Local
South Australian Newstart recipients will today tell their stories of life below the poverty line at the Adelaide hearing of the Senate inquiry into the unemployment allowance.
Opinion
With Newstart payments in the spotlight, it’s time to consider who’s receiving them when assessing the impact of government policy. The results are revealing, argue Owain Emslie and Danielle Wood.
Get InDaily in your inbox. Daily. The best local news sent straight to your inbox every workday at lunchtime.
Thanks for signing up to the InDaily newsletter.
Unemployment benefits should be increased by more than $120 a week and the unemployed should not be treated as “dole bludgers” when many – including former car industry workers – were not responsible for losing their jobs, argues a new report.
Calls to raise Newstart will be put directly to senior government bureaucrats during a parliamentary inquiry into the unemployment welfare payment.
Social Services Minister Anne Ruston has told a Murray Bridge audience that raising the Newstart allowance would do “absolutely nothing” but likely give more money to pubs and drug dealers.
South Australians are exchanging sex for accommodation, in an arrangement that SA Police insists is legal, but which lawyers say lives in a “grey” area within the state’s under-scrutiny sex work laws.
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.
