One of the biggest failures of this month’s federal budget was that it failed to permanently lift the rate of JobSeeker from its poverty rate of around $40 per day.
This means that Australia is facing a gaping welfare cliff if the temporary JobSeeker coronavirus supplement is unwound as scheduled from 31 December, alongside the scheduled abolition of JobKeeper at the end of March, which will push many of those recipients onto JobSeeker.
The JobSeeker supplement was already lowered in late-September from $550 per fortnight to $250 per fortnight, impacting 1.4 million people. And from 1 January 2021, the supplement is scheduled to be removed altogether, which would return JobSeeker to its old rate of around $40 a day – well below both the poverty line and the Aged Pension:
