You know, I don’t wholly dispute those welfare advocates who claim that the dole is difficult to live on. Seven hundred dollars a fortnight ($850 with rent assistance) isn’t a lot of money, for sure.
But surely the point is that it’s not meant to be?
After all, if everyone could live on the dole, why would anyone bother working?
But if welfare advocates want to make their case, they need to find better sob stories than this one.
Unemployed Melburnian Jez Heywood is not only unimpressed with the $20 a week increase to JobSeeker in the federal budget, he is angry.
The 47-year-old graphic designer said the increase, while across the board, was so small as to make no noticeable difference to his struggles to survive on the allowance.
Now, here I can empathise to some extent. I know exactly what it’s like to be an unemployed middle-aged graphic designer. Because I was one, once. It happens a lot in what is a tough and competitive field, especially hit hard by globalisation. Unlike Mr Heywood, though, I was the major wage-earner with two school-aged children.
“You have to weigh up every financial decision you make. There is no room for error. There’s no room for unexpected bills. If I were to get a speeding ticket, it would ruin me.”
Again, I can empathise. Although speeding fines were not a problem I chose to incur, I did rack up a few parking tickets as a graphic design student, at a city-based campus with bugger-all parking options. They took a lot of juggling to pay.
But my empathy begins to dry up when I read this:
Unemployed since 2017 and with job options limited by health conditions, he would be homeless if not for the ability to live rent-free in a granny flat on his parent’s property […]
“I have to go without pretty much any form of entertainment – in a previous life, I was a music journalist and bought a lot of music – I can’t do that anymore, I can’t buy books anymore,” he said.
Well, I had to keep paying a mortgage. I didn’t have the luxury of bludging off my parents in my middle-age.
Oddly enough, I too was once a freelance music journalist, back in the ’80s. But my record collection bulges with review copies sent to me by record labels. As for books – ever heard of libraries? They’re free. Tasmania’s don’t even charge late fees any more.
The Morrison government, through a Covid supplement to JobSeeker, had shown what could be done, only to snatch it away. It had alleviated worries over every bill and let him finally make repairs to his ageing car, he said.
The Australian
As I wrote at the time, the Covid supplement to JobSeeker was a ridiculous idea in the first place. Why was the government paying more money to people who weren’t working anyway, to not work during Covid? It didn’t make a lick of sense. Worse, it raised expectations, as government handouts always do. Any government that starts giving money away quickly finds that recipients come to take it for granted. The barrel, once porked, is near-impossible to un-pork.
But, hey, what did I do, as an unemployed, middle-aged graphic designer? With health issues, too?
Got off my arse and did whatever I could to bring in some money. I milked cows and cleaned houses, for a while. It wasn’t easy, and the money was pretty poor, but it kept the bills paid and the kids fed until something better came along.
And it was infinitely better than dealing with Centrelink.