Jacinda Ardern’s landslide election is widely – and almost certainly, rightly – attributed to her handling of the Wuhan pandemic. But it is also true that Ardern was able to capitalise on the Chinese virus because voters are yet to really feel the effects of her panicked resort to lockdowns and border closures. If stage four lockdowns were bad enough, what’s to come is going to seem almost benign by comparison.
The same scenario is playing out across the Tasman. Victorians are proving strangely reluctant to criticise Daniel Andrews, while other state premiers are frankly revelling in the electoral glow of COVID. Mark McGowan in WA and Peter Gutwein in Tasmania are basking in the warm approval of voters who are scared witless of the big, bad ‘Rona sneaking across the borders.
The devastating toll in mental health is already becoming clear. But the real hurt to the nation’s hip-pockets is only just starting to strike.
The worst is yet to come for many of Australia’s COVID-hit renters, with new research warning looming cuts to government support and dwindling savings balances will push them to “the brink of a financial precipice”.
A survey of 15,000 tenants carried out at the height of the pandemic has exposed a reliance on temporary measures like JobKeeper and the topped-up JobSeeker to “make ends meet” — highlighting the need for ongoing welfare payments well into 2021.
This is the flipside of the sometimes-puzzling decision to double welfare payments. After all, it’s not as if the jobless were any more unemployed than before. But not all renters are unemployed – and neither are many of the people suddenly receiving welfare payments. Many low-paid and “non-essential” workers (as if anyone’s job is non-essential to them) have been pushed closer to the breadline.
A third of respondents said they had been forced to tap into their savings, and about one in eight into their superannuation, to afford the roof over their head, according to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute research.
Others even reported having to skip meals, bring in an extra housemate or move out altogether, with almost half suffering stress and anxiety due to COVID-19.
Almost two-thirds experienced negative changes to their employment or income, including reduced hours, retrenchment and temporary job loss — reflecting a high rate of casual workers and employment in pandemic-hit sectors like retail and hospitality.
If the mental health toll of lockdowns is already devastating, it’s going to get a lot worse.
Emma Baker of the University of Adelaide said[…]“renters have been buffered to a great extent, especially when JobKeeper and JobSeeker were in full flight, and with hits on their superannuation and using up their savings,” she said.
“So I suspect the story will get much worse (when these buffers disappear)”[…]
Prof Baker said the survey revealed JobKeeper had helped struggling renters “keep their head above water”, while the COVID-19 supplement boosting JobSeeker had increased quality of life by, for example, allowing people to “afford fruit and vegetables for the first time”.
This is the political millstone governments have hung around their own necks, by taking it upon themselves to summarily shut down jobs and businesses. It’s all very well for the government to say they’ll reduce payments again, but doing so will be a political nightmare. Especially when activists are seizing on the crisis as a wedge for their own hobby-horses.
Prof Baker also called for a co-ordinated national framework for tenant-landlord negotiations on rent reductions[…]On top of these short-term fixes, Prof Baker said the pandemic had exposed the importance of transforming the rental sector from an avenue for “mum and dad investors to make money” into a provider of “healthy housing” for the one-third of Aussies who were now tenants.
“COVID-19 gives us the chance to say, ‘what housing system do we want to see?’ (and) … provide housing of a good standard that allows people to live healthy and productive lives,” she said.
Politicians have been exploiting COVID for their own ends for months. It’s hardly surprising that other parties want in on the act.
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