National
Some welfare recipients could soon be permanently stuck with cashless debit cards – but taxpayers are not allowed to know how much the scheme will cost.
News
Older Australians and women have been making up a bigger share of JobSeeker recipients, with people on the unemployment payment long-term also rising.
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JobSeeker payments for more than one million unemployed Australians will be slashed by $300 a fortnight from tomorrow as coronavirus supplements are wound back – with reduced payments for the next few months to be worth an average $58 a day compared with $40 before the pandemic.
Many of the hundreds of thousands of Australians expected to lose their jobs before Christmas due to cuts to the JobKeeper subsidy could be forced to wait months for unemployment income support.
People anxious about having JobKeeper payments reduced or withdrawn are being urged to check their eligibility for the JobSeeker unemployment benefit.
More than 1.35 million JobSeeker recipients will soon need to start looking for more work or face cuts to their payments, with the Morrison government ratcheting up mutual obligation requirements wound down during the pandemic.
As support builds to lift the Newstart allowance, the Morrison Government says as many as 80 per cent of jobseekers are penalised each year for failing to turn up to training or interviews as part of “mutual obligation” to receive benefits. But claims that the unemployed actively snub work opportunities don’t tell the whole story, argues Greg Marston, Gaby Ramia, Michelle Peterie, and Roger Patulny.
