Tasmanian leaders fail to push back on COVID payment cut

State government is silent on double blow to 51,000 of us, says Greg Barns

WHILE the Gutwein government has won plaudits for closing off the island and therefore curtailing COVID19’ s health impact, that was an easy task. The real challenge comes now with the callous decision of Mr Gutwein’s political friends in the Liberal Party in Canberra to slash the COVID supplement which has been paid to JobSeeker and Youth Allowance recipients since March of this year.

As of January 1, this supplement is now only $ 150 a fortnight, down from $ 550 when it was introduced in March. The payment was stepped down to $ 250 in September but will vanish by the end of March.

So if you are a JobSeeker recipient, being paid a paltry base rate of $ 565.70 per fortnight, your income will have been halved in 12 months. This is despite the employment market remaining poor and no certainty about economic recovery, partly because Australia lags other nations such as the UK and US in rolling out a COVID vaccine.

According to TASCOSS, the peak welfare body, about 51,000 Tasmanians will be impacted by the Morrison government’s cruelty. That is, about one in 10 of us. TASCOSS chief executive Adrienne Picone rightly said on Wednesday, “The federal government’s shortsighted decision to cut income support programs further shifts the cost burden of caring and supporting Tasmanians while they look for work onto our state government and social assistance sector. When people don’t have enough money to live on, it also puts more pressure on local services and local government to provide much needed support. Tasmanians simply trying to get by are well within their right to ask: does the federal government care?”

Note there has been no pushback from Mr Gutwein or his government on this latest attack on marginalised and low income Tasmanians. They have, despite knowing the severe adverse impact on the Tasmanian community, been too cowardly to tell the Morrison government not to plunge individuals back well below the poverty line.

He is not alone of course. Premiers and chief ministers generally have been shamefully silent on this decision. But what will the Gutwein government do to improve the life of those 51,000 Tasmanians? What will it put in place to improve their employment prospects? What about housing support? How will energy bills be met?

This is a real challenge to a government led by a premier and treasurer who has been bone lazy when it comes to economic reform, and creating policies to improve equity since it was elected in 2014. Housing is a prime example.

For years the Tasmanian housing market has been such that in major centres like Hobart, rentals have been astronomically high. In 2018 the liberal Liberal Sue Hickey, the Speaker of the Parliament and MP for Clark, and this newspaper shamed the then Hodgman government into addressing the high levels of

homelessness that low income earners were experiencing. In March that year Mr Hodgman announced a housing summit recognising “more immediate action is needed” and that his government would “work together with the experts to identify the best, immediate solution.” Homes have been built and some short- term accommodation delivered. But the stress remains and the 51,000 impacted by slashing the COVID supplement will find themselves, if not already, back on the streets. This is because despite the rhetoric the housing shortage remains a reality. As Pattie Chugg from Shelter Tas, a peak body, said, “In Tasmania’s competitive and unaffordable rental market, many low income earners must make impossible choices between essentials such as food and heating or having a home. Single parent working families, [ JobSeeker] recipients, young people and aged and disability pensioners are the worst affected, along with many households who have lost income due to the COVID- 19 pandemic effects on the Tasmanian economy.”

Things are going to get a whole lot worse now that the

COVID supplement is vanishing. But we see no forward planning by the Gutwein government on how it will tackle the severe worsening of an already intolerable housing situation.

And do not expect the employment market to soak up many of the 51,000 who are surviving on the COVID supplement. As the TCCI Tasmania Report, written by economist Saul Eslake, argues Tasmania’s employment outlook is being hit harder than mainland jurisdictions in this time of national economic downturn and will take longer to emerge into a better place.

So thanks to Mr Morrison and his blow to the vulnerable members of the community, Mr Gutwein and his government are left with a serious challenge of how to stop a full blown poverty crisis in 2021. Is it up the task? Not likely given its timidity and policy laziness. But one hopes, in vain perhaps, but for the sake of humanity on this island, one is wrong.