. A direct line phone call to a branch manager (I was lucky), sorted it out quickly. They were wrong. It was their mistake. I owed them $300 but they sent me a letter claiming they had magnanimously “reviewed their decision.” Oh mercy.
And while I’ve got the bee buzzing– the sign on the counter. “We don’t make emergency payments for: rent, food, electricity, medical expenses, transport or telephone accounts” Which left me wondering. Pray tell? WTF do you make emergency payments for? Apparently if you lose your wallet, you can get an emergency payment. But you have to have reported it to the police. I didn’t want an emergency payment I was just curious it was such a comprehensive list of anything one could conceivably need $50 quid for. Of course the wallet trick is not advertised.
Billie: “…they have too many assets – shares, property or ($2500) cash in bank…or their partner works or to be eligible for assistance from Centrelink ”
Herindoors:” the new times unemployed .. will very quickly lose their highly leveraged homes (mortgaged or rented), all their credit bought consumerables…”
By the sounds of what Billie is saying, they will have to lose their homes, or partners, or both, otherwise they will have too many assets to receive benefits? Can that really be an intended consequence, for folks to lose their hard and long earned housing equity?
I suppose the otherside of the coin is there will be lots of property bargains to be snapped up by those with the wherewithall. Maybe that’s the intended consequence, designed to work hand in glove with the negative gearing scam.
Anyone know what the limit for property assets is, whether it’s the equity, or the total value? What if it’s a family, y’know like 2 adults: does the allowable amount double? That’d be terrific, losing the family home so Mum/Dad can get benefits for necessities. What would Deitrich Bonhoffer have to say about that?
that’s for damn sure.
Ah, the good old Centrelink dole interview process…
I was unemployed in March 1997 — the month that my father died of cancer at his house just out of Brisbane, with most of the family at his bedside.
But I wasn’t there. I had to go back to Brisbane to attend a Centrelink interview, or else I would have been breached for unemployment benefits.
Having a dying parent, apparently, was not sufficient reason to be excused from such an interview.
If you google “assets test for newstart allowance” you will find the information on the centrelink website.
There is a separate assets test that applies to homeowners and non-homeowners. The primarly residence is exempt from the assets test.
Centrelink differentiates between liquid assets and non-liquid assets. If you have more than $2500 of liquid assets, you have to run that down before accessing benfits. Superannuation does not count as a liquid asset.
For homeowners, the asset test is almost $200,000 for a single person and it is nearly $300,000 for a non-homeowning single. Benefits taper out as assets rise above the thresholds.
There is a separate income test of course which means that if your partner earns an income, it has to be less than about $38,000 a year for you to get any benefits. Rates differ for those with single children.
Well, our Nick will change his mind about the Legislation in a proverbial New York minute once the good middle class burghers of SA who put him in the Senate start losing their jobs in any substantial nuimbers. Once that happens, the’s have his own little road to Damascus moment, that’s for sure.
See, he doesn’t like gambling much and sticking with the current blame-the-victim social security regime will amount to no less than gambling with his political future in such circumstances.
So comrades, watch for the back-flip.
not including a home what other assets are considered non-liquid? looking to purchase some non-liquid assets that don’t produce an income
also, does the social security act use the same definition of income as the tax act? all very important questions i need answered.
Thanks for the good post, Mark.
Just on Xenophon, despite how he likes to portray himself in the media, ideology wise he’s basically Family First. Doesn’t surprise me at all he rejected this or his bullshit reasons for doing so. Wolf in sheeps clothing.
Pollytickedoff, you seem to have mistaken me for a Xenophon apologist because I was inclined to give him some benefit of the doubt based on his statement to the Senate.
I’ve no idea what other bills were on the go at the same time. It may well be as Hannah’s Dad implies above that there were bills that played to his base up for the vote. None of that changes that he – if telling the truth – was forced to choose where he put his efforts at the time, and this bill failed as a result.
Which brings me back to the ALP – they have a complex Senate to get bills through, and must rely on Xenophon & the Greens & Fielding. Which means that putting up bills which play to Xenophon’s base at the same time as key legislation like this is a pretty stupid idea, as much as you might like to throw stones at Xenophon, if this was indeed the case. But all politicians play to their base, and the ALP need to get a lot more skilled and navigating the Senate rather than naively expecting the likes of Xenophon and others to roll over. If this legislation was so important, they should have been spoon-feeding him frankly. That’s the reality of the power balance, whether we like it or not. It’s their agenda they are trying to achieve and convince the Senate, remember?
Jacques de Molay, based on my admittedly cursory reading of the debate in the Senate (the very next speech after Xenophon’s), Family First were in favour of Labor’s legislation.
Evan, not sure you’ve been reading the thread, but I didn’t see evidence that Xenophon’s opposition was on substantive rather than procedural grounds. I admit, this is a depressing application of senatorial responsibility, but maybe Labor should have had this one ready A LOT SOONER than the final session of the year?
Why this difference between liquid and other assets? Why this bias against non- home owners? Why should a person be penalised because they have money in savings and not a house?
“Cause they can’t force you to sell your house? At least, not until you have to go into an old peoples’ home.
I think the idea is that every australian is supposed to own a house, and they’re supposed to move into it before they get the dole. Which is a bit hard on the people who are renting it (because every australian is also supposed to rort the negative gearing and other tax dodges).
I’m also in the “too smart for my own good” category, currently waiting while my savings run out and busily selling off “liquid assets” (viz, anything except one house and my compulsory super[1]) that strangely are very hard to sell in the current economic climate, unless I want to sell at bargain prices. But the problem there is that Centrelink require me to get market prices for them and will happily pretend I did if the actual sale yields less than they expect. Just another catch-22 from the department of such things.
We’re caught between the US idea of forcing the unemployed to alternate between grinding, demoralising poverty when they get the dole, and starvation or crime when they don’t; and the social democratic idea the no-one should be forced to live below the poverty line, especially children. Obviously Howard tried very hard to move the whole country into the US model, and now hopefully Rudd will try to drag us back.
[1] note that you cannot voluntarily put money into super, Centrelink will get it back for you less fees.
“Why this bias against non- home owners?”
Well at least renters get a small rental allowance. There’s no equivalent mortgage assistance; if you’re on the dole long enough chances are you’ll lose your home and much of what’s been paid into it when the bank sells it below market at a mortgagee auction.
Tragically, in today’s stimulus package there appears to be nothing for people who are unemployed; by way of a cash payment, NewStart payment increase, or mortgage alleviation. Obviously it is important to protect people’s jobs – for all the reasons so well explained above, or indeed, for job creation, skills training etc. However, we are informed today that unemployment, in spite of today’s fiscal/monetary policy, is still expected to increase to 7% (at least) by next year.
With the consequent exponential increase in homelessness, family break down, children at risk, anxiety, clinical depression and drink/drug abuse (all well recognised and well able to be costed; after all we’ve travelled this road before), surely it is only sensible to target the needs of the unemployed, in order that they are not required/ordered to reach rock bottom, before times improve. Spending money to save money is as important to this demographic of Australians as anyone, if not more so.
I’m well off enough to live in a well-insulated house close to PT and affordable shopping (and Ceres). Utility bills are low. We don’t usually heat or cool the house but gave in and bought a usable air conditioner (700W, CoP 3.4) last week when the bedrooms were still over 30 degrees at midnight. It’s a big house so there’s six of us here and that also brings the rent down (under $80/wk each).
But if you’re a poor sod living in public housing or a cheap unit with cardboard walls… you’re stuffed. All your living costs will be higher than mine and Centrelink stops you saving enough to invest in stuff to reduce the bills. Same goes for the grasshoppers who lose their jobs – people who have a built their lives around high disposable incomes. They will find it difficult to sell their “liquid” assets and the cost of rebuilding their lifestyle to be more frugal will be high. If you’re in a mcmansion in Narre Warren the cost of everything is just fricken ugly – keeping the house habitable costs a fortune, it’s 10 minutes drive to the train station or shops, turning off the aircon to save money leaves the house at or above ambient, and so on.
One optimistic outcome would be a rise in people taking in lodgers to help pay the mortgage, which could take some of the load off the rental market. Pessimistically, our landlord might decide to hike the rent to take advantage of the tight market. But since a house up the road is into its third month of “for lease”, maybe not so much.