Newstart-An award winning journalist has slammed Centrelink

[boku]

'Totally catch-22 madness': Award-winning journalist slams Centrelink after being forced to apply for 10 positions in two weeks despite already having a new job lined up

An award winning journalist has slammed Centrelink after the government agency forced him to apply for ten jobs in two weeks - despite already having one lined up.

Pascall prize winner Mark Mordue, 59, sought welfare assistance after a stream of personal turmoil almost left him homeless.

Giving evidence against the Newstart allowance at a Senate inquiry on Friday, he claimed he had to submit ten applications in the fortnight leading up to his new job earlier this year.

Mr Mordue, who is also an author and editor, described his harrowing ordeal as 'totally catch-22 madness' and accused the system of victimising those seeking help.

'They don't provide jobs, they farm the unemployed,' he told the inquiry, the Canberra Times reports.

'You're basically pushed over a cliff and that is how the system operates, to deter or destroy, but certainly not to help,' he said.

Although the novelist had already given job agencies the date he was commencing work, he said they prioritised 'ticking boxes' while disregarding his employment history.

'I was finding my main occupation was to be unemployed and to keep the bureaucracy satisfied... The appearance of seeking work was more important than the actuality,' he said.

The Sydney resident descended from the middle class in the aftermath of his 17-year relationship breaking down.

He received unemployment benefits for a year, but needed them once more for a further three months when the newspaper he began editing collapsed in December 2018.

In exchange for $695 a fortnight- which included rent assistance- the now-employed freelancer was required to send 20 job applications a month.

After he paid rent for his small one-bedroom apartment in the city's west, he was left with just $15 to spend over two weeks.

In a Facebook post, Mr Mordue said he was relieved to be employed again and to stand up against the 'misadventures' and 'miseries' he had gone through.

'It was very important to me to go before the Senate group – and speak up about the ugly and abusive truths that are wreaking havoc on the unemployed and perpetuating all kinds of awful problems in this country of ours,' it read.

The inquiry also heard from other Newstart recipients that had negative experiences as they struggled to make ends meet.

One, a 56-year-old man with twenty years experience in IT and post graduate qualification, was required to do 650 hours of work for the dole - which is more than the community service allocated to offenders for a year.

Another who lost her job while struggling with depression and now lives off Newstart and the money earned from working just one day a week, lives minimally off $57 a day.

She could only afford four meals a week and couldn't take her dog to the vet, and failed to find employment despite 400 applications resulting in 50 interviews over 18 months.

More than half of Newstart recipients are over 45 and earn $277.85 a week or $39 a day.

The inquiry comes amid calls on the Federal Government from various industries to increase the payment.

Mental Health Australia addressed parliament earlier this week over concerns the low income support could be affecting the mental health of those dependent on the system to survive.

www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/totally-catch-22-madness-award-winning-journalist-slams-centrelink-after-being-forced-to-apply-for-10-positions-in-two-weeks-despite-already-having-a-new-job-lined-up/ar-AAICYYc?ocid=iehp

[boku]

Either way life on newstart is tough enough even without the BS apply for work requirements.

Correct me if I am wrong but didn't the Federal government recently announce the newstart payment would be increased $50 a week. I'm sure someone online told me that.

[Deleted]

Correct me if I am wrong but didn't the Federal government recently announce the newstart payment would be increased $50 a week

I'm sorry to have to correct you boku , but there's no increase coming to Newstart that we know of. The inquiry is trying to determine if it should be raised. Cheers bear

The Morrison government should increase Newstart by nearly $100 a week, KPMG says, with the accounting giant calling for an even larger rise than welfare groups and arguing the low rate of the payment “tears at our inclusive social contract”.

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/07/accounting-giant-kpmg-calls-for-newstart-to-increase-by-100-a-week

[Deleted]

Newstart recipient has payments suspended after appearing at Senate inquiry. Welfare recipients tell inquiry they are living in a state of fear and despair.

A Newstart recipient in her 50s had her payments suspended by her employment services provider after she appeared at a Senate inquiry to argue for an increase to the payment.

At a hearing in Sydney on Friday, life on Australia’s unemployment benefit was described as “a state of fear”, “constant worry” and “stress and despair” by recipients.

Government senators were forced to confront the experiences of Newstart recipients, who told how they skipped meals, experienced homelessness and were unable to afford clothes and Christmas presents for their children due to the low rate of the payment.

“We do not want your pity but we do need your empathy,” said Nigel, who felt he was being punished for not having a job.

Leslie, who is in her 50s and has been on Newstart for 10 years, said she was breaching her mutual obligations by appearing before the inquiry. Leslie told her employment consultant about the hearing; she said they scheduled an appointment anyway, saying it was a requirement of her jobs plan.

About an hour after she finished giving evidence, Leslie told Guardian Australia she got a text. “Your payment has been suspended for not attending your provider appointment,” it read.

Leslie had been paid for the fortnight on Friday morning. But she will now have to ask her job agency to have her income support switched back on, a process welfare recipients say is not always easy.

“Why am I being punished for doing things that help my community?” she said.

Mark is a former journalist and writer who said he had won awards for his work. But twice in the past five years he had been forced on to unemployment benefits, currently about $280 a week for a single person, he told the inquiry.

“Once you get caught up in a system like Centrelink and Newstart … you’re reminded how much your own background and professional history mean nothing,” he said. “And that you are, because of the way you are treated, nothing.”

Alyx is in her 50s and has not been able to find more than a few months’ work at a time.

Karen is on Newstart with “partial capacity to work”. It means she is among the 200,000 people now deemed not sick enough for the disability support pension.

She has been homeless and forced into boarding houses. There was violence in one, and bed bugs. She needed iron transfusions at $150 each but they were not covered by Medicare, she said. She could not afford them.

Karen had heard people say Newstart should be a “trampoline not a hammock”. She called it a “poverty trap”.

Jenny lost her job in hospital administration 10 years ago. She now works once a week at St Vincent’s private hospital. Jenny went through some of her expenses: her mortgage, council rates, traffic fines, funeral insurance. Now in her mid-50s, she has taken in a boarder.

It has made things easier but the financial stress is constant. Her glasses broke and the ones she uses now are not strong enough, which makes driving dangerous. Her dog has a cough but she cannot afford the vet bills to see what is wrong.

When she hears her housemate having a long, hot shower, “it sends me into a state of fear but I can’t say anything”.

Earlier, the Australian Council of Social Service’s chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, clashed with the Liberal senator Hollie Hughes.

Goldie wondered about Scott Morrison’s slogan “The best form of welfare is a job”.

“Are we saying we don’t need a social security system?” she asked.

That riled Hughes. It was a “wild and inappropriate” claim about the government’s position, she said. But that is what people took from the phrase, Goldie replied.

Acoss said the Senate inquiry was the most important in 25 years.

The Coalition senators asked questions of Acoss – as well as the Council of the Ageing and Foodbank. When the Newstart recipients finished their statements, they fell silent.

Another witness, Zareen, 48, came to Australia in 1992 on a skilled migration visa with her little girl and a bag. Her other half was “not that great”, she said, and she was now a single parent.

“I’ve worked for the ATO, I’ve worked for the ABS, I’ve worked for the Commonwealth Bank … and yet I don’t have a job,” she said. “I’m supposed to be living on $24.65 a day. Am I supposed to be doing that for the rest of my life?”

Zareen’s hope for Christmas was to read the book Gutsy Women by Hillary Clinton and to get a job. She was not the only one to mention Christmas.

Nigel noticed the Christmas ad season had begun. Nothing in them reflected his reality.

The Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy told the Newstart recipients: “I reckon each of you are pretty gutsy.”

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/11/newstart-recipient-has-payments-suspended-after-appearing-at-senate-inquiry

[Deleted]

'Difficult to survive': Mental toll of being on Newstart examined amid push to increase payments

Those with mental health conditions on Newstart are suffering because of the payment’s ‘inadequacy’ and cost of living pressures, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

People suffering mental health concerns on Newstart are at risk of having their conditions worsen by the restrictive nature of the payments, mental health advocates have warned.

Mental Health Australia has fronted a parliamentary inquiry examining the adequacy of the income support payment for the unemployed, delivering a stern warning over the impact of the $40-a-day dole.

The Morrison government has so far rejected calls to increase the income safety net from $277 per week, instead of concentrating its efforts on pushing people into employment.

Australian Senate
Harry Lovelock, Mental Health Australia Director, said the income allowance is ‘inadequate’ and taking an unfair toll on those suffering mental illnesses.

“We know Australians on Newstart are more likely to be living with mental health conditions than other Australians,” he said.

"At best the Newstart payment is fundamentally inadequate to sustain reasonable and necessary cost of living for people with mental illness.”

“At worst, the payment’s inadequacy causes deterioration of mental illness through restricting access to nutrition [and] safe and stable housing.”

Newstart inquiry expected to prompt fresh wave of calls to lift payments
There has been pressure for a $75-a-week raise to the Newstart allowance, which has only slightly increased in real terms for a quarter of a century.

But the Morrison government has resisted the push, long stating that the ‘best form of welfare is a job’ and getting people into the workforce is their focus.

Social Services Minister Anne Ruston has said the government is ‘totally committed’ to helping anyone on Newstart find a job.

‘Difficult to survive’
Mental Health Australia is among those lobbying for a rise to the income support measure.

Mr Lovelock told the inquiry the number of people on Newstart with mental health problems had increased from 30 per cent in the early 2000s to “around 50 per cent” of those on the payment.

“If you're caught up in a system that is continually making it difficult to survive on a day to day basis, it's very hard to look to a future,” he said.

“The pressures for Australians of surviving on a budget far below the recognised poverty rate exacerbates mental health problems, and is counteractive to recovery and independence."

The parliamentary committee heard the average length of time people received the payment was about three years or 159 weeks.

Ms Ruston has said the payment would not be ‘easy to live’ on but was designed as a ‘safety net payment’ not a ‘replacement for a wage.’

'No longer a temporary allowance'
Left-leaning think tank The Australia Institute noted in its submission to the inquiry an increase of around $200 a week could be appropriate.

Its researcher David Richardson arguing the Newstart payment should no longer be considered a ‘temporary’ income support measure.

“The average duration on Newstart is now 159 weeks, now they’re not all going to leave tomorrow,” he told the inquiry.

“When you look at the population of Newstart recipients – on average you would expect them to be halfway through their journey.”

“That is telling us that the average journey on Newstart is going to be around six years.”

He raised concerns when matched against a benchmark poverty line the value of the Newstart payment had shown a trending decrease over time.

“In the early 90s [an employed] family of four, was over 10 per cent above the Henderson poverty line, since then it has been indexed only and now it sits at 20 per cent below the poverty line,” he said.

'Barriers and challenges'
The inquiry also heard that the government hadn’t asked for advice on increasing the Newstart payments from Departments overseeing the nation's welfare, social security and employment sectors.

Senior government bureaucrats who fronted inquiry were asked whether they had been told to provide such advice and replied that they hadn’t.

Heads of the social services, human services and employment departments were questioned over whether the Newstart payment should be considered a ‘temporary’ assistance measure given its lengthy average duration.

“I would say that if someone is on Newstart for three years it is quite a long period of time,” Nathan Williamson, Deputy Secretary, Department of Social Services told the inquiry.

“Understandably there are probably some complex barriers involved with those individuals.”

Another line of questioning was over if poverty was a factor considered in the advice given to the government.

”We are aware of the barriers and challenges that exist and we take that into consideration when we provide ... advice to government,” Mr Williamson said.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert pointed to concerns for people with mental health struggles accessing welfare support services.

She said they were unlikely to disclose such conditions over the phone, where the inquiry heard contact with the system commonly takes place.

“It is a challenge, Senator, it is a challenge for staff members identifying if there is an underlying vulnerability that hasn’t been identified,” Brendan Moon of Services Australia told the inquiry.

The hearing is set to continue in Sydney tomorrow.

www.sbs.com.au/news/difficult-to-survive-mental-toll-of-being-on-newstart-examined-amid-push-to-increase-payments

[nomadic]

They really do sicken me to the bone. They are not human in any sense. Given the times they are even worse than Pol Pot & the Taliban. Australia is a G20 member and hasn't been bombed back into the stone age.

[Deleted]

This 61-year-old worked for Westpac, IBM and is now on Newstart

This is a day in the life of a Newstart recipient. Chris is 61 years old and lives in a rooming house in the outer-north eastern suburbs of Melbourne, which costs him around $304 per fortnight or roughly half of his $604 fortnightly Newstart payments.

“As far as rooming houses go, it’s not too bad,” Chris told Yahoo Finance. “It’s run by a professional group – a community housing group – and it’s got its own ensuite.”

He’s been on-and-off Newstart payments for the last decade, but he wasn’t always a welfare recipient.

“I got retrenched during the GFC,” he said. “And about six months later, the partner I was living with – we split up.”

“I was working corporate for the last 30 to 35 odd years before that. I was 17 years with Westpac and nine years with IBM, and then I got retrenched.

“I was sort of lower-to-middle management, and everyone was laying off people that were in lower-to-middle management at the time. To get another job doing that was pretty much impossible. It took me 12 months to get another job after that – and that was a customer service job, which was minimum wage.”

After finding himself unemployed again when the company shut down, Chris found another job, lost it, and found another job as a bookkeeper.

“That was a reasonably good job, which I had for about three years,” he told Yahoo Finance.
But after finding himself in hospital after suffering a depressive episode, he “got the sack” while he was there.

Now, Chris says he’s “given up” finding employment.

“I’m over 60; it’s virtually impossible.”

How much do you receive on Newstart, and what does that get you?

Typically, singles with no children on Newstart receive $559 per fortnight. In Chris’ case, he receives $604 per fortnight.

“I get $604 Newstart per fortnight,” Chris said.
“Rent assistance is $138, I get an energy supplement of $9.50, and a pharmaceutical allowance of $6.20. They also give me $30 for a phone allowance once a year or something.”
But by the time Chris sees his Newstart payment, “roughly half” of it goes to his rent, leaving around $300 for him to survive the fortnight.

“Once you’ve been on Newstart for a while, you can work out to feed yourself, but it’s not much,” he said.

“It’s not great, it involves sausages and mince, and chicken. And a lot of pasta and rice.”
Chris has two bills that he pays regularly: his car registration and his phone. “The place I live at, the gas, electricity and water is included.”
Though he has a car, he admits it’s “difficult” to keep it, with petrol being a big expense and two tires that need replacing for $300 that he simply can’t afford.

“This year, it was really difficult to pay,” Chris said.

“I’ve been drawing down on my superannuation, and there’s not much of that left. Every year I either get the Centrelink loan, which is around $500 once a year, and I can use that. But next year I’m not sure – I can’t afford it anymore.”

Living on Newstart: “It’s normal life things that you just can’t do”

While he can work out how to feed himself and scrape through to pay his rent, Chris said it’s the regular everyday things Newstarters just can’t afford to do.

“It’s normal life things that you just can’t do,” he said. “You’ve got no money for clothes.
“The chances of me having any sort of romance is zero – the possibility of me buying a woman a coffee – one coffee is $5 – that’s $10, which is three meals for me. There’s no chance of that.”

And Chris said he hasn’t had a haircut for eight months because he can’t afford it.
On top of that, since his car is such a big expense, Chris says he rarely goes far.

“I can’t go anywhere. I spend about $20 a month on petrol – I walk everywhere if I can.”
“It’s isolating. It’s difficult, you end up watching TV a lot which isn’t good.

“I go down to the local op shop, which is where I get all my clothes from, and I do that about four days a week. That gets me out of the house, and it gets me seeing people.”

Dole bludger stereotype “not the reality”

There have been calls for the government to increase Newstart payments by $75 a week, after the Australian Labor Party slammed the system for being ‘simply not fair’.

“The level of Allowances now sit well below well below the poverty line,” ACOSS said earlier this year.

“Youth Allowance and Newstart need to be substantially increased to work properly – helping students to cover the essential costs of living, and ensuring people looking for paid work are not in financial crisis. The low rate of Newstart is acting as a major barrier to securing paid work.”

Chris says he’s “disgusted” by the debate surrounding increasing Newstart payments, and he’s sick of the ‘dole bludger’ stereotype too.

“There are so many groups [calling for an increase to Newstart] – even the Business Council says increase it, the Reserve Bank says increase it. It’s not just ACOSS and others, it’s right-wing people that say increase it.

“As soon as somebody comes out and says increase it, you get this stuff on the TV talking about unemployed people being druggies, alcoholics and gamblers.

“Show me somebody that can afford to buy drugs, or enough alcohol to be an alcoholic – or have money to gamble?”
“It’s not the reality.”

Welfare cards feel “condescending”

The Federal Government implemented the cashless welfare card to regional areas in 2016, and extending it further across the nation in 2017 and 2018.

The cards don’t allow welfare recipients to withdraw cash, and only allow them to spend the money in certain places.

The Human Rights Legal Centre has said the welfare cards are inconsistent with human rights, citing they “unjustifiably limit rights to social security, private and family life, equality and nondiscrimination”.

And Chris agrees.

“The fact that the government gives you a card and says you can’t spend money on anything but what they tell you – that’s just so condescending,” Chris said.

“I’ve been a finance manager and a bookkeeper – I know how to handle my finances.”

au.finance.yahoo.com/news/this-61-yearold-worked-for-westpac-ibm-and-is-now-on-newstart-233439220.html

[nomadic]

No one other than the religious mad people are opposed to a Newstart rise. More interested in going to war with Iran. GROWL.

[Deleted]

[Denis-NFA]

Oct 13, 2019 7:08:22 GMT 7 nomadic said:

No one other than the religious mad people are opposed to a Newstart rise. More interested in going to war with Iran. GROWL.

The best one is the $50 billion contract for 12 submarines with the first 1 to be delivered in 2030 and the last 1 in 2060!

[Denis-NFA]

I was interested to read in an Australian Economics/Business blog posting the following statement -

Given the near viciousness that the ATO and Centrelink pursues mere citizens

Who knows but the way the Government is pursuing folk for ATO sourced debt is being noticed!