Australia’s unemployment benefits | Bad and getting worse

“A report on inequality to be delivered to Treasurer Wayne Swan this morning will label Australia’s welfare system one of the best and most efficient in the developed world, with the exception of unemployment benefits which are the worst relative to community standards and shrinking” writes Peter Martin.

The report, to be unveiled just after Mr Swan takes the stage at the Council of Social Service annual conference in Sydney finds family payments for the low paid Australians are the highest in the OECD. But the Newstart unemployment benefit is the lowest as a proportion of the typical wage.

“Unemployment payments fell from 46 per cent of median household income in 1996 – a little below a conventional relative poverty line – to 36 per cent in 2009-10, a long way below such a poverty line,” University of NSW professor Peter Whiteford says in the report.

Whereas NewStart and the age, disability and carers pensions were once roughly similar, different methods of indexation adopted in 1997 mean the gap is now more than $230 per fortnight, with a single unemployed person getting only 65 per cent of what he or she would get as a disability pensioner.

“This gap cannot narrow over time, it can only grow,” the report says.

Read More @ Peter Martin: How bad are Australia’s unemployment benefits? Bad and getting worse..