JobSeeker fails to meet needs of older workers

I AM 60+ years old and have a wealth of experience in senior positions around the world, including Australia, on major leisure and recreation construction projects.

As a journeyman, I have no superannuation to speak of, and, having lost “my nest egg” in an entrepreneurial mishap some years ago, remortgaged my house to pay the bills.

I was working overseas up until April 2020 as a project director but due to health concerns and at the prompting of our own government returned to Australia on the last available flight direct to Brisbane to avoid double quarantine (it was not at all clear at the time, if we arrived in another state, we may well have to quarantine there, and when we arrived in Queensland).

Like most I was assuming this would “blow over” by June or July (2020) and it would be back to business as usual and I could continue working to pay off the mortgage and hopefully set aside a modest nest egg for retirement.

However, here we are eight months later, and very much poorer, living off the diminishing equity in our home (again) and the appreciated contribution from the JobSeeker program (nowhere near enough to live on when you are not geared for it).

Having the aforementioned wealth of experience, one would think that, well I certainly did, that there would be construction companies within Australia that would welcome my expertise. How wrong I was.

The dilemma is, I am now considered too old to employ overseas (most countries will not issue employment visas after 65 and I am approaching that), I cannot claim a pension as the government very generously (sarcasm) raised the retirement age for my age group to 67 (thanks for nothing) to save a few pension dollars, I cannot secure employment within Australia (career path being the No.1 requisite of employers), cannot possibly live on the ever-reducing JobSeeker benefits even with the maximum CV19 supplement, cannot travel overseas even if I secure a job due to departures exemption requirements (one of which is three months before re-entering, and, I need medication that requires government approval, hence public hospital testing, every six months, next due in March), should not travel overseas with CV19 still rampant and no rollout of vaccinations until March as I am considered vulnerable (although fit due to the imminently treatable and aforementioned medication).

I guess the point is, if I am in this dilemma through no fault of my own, then there must be thousands in similar situations.

Likewise, there must be thousands like myself who have never claimed any benefits from the state prior to CV19, whilst all the while, there are many second and third generation welfare recipients tho are afforded the same treatment as the thousands of hard-working, tax-paying contributors who are unfortunate victims of circumstance, and, as previous income earners geared to same.

It is my humble opinion that the powers that be need to reconsider the one size fits all dictum when it applies to JobSeeker and retain the higher range of CV19 supplements until the vaccination’s programs have had time to work, at least for those who had been gainfully employed pre-COVID-19.

It seems, that most of all discussions that I have had on this, people agree wholeheartedly that there should be a differentiation between those directly or adversely affected by CV19 and those who are the beneficiaries of CV19.

They should also reconsider the retirement age. When my father was alive he worked for the Electricity, Water & Sewerage (EWS) in South Australia and was offered early retirement at 55 years of age as they were encouraging employers to engage an ever younger workforce.

The raising of the retirement age was cloaked in the desire of reversing this, but in reality was in fact a budget saving of millions of dollars per annum with absolutely no incentive given for employers to actually engage those in, or nearing the retirement age bracket.

Clearly, the whole pension issue in Australia has little to do with the realities on the ground save for lowering the cost of supporting erstwhile precious contributors to society.

Our leaders cannot fix all of the societal problems but at the very least should apply some measure of common sense and fully justifiable resolutions to these two very key points, retirement age (including incentives for employers to actually employ the more mature amongst us) and continuing support for those severely disadvantaged in the pandemic as a separate issue to those twho have never wished to work. The latter is a third point (the freeloaders) we could write a book on another day.