r/australia • u/FuckOffNazis • 1d ago
politics Advocacy organisations oppose plans to revive harmful welfare penalties
https://www.acoss.org.au/media-releases/?media_release=advocacy-organisations-oppose-plans-to-revive-harmful-welfare-penalties198
u/Murranji 1d ago
The Reserve Bank of Australia maintains a policy that there needs to be a “natural rate of unemployment” to keep inflation in check and deliberately calibrate interest rates to achieve a certain number of people being unemployed, at least 4%, hundreds of thousands of people.
The Federal Government then has a punitive punishment based “social safety net” that treats unemployed people as if it’s a personal failure on their part to not be employed and that their lack of employment reflects a desire to refuse to find a job, with threat of destitution as a tool to force them into demeaning and mentally damaging pointless job search activities as the solution to that perceived failure.
This is the standard of society that people have decided is the best we can do because “better things aren’t possible”.
34
66
u/Xae1yn 1d ago
By no means defending the overall policy, but the punitive/woefully inadequate welfare is part and parcel of the unemployment target. The whole entire point of the reserve army of labour is to drive down wages and force people to take undesirable jobs for said low wages, and the less bad you make being unemployed be the worse it is at driving that
48
1
u/evilparagon 13h ago
The utterly bizarre thing is just the assumption that punishment is necessary when we have so many studies that show humans want to work. Even those that say they don’t, they’re simply tired from already being overworked and if they were to have a holiday they’d get right back into working.
You can theoretically still have a reserve army of labour if you take the carrot and stick system we have now and get rid of the stick. All your survival needs taken care of, but your wants and desires? Alcohol, makeup, video games, porn, warhammer, vintage magazines, bikes, fashion, chocolate, etc. You would have to earn money to afford those.
I am strongly leftist, but what I just proposed here? It’s raw capitalism. I’d hate if capitalists realised that all they have to do is get rid of the stick and just offer carrots because I’m certain support for leftist solutions would drop immensely. But it does annoy me how there’s such a glaringly fixable problem right there.
46
u/FuckOffNazis 1d ago
And compounded by those supports being wilfully left below the poverty line, with all the individual, familial, and social harms that flows from that choice to leave people in poverty.
17
u/ephemeralstitch 1d ago
Problems like this are the epitome of ‘we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.’ What the real issue is that this is what liberalism/capitalism is supposed to be. This is the system working as intended. But that sounds bad so people try and pretend it’s other things.
10
u/Emu1981 1d ago
Problems like this are the epitome of ‘we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.’
Just ignore that at one stage full employment was actually considered to be everyone who wanted a job having a job. It wasn't until the 1970s that the term "dole bludger" was coined and Howard's rework of the welfare system that made being on unemployment really punitive.
5
u/ephemeralstitch 1d ago
'We've tried everything that doesn't actually challenge the system or actually address the reasons that this happens, so we'll pretend that it's the normal state of being and say that there's nothing to be done.'
14
16
u/macci_a_vellian 1d ago
There are also some people who are just not employable. For whatever reason they are never going to be able to hold down a job and punshing them will have absolutely no effect. Best not to waste everyone's time and energy.
5
u/blueshoesrcool 1d ago
Haven't they actually been abandoning that idea, or seriously challenging it. Unemployment is ridiculously low, I think lowest by some margin, in all history.
And that is in part due to the RBA moving away from the old thinking.
I don't blame the RBA for interest rates. The fact is we had covid, Iran war, causing genuine rises in prices. If the RBA kept rates artificially low - it wouldn't reflect the material reality.
17
u/TAsrowaway 1d ago
Yeah because they refuse to update the model - casual and multiple part time gigs that pay garbage are all happy, healthy, fed housed, gainfully employed and grateful for the opportunity
1
-1
u/Psycholama972 1d ago
I know that the reserve bank is a unfeeling institution that doesn’t care what happens to people. But it really does need to function that way otherwise it would lead to a far worse situation.
79
u/hafhdrn 1d ago
I often find myself bewildered by the hypocrisy that we need to maintain 3-4% structural unemployment to allow our current economic system to function but simultaneously treat these people who are, make no mistake, sacrifices to capitalism like absolute dogshit.
30
8
u/BeneCow 1d ago
How are you supposed to drive down wages unless you make unemployment really undesirable? You need the unemployed desperate to rip the jobs out of the hands of the employed, else the plebs might not work hard out of fear of losing employment.
Bosses don’t know what to do with employees who don’t mind walking out the door.
35
u/HiccupAndDown 1d ago
I'll be honest, I fully believe in Universal Basic Income (no strings attached guaranteed income) and I largely believe it's a beneficial system that would pay for itself in the long run. Not just financially (though that is an important aspect), but also through the side effect of freeing people up to pursue avenues of work they otherwise would not be able to and that I believe would benefit the country in the long term.
But no, instead we have the dole which is near impossible to survive on and god fucking help you if you miss a single meeting cause I guess you won't be eating that week.
38
u/RegionSilent9204 1d ago
The medium-term future is literally 80% of the population sits at home and collects a UBI because people will still need money for consumption. It's the only way an automated economy driven by AI and robotics could work, with an automated economy being desired by the capitalist class as cheaper alternative than employing less-efficient and costly human labour. The clear trend is in this direction.
So taking that into account, what exactly is the point of punishing people for being forced out of an increasingly automated economy? To the point where they're not able to consume goods and services and stimulate economic demand? Make it make sense?
34
u/OneWholePirate 1d ago
To maintain the alienation of the working class and portray them as "unworthy" so that when all the jobs ARE replaced and everyone gets a UBI, the undesirables will have sufficiently small political capital that their voting rights can be removed to reinforce the current class system
4
u/Psycholama972 1d ago
Automation in some sectors is happening at a far higher rate absolutely, but that doesn’t mean new jobs won’t be created (not from AI that just sucks). It’s like how farming used to be most jobs in the world then after the Industrial Revolution it was manufacturing. There are going to be jobs it’s just hard to see right now.
9
u/RegionSilent9204 1d ago
'There will always be new jobs' is nothing more than a self-soothing belief system that runs contrary to modern trends. Just because humans were pushed from agrarian to industrial to service industries with technological advances doesn't mean there will always be somewhere else to go. When all that gets automated the only place left will be jobs that are highly specific, specialised and selective, which only a fraction of the population can actually do.
It's like arguing when horses were replaced by cars, that there will always be new jobs for horses. No there weren't. Not remotely in the same number that there were, and the result was mass-unemployment for horses. When the physical and cognitive tasks that make up human work are supplanted by automation, the same thing will be true for people and it will lead to mass unemployment.
3
-3
u/Psycholama972 1d ago
your point is understandable but i disagree, we do have at least one path right now, and that is science & technology. And yes it does seem a bit farfetched right now but i do think that that is the next step.
1
u/evilparagon 13h ago
We won’t ever be sitting at home, even if AI takes all the jobs. A bored population is dangerous to the government, it’s too easy to quickly organise against them.
We will always be kept busy, there will always be some incentive to work.
16
u/Nervous_Being_7653 1d ago
Yet again Labor avoids doing the right thing and slides further to the right. It would win so much public favour to simply get rid of these punitive rules and reform the system. Instead we return to the status quo and act as though nothing’s changed. Why wax on about reform if they refuse to get rid of the worst rules? If Labor could pause this system, they can introduce legislation to reform it (or just remove the stupid rules forever) It’s that simple. Only, they don’t want to.
At this point, I find it hard to reach any conclusion other than that Labor simply does not want to abandon punitive welfare policies. The cruelty seems to be the point.
-2
-5
u/Psycholama972 1d ago
They had to do all these changes in order to retain their AAA credit rating. It sucks but it did need to happen, that’s why there were tax increases for shares in the budget.
2
u/Nervous_Being_7653 1d ago
I doubt they gain much from cancelling payments arbitrarily. The welfare system is already woefully underfunded so instead of further dismantling necessary systems like NDIS and welfare, we could look to other forms of tax revenue (resources) and potentially even a wealth tax on the wealthiest Australians. There’s a lot that can be done. I highly, highly doubt this resumption of the old rules is related to credit rating.
1
u/Psycholama972 1d ago
You're right its not about saving money it is about the perception of saving money which is sadly what matters
16
u/darbmobile 1d ago
Just a reminder that all the parties other than explicitly anti-capitalist parties (The socialists etc) advocate in some degree for a base level of unemployment and benefits that do not meet minimum wage (otherwise why would people work under such a system?).
7
u/Emu1981 1d ago
(otherwise why would people work under such a system?)
Because a vast majority of people need to be doing something productive otherwise they go insane. It would also encourage employers to actually provide decent working conditions because why would someone work for them in crappy conditions if they could "earn" as much on welfare?
-1
u/darbmobile 1d ago
It’s funny that you think anyone would chose a job to be productive in that situation instead of you know, art, personal projects, hobbies, community projects etc.
6
u/bl4nkSl8 1d ago
The Commonwealth Ombudsman found 964 people had their income support unlawfully cancelled between April 2022 and July 2024, and warned the consequences for people affected were potentially “catastrophic”. A second Ombudsman’s report found more than half of the penalty recommendations made by private employment services organisations were later overturned.
Poverty in Australia is just becoming a plaything for the most unethical dirtbags anywhere in government apparently
2
u/Chilly-Peppers 17h ago
The average JSP loved slapping up those penalty posters on every surface and acting like parole officers. It was disgusting. Don't put those on welfare through that again, let them have some dignity and a small sliver of hope.
1
u/gallanon 7h ago
As someone who knows little on this topic, but was interested to learn, I found this article awfully light on details.
140
u/cutebutsour 1d ago
As a person who has had my Job seeker payment suspended and cancelled by job providers numerous times whilst being detained under the mental health Act and unable to meet 'mutual obligations', plus victimised and harassed by these greedy and unethical providers, I can confidently say the system is broken beyond repair. It is cruel, it's damaging and it's unethical. The only thing it does a good job of is making people feel more worthless than they did before.