Excluding the most vulnerable from Covid payments isn’t just cruel – it jeopardises public health
As New South Wales stares down another painful lockdown extension, its mission is clear: drastically reduce travel and other activities of people outside their homes, and thus reduce transmission.
Only the bare minimum of essential economic activity can be maintained in order to support the majority to stay home.
Public health restrictions are the central weapon in the battle to prevent all-out contagion. But their effects are undermined if not coupled with a program of liveable income supports that allow people to stay safe – and keep others safe – by staying home.
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Intensive policing to enforce stayat-home rules doesn’t work when people feel compelled to work because they have no other way to support themselves. In this regard, the uneven and inadequate patchwork of income supports provided through the federal government’s disaster payment program is not up to the task.
For example, the federal government excluded anyone receiving welfare payments from receiving Covid disaster supports. But excluding our lowest-income most vulnerable communities from these supports isn’t just cruel. It also jeopardises public health.
Many people receiving welfare payments also earn paid work income. Working social security recipients are a “deliberate design feature” of Australia’s employment policies.
But they will not be compensated for losses in income resulting from the new lockdowns. Indeed, an estimated 400,000 unemployed or parttime workers across greater Sydney don’t qualify for Covid supports, purely because they receive another form of payment.
These desperate people face continued compulsion to work, expanding the pool of desperate workers seeking precarious, dangerous cash-in-hand and gig work. We have already seen how this story ends: with WhatsApp security guards, pizza delivery drivers, and interstate removalists.
With this arbitrary and dangerous policy choice, the federal government reveals its political priorities: to appear “tough on dole-bludgers”, and focus on deficit reduction even amid a pandemic.
Indeed, expanding the ranks of desperate jobseekers was always a priority for this government as the pandemic dragged on. Income-free thresholds were lifted, the unemployed were ordered to recommence “mutual obligations” and casual and part-time work (which bore the brunt of initial Covid job losses) exploded again (accounting for 60% of all new jobs since the initial lockdowns).
Another consequence of the federal government’s punitive income support model is deepening and arbitrary inequality. Consider this scenario: two 21-year-old university students, both
live with their parents, and both worked eight hours per week as baristas before the outbreak. Both earned $216 per week from work.
One student has two parents in professional employment. But the other receives Youth Allowance ($156 per week) because his parents have low incomes and no significant wealth or assets. With his barista income, he earned a combined $372 per week prelockdowns – and remitted a good portion to his parents to support weekly rent, food and bills.
Assume that both lost their jobs in the new lockdowns. The wealthier student qualifies for federal disaster payments and receives $375 per week. Perversely, the poorer student does not qualify because he already received a means-tested support payment before the lockdown. He reverts to the $156 per week Youth Allowance rate – almost $200 lessper weekthan the wealthier student.
Two people facing the same deadly virus, same lockdowns, and same loss of income. But the government pays one less because he was poorer to start with.
This shows how two classes have been created through the perverse redesign of commonwealth Covid supports: a “deserving” group and an “undeserving” group. People with the greatest need are excluded and public health is sacrificed.
Pulling NSW through this outbreak requires an entirely different direction. Livelihoods needn’t be sacrificed in our efforts to save lives. Australia clearly has the capacity to provide income payments to all who need them: we did that last year, and we can do it again.
Jobkeeper must be resurrected and improved. While the program was exploited by some businesses, a wage subsidy is still a powerful way to prevent mass job destruction, retain ties between workers and employers, and minimise skills loss and career disruptions.
Stronger revenue tests to prevent rorting, extension to all short-term casuals and temporary migrant workers, and payments at the original $750 rate are all possible.
The jobseeker coronavirus supplement of $550 per fortnight must also be reinstated, and eligibility expanded to include those on DSP and carer payments. We must also get on the front foot against workplace contagion by paying essential workers to regularly test and isolate.
In short, the success of Australia’s public health strategy depends on fast action to expand and strengthen the income support program. It’s the critical companion to stay-at-home lockdown orders.
The federal government can choose to do this right. Or it can choose to keep sending cruel ideological signals. All Australians hope it does the former.
Alison Pennington is senior researcher at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work