Social security in Australia

• Tuesday’s budget will include $11.3 billion over four years to fund the 15% pay rise aged care workers will receive from July 1.
• Labor committed at last year’s election to fully fund a rise in pay for this sector.
• Aged Care Minister Anika Wells said that “fair wages play a major role in attracting and retaining workers”.
• This financial year the cost of aged care will increase from $24.8 billion to an estimated $29.6 billion (23%).

• Late last year he set up a committee he specifically asked to tell him how bad JobSeeker was.
• The exact words in its terms of reference required it to advise him on the “adequacy, effectiveness and sustainability of income support payments”.
• Independent Senator David Pocock made the committee a condition of supporting an unrelated industrial relations bill in the Senate.

Impossible to ignore

• And this committee did make 37 recommendations, as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher noted this week saying she was “not going to be able to do everything”.
• But, unusually, this committee went out of its way to make sure one recommendation stood out above all others.
• Measured against other members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia’s JobSeeker payment for a newly-unemployed single was the third worst.

Too little to get medicines or work

• Job seekers told the committee that $347 per week is so low, they kept looking around their homes for things to sell.
• Some had to choose between medicines and electricity.
• Ben Phillips has calculated that would cost $5.7 billion per year, which is less than 1% of total government spending.

Changing the subject

• There are 920,640 Australians on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance (which is a lower rate of JobSeeker for young Australians and is also paid to apprentices and students).
• Chalmers appeared to verbal his committee on Tuesday by saying it had found women over 55 are the most vulnerable group amongst unemployed Australians.
• Chalmers says we ought to wait to see what is in the budget, which is fair enough.
• Read more:
  Boosting JobSeeker is the most effective way to tackle poverty: what the treasurer's committee told him

• The committee delivered its report to the government in late February.
• The most pressing concern, and the most important for immediate policy action, is to substantially increase the JobSeeker payment for the unemployed.
• JobSeeker Payment relative to Age Pension, 2000 to 2021 The committee has recommended restoring the relativities of the mid-1990s, when the unemployment benefit was about 90% of the age pension.

How we made our decision

• There is no right level for JobSeeker (or any other welfare payment) and there is no single methodology that provides all the answers.
• Read more:
  There are lots of poverty lines, and JobSeeker isn't above any of them

The greatest, most urgent, need

• There was a substantial boost to most pension payments following the 2009 Harmer Pension Review.
• JobSeeker has a larger budget and is better targeted than Rent Assistance to those in most financial need.

What will it cost?

• Over the three years of forward estimates (2023 to 2026), the cost would be about $24 billion.
• The total cost of welfare payments in 2023-24 is expected to reach A$145 billion.
• So $5.7 billion, while a substantial additional expense, does only represent a 4% increase in the welfare cash payments, and less than 1% of the total federal budget.

• In Germany, the amount of the voluntary payment per employee is EUR 500 and is tax- and social security-free.
• Any entitlements under collective labor agreements shall remain unaffected by this bonus payment.
• "With this bonus payment, we want to send a clear signal of recognition and thanks for the exceptional performance of our workforce during the pandemic," comments Stefan Klebert, CEO of GEA Group AG.
• GEA plants, processes and components help achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions, plastic use and food waste in production worldwide.