Zoe Wundenberg | Why do federal governments find it so difficult to help people?

And another: does the Australian government only need to provide for people who fit their preconceived ideas of the "model jobseeker"?

I think these questions are what underpin my problem with the Workforce Australia/JobActive system. Over half of all Australians are living pay cheque to pay cheque, December 2022 data from Paytime shows. That means that if one of these workers were to lose their job, they would be in severe financial stress immediately, which makes them vulnerable to a system that is meant to support them, but is often used punitively resulting in further damage being instigated.

Workforce Australia, and JobActive before it, focuses on negative incentive, i.e., "do this or else your payments will be stopped", causing payment recipients to feel stress - and likely resentment - regarding the "mutual obligations" they are bound to uphold. It emphasises their vulnerability and puts them at the mercy of a third-party private company, as the administrators of government payments.

Extensive research has been done into this system, exposing the impact of neoliberalism on social policy and the creation of subsections of our society known as "the deserving poor", and "the undeserving poor." Both Coalition and Labor governments have peddled negative stereotypes of people experiencing unemployment that have resonated through mainstream media since the mid-1970s. Subsequently, we, as a society, generally accept concepts of dole-bludgers, laziness, addiction, uncleanliness, and violence, as characterisations of JobSeeker payment recipients, resulting in many of us parroting the government's harmful soundbites like the Coalition's "the best form of welfare is a job," which is a "d'oh moment" at best and a condescending, patriarchal, derisive statement at worst.

The concept of "deserving and undeserving poor" is a neoliberal production that has been touted for decades, with former Liberal Party minister Pru Goward actually publishing an opinion piece entitled Why you shouldn't underestimate the underclass, describing the "underclass" as "damaged, lacking in trust and discipline ... and highly self-interested." However, it's not a concept associated only with the Coalition governments. In 2009, the Rudd government announced a $42 billion stimulus package that provided "thousands" of dollars to lower income-earning families, and almost nothing to the long-termed unemployed, suggesting Labor's delineation between the "deserving" poor and the "undeserving" poor is also alive and well.

The system has tests for tests, designed to pigeon hole you into your little box of inadequacy. You have to go through means testing, which doesn't just take you into account, but also your spouse, meaning that if your spouse earns over the threshold, your individual position is skewed to that - you are no longer an independent person, but an extension of your spouse. You also go through liquid asset tests, where you must disclose how much you have in savings, and if you are a single person with no dependents and have $5500 or more in the bank, you will face a waiting period prior to receiving financial support, leaving you with no back up to make up the shortfall of the payment once it does arrive.

MORE ZOE WUNDENBERG:

Over the years, our governments have seen social security as a cost to be managed, reduced where possible, efficient in the achievement of its goal (supposedly to get people back into work) and an outsourced service to be overseen.

But social security is so much more than just a cost to be managed with punitive incentives designed to frighten people into doing as they are told.

When the system designers care more about whether the people in need are worthy of assistance, all it does is draw attention to the fact that the designers themselves are perhaps unworthy to judge.

When you are a government, charged with the welfare of a nation, and a citizen asks for food, you don't ask them why, for how long have they needed it, whether they've considered trying to earn it, and what are they going to do for you once they've eaten the cracker you've tossed at them.

You provide them with food. It is a basic human right.