August 2, 2023

Where to start?

EXPLORE MAPS

DATA DASHBOARD

ANALYSIS (PDF)

Poverty hurts people and communities.

It undermines people’s mental and physical health, creates considerable stress for families and can hinder children’s emotional, physical and mental wellbeing and development.

Tragically, poverty is all too common in Victoria.

This analysis explores the extent and characteristics of poverty in Victoria.

In total, more than 800,000 Victorians live in significant economic disadvantage, including 216,000 children.

That’s 13.3% of all Victorians.

However, as our analysis reveals, not everyone is impacted evenly.

There are some groups of people and parts of Victoria where disadvantage is deep and worsening.

How to explore the data

There are three ways to explore the data and learn about poverty in Victoria.

You can

• Use the interactive maps below
• Read our detailed analysis (including comparisons to 2016 poverty data)
• Explore the interactive data dashboard (with poverty data by council area)
• Take a guided tour of the data prepared by our project partners at NATSEM.

Key findings

As detailed and explained in our detailed analysis:

• 800,000 people in Victoria are living in poverty.
• Pandemic supports reveal poverty is a policy choice.
• Child poverty remains significant and widespread.
• Poverty across Melbourne has increased since 2016.
• Poverty remains stubbornly high across regional and rural Victoria.
• Victoria has deep pockets of severe place-based disadvantage.
• More people over 65 are living in poverty – and it’s getting worse.
• Housing costs are hurting both renters and mortgage holders.
• Having a job makes you less likely to live in poverty but doesn’t protect you fully.

VCOSS CEO Emma King on ABC Radio

Top councils – by total number of people living in poverty 

Casey	56,548
Hume	46,684
Wyndham	43,600
Whittlesea	35,733
Brimbank	32,349
Greater Geelong	30,437
Melton	28,521
Greater Dandenong	27,859
Monash	22,876
Melbourne	19,988

Top ten councils — by poverty rate

Hume	20.59%
Central Goldfields*	19.7%
Greater Dandenong	18.34%
Brimbank	18.13%
Melton	17.36%
Casey	16.59%
Whittlesea	16.55%
Wyndham	16.12%
Latrobe*	16.11%
Yarriambiack*	15.9%

VCOSS is the peak body for Victoria’s social and community sector, and the state’s premier social advocacy body.

We work towards a Victoria free from poverty and disadvantage, where every person and community experiences genuine wellbeing.

Read more.

August 2, 2023

PRIMARY AUTHOR

Meg Brodie

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VCOSS acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country, and we pay respect to Elders and Ancestors. Our business is conducted on sovereign, unceded Aboriginal land. The VCOSS offices are located on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung land in central Naarm.

As dreams of homeownership recede into a hazy fog of unjust Federal housing policy, long-term renting is the only option for a growing number of Victorians, especially young people.

Until recently, if you were among the one in three Victorians forced to compete in an intensely competitive rental market like some new Hunger Games spinoff, there was no guarantee you wouldn’t end up in living in a dump.

The general power imbalance of renting combined with a lack of available housing meant many renters were forced to settle for uncomfortable or even unsafe homes, without things like basic cooking facilities or lockable external doors.

In March 2021, Victoria introduced minimum standards for rental properties.

Mandating minimum standards (really basic things, like doors that lock, toilets that flush and stovetops that actually work) was an overdue acknowledgment by the Victorian Government that renters need to be safe and comfortable in their home.

But there’s one area in which renters still lag conspicuously behind homeowners when it comes to safety, comfort and cost-saving.

Homeowners are twice as likely to have insulation than renters, and three times as likely to have double-glazing windows, according to new data from Energy Consumers Australia.

For renters, that means sweating through summer and shivering through winter. It’s especially rough for people already struggling to pay the high energy bills that come with heating and cooling.

And the inequity is even more glaring when it comes to solar power: homeowners are almost five times more likely than renters to have rooftop panels.

That’s 34 per cent of homeowners producing their own energy and selling what they don’t need, compared to only 7 per cent of renters.

Climate change will keep increasing the risk and unfairness of this situation, with more dangerous summer conditions and more power needed to cool people’s homes.

Should the clean energy revolution only be for the benefit of the already well-off? We think not.

There’s lots that can be done to make every rental property in Victoria comfortable and energy efficient.

Firstly, with the stroke of a pen the Victorian Government could mandate it, just as they did with other items. Investment property owners would be required to install air-conditioning and double-glazed windows before advertising for tenants.

Installing solar panels on rental properties is a harder conversation, but an absolutely necessary one. Renters should have access to the benefits of affordable and sustainable energy, which would also help cut Victoria’s carbon emissions.

Panels are too expensive to become a minimum standard, and property owners have little incentive to install them when they won’t reap the benefits themselves.

Uptake of Solar Victoria’s Solar for Renters scheme has been slow for this reason, despite the introduction of no-interest loans that renters can help pay off with their bill savings.

As part of the solution, the Victorian Government should invest in solar gardens, and subsidise them for renters the same way rooftop panels are subsidised for homeowners. These schemes allow renters to buy solar panels away from their home, and receive a discount on their energy bill.

And renters who take up the scheme can continue benefiting from the panels when they move from home to home, lease to lease.

What it all boils down to is ensuring our response to climate change is equitable.

All Victorians deserve safe and comfortable homes. It will be a dangerous injustice if Victorian renters get left behind on solar power.

GUEST AUTHOR

Personal reflections on the pandemic, what women need for a fair recovery and the benefits of gender lens budgeting, by Natalie Kon-yu

On that Saturday, the 21st of August, I was keeping an eye on the news while playing with my kids. My husband was in the lab – he’s a biomedical scientist working on Covid-19 so he’d been going into the lab more often.

His time, and consequently ours too, had become dictated by the readiness of tiny cells.

In Melbourne, as in the rest of Victoria, all our lives had been dictated by tiny cells. The case numbers of COVID-19 had been rising, and that Saturday the news that many of us expected finally came in. Things that had been opened in the last two weeks would be closed. For us, and many other parents, this meant that childcare centres would be shut.

I felt a sigh of relief, followed by a moment of panic. In our house, both adults work and we have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. I’d been uneasily dropping my three-year-old to childcare for the last two weeks. At home, I’d been able to focus on my daughter’s schooling, and given how many days of school she’s missed since last year, this seemed important.

But with the case numbers rising I was glad that childcare centres were closing and that the daily choice I’d had to make for the last fortnight was taken from me. It seemed callous to make early childhood educators work, while primary, secondary and tertiary educators got to work from home, especially given the way the most mundane illnesses can rip through a childcare centre. We would keep our son at home for the duration. And, also, we would have to scramble.

I’m aware that I’m very lucky my husband and I are both employed. Lucky because work, for both of us, gives us a sense of meaning and fulfillment. And lucky because we would really struggle without both our incomes.

More than a century ago in the Harvester Judgement, an arbitration court judge decreed that the minimum wage should allow a man to support a family of five. Times have really changed since then. Not only have wage rises failed to match the cost of living in Australia, but more and more working Australians have been forced into casualised labour, which doesn’t incorporate things like sick leave, carers leave and long-service leave.

Having two full-time workers in the home has become a necessity for most Australian families. In 2016, the Australian Institute of Family Studies showed that 66 per cent of all Australian families had two parents in the workforce.

During the COVID outbreaks, there were no national or state strategies detailing how parents should approach the issue of leave if they had work and caring responsibilities.

Even in the earlier stages of the pandemic when government support for workers was more ready and reliable, people with full-time caring responsibilities were left out of the picture. JobKeeper, with all its problems, was an incredibly welcome initiative for many Australian workers – no one should be made vulnerable to job loss in a pandemic – but it should have been only a first step. No similar funding was ever made available to employers to give their staff extra leave, or supplement half days of work with leave, if they were caring for a family. This was a burden that each of us had to take on ourselves.

And it’s on the record that the majority of care work in Australian families falls to women.

In the report ‘Worsening of Australian Women’s Experiences under COVID-19: A Crisis for Victoria’s Future’, a team of researchers found that ‘Australian women’s larger care burdens – to children, spouses, and relatives – have resulted in increasing demands for their labour under lockdown, yet much of this work is unrecognised and unpaid.’ Not only this, but a crisis emerged in women’s paid work, too. The report found that during the second lockdown of 2020, Victorian women reported the highest rates of job loss, outstripping both Victorian men and women around the rest of the country. Women have also experienced higher rates of mental ill-health during the pandemic.

It’s on the record that the majority of care work in Australian families falls to women.

In some ways this crisis has just exacerbated and highlighted systemic issues that were around long before the pandemic. Australia has a famously poor parental leave scheme, just below the OECD average and leagues behind other nations – famously the Nordic countries, but also places like Japan, Korea, Estonia and the Slovak Republic.

We also have prohibitively high childcare costs.

Of course, many of these issues are dictated by the Federal Government, and we need to see changes on the federal level including to the parental leave scheme. The Grattan Institute, for instance, recently recommended an expansion of the scheme, adding up to six weeks to the current 20 weeks of paid parental leave allowance, and also a ‘use it or lose it’ clause to encourage Australian fathers to do more childcare. The modelling finds that this federal encouragement of women back into the workforce would see a net boost to the GDP of 300 million dollars, and a boost to women’s earning and their superannuation, and that it would also make men happier by increasing their life satisfaction and improving their relationships.

There are also things the Victorian Government could do, in the pandemic context and beyond, to help level the heavily gendered playing field. The state went some way towards recognising the weight of care responsibilities during lockdowns by allowing single parents (the vast majority of whom are women) to access childcare whether or not they are essential workers. For the bulk of the lockdowns single parents with paid employment were essentially doing two jobs by themselves; to think otherwise is to fail to recognise the labour involved in looking after children.

There should also be extra investment in women’s recovery from the disproportionate effects of the pandemic, including health services that address gender-based illness and family violence services that focus on primary prevention.

Gender lens budgeting would allow for policies, programs and resource-allocation to be informed by the best information about combatting inequality and supporting women.

And the Victorian Government should fully and adequately fund public schools so parents don’t face hidden educational costs and so schools, which have been under more pressure than ever, can support all their students through the pandemic and recovery.

Governments in Australia always claim to be strong on family values, and we’ve heard a lot in recent times about the need for gender equality in our society. Now is the time to step up and offer more than rhetoric. Australian working parents – code: working mothers – need tangible help. Without it many will fall through the cracks.

About 200,000 Victorians will be plunged into poverty, as they’re shunted from the Federal Government’s COVID Disaster Payment to the grossly inadequate JobSeeker scheme.

COVID-specific payments are ending in Victoria today  with the state having reached its 80% vaccination target.

“The Federal Government is washing its hands of these people,” VCOSS CEO Emma King said.

“The jobs market hasn’t yet bounced back. On average, there are about six unemployed or underemployed people applying for every job vacancy in Australia.”

“Knowingly pushing 200,000 Victorians into poverty is a terrible start to our post-COVID recovery.”

Ms King said while the COVID Disaster Payment was being withdrawal early, it was designed as temporary payment.

“The real scandal here is the ludicrously low rate of JobSeeker,” she said.

“JobSeeker is set below the poverty line.  $45 a day is simply not enough to buy fresh food or pay the rent.”

“JobSeeker is meant to be a safety net that protects people from poverty. Instead, it’s a net that traps people in poverty,” Ms King said.

The Federal Government was lauded by economists, mental health experts and social welfare advocates for bolstering the rate of JobSeeker during the height of the pandemic.

VCOSS is calling on the Federal Government and Labor Opposition to pledge to permanently raise the rate of JobSeeker ahead of next year’s federal election.

“Helping people out of poverty should be an issue we can all agree on. It should be above politics,” Ms King said.

“If the Commonwealth fails to boost JobSeeker to a suitable level, it will once again fall to other tiers of government and under-funded frontline social service bodies to pick up the pieces.”

In the media

Future is pretty bleak’: Unemployment up as COVID-19 payments end
The Age, 11 November 2021

COVID payments to end in Victoria
Mornings with Rafael Epstein (ABC Radio Melbourne), 18 November 2021

By Matt Jowett

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about life in the pandemic, the challenges of lockdowns and building back fairer. 

I can’t help but feel a sharp sense of existential dread and loss whenever someone asks, “So, what do you do for work?”

When COVID-19 decimated the events industry in 2020 – an industry in which I had worked for 15 years – I had contracts lined up with Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Pro Bono Australia, Live Nation and Crown Melbourne, and even with an NGO that took me to the UN Headquarters in New York. I’d recently worked on tours for Adele and Coldplay. I was truly hitting my career stride.

All that disappeared over a period of two months. I lost contracts worth tens of thousands of dollars, representing my ability to pay my bills and credit cards, pay down my HECS, contribute to my retirement and keep a roof over my head.

As the federal and state governments dragged their feet on announcing financial support – and other measures around evictions, utility relief and mental health access – my only option was to withdraw money from my super. I lost around a third of it in tax, as this was just weeks before the COVID policy of tax-free early super access was announced.

I never had much super to begin with, having spent years working mostly casual and freelance jobs, and what I withdrew was a majority of the money that should have been gathering interest for my retirement. I shudder to think how much that loss represents, and how far back it will set my retirement age – but it wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity.

In April 2020, once a policy agenda for support was in place, I attempted to access JobKeeper. As a sole trader I found the application process very confusing and, after failing to gain access to it, like many Australians I landed in line at Centrelink for JobSeeker. At that point I thought little of it – with the Coronavirus Supplement in place it was a similar level of support anyway. I would later learn that being a ‘welfare recipient’ would place major limits on my options and compound the pandemic’s impacts.

With so many barriers to returning to work in events, or any industry at that point, I felt the need to go back to uni and reskill. I shifted to Youth Allowance, just as that payment halved with the end of the Coronavirus Supplement – as if Coronavirus itself had ended. 

I had access to the State Government’s Utility Relief Grant Scheme, and micro grants from NGOs like Support Act helped get me through. In late 2020 I managed to get a few days a week of casual work at a local footwear retail store. All these combined bits of income were still not enough to make ends meet, but they kept the rent paid. I even got approached in 2021 with an event contract to deliver a small event in October; the first time I’d had an offer of event work since early 2020.

This brings me to the situation we’re in now. If 2020 was characterised by a sentiment of unity and support – ‘we’re all in this together’ – 2021 has been the year the crisis continued but the support, largely, did not.

As COVID-19 came back with a mutated vengeance, and with it the necessary lockdowns and restrictions, the Coronavirus Supplement did not return for social security recipients and nor did the JobKeeper program. Instead, a range of one-off disaster support payments have been announced, but for millions of Australians in my position of surviving on a mix of paid work and partial social security payments these schemes were not available, despite losing work.

As retail shut down, and that new contract decided it was too risky and cancelled, I found myself struggling through Victoria’s fourth and fifth lockdowns on around $600 a fortnight – barely enough to cover rent and about half my average income when I’d been working. I was constantly frustrated to find I was locked out of federal and state assistance while adhering to state lockdowns that kept me from work.

I understand the need for these public health measures, and am generally very supportive of them. What I don’t understand is setting the 2021 JobSeeker rate – $630 a fortnight – at around half that of 2020 – $1,200 a fortnight – and excluding those struggling to survive on it from any other support while lockdowns and other restrictions are an ongoing feature of our lives.

If 2020 was characterised by a sentiment of unity and support – ‘we’re all in this together’ – 2021 has been the year the crisis continued but the support, largely, did not.

I regularly have to put off paying bills so I can eat, and I go weeks eating no-name two-minute noodles or 90-cent tins of tuna with a small bowl of rice. I postpone repairs to items or vet check-ups for my pets, I’ve cancelled much-needed psychology and dental appointments to ensure I can pay rent. I cancelled any subscription or membership I could. Without a gym membership and with a drastically reduced grocery budget my health is not what it used to be. Outside of lockdowns I politely decline friends’ invitations to social gatherings if there’s any kind of cost, and feel ashamed to admit it’s because I can’t afford it.  

On recently announcing the return of some of the financial support that had been removed, Scott Morrison said, “The priority is to ensure we’re there to support those that need that help … this is the task, we will come through this lockdown … and on the other side we come back strongly, that’s what we saw last year.”

To that I say: Look a little harder. As someone on a welfare payment I have not been eligible for the lockdown support payments that were supposedly for “anyone who lost income and hours”.

And much of the support that has been temporarily reinstated is only for NSW. Where is it for the rest of us, for the rest of 2021? Where was it for Victoria’s almost back-to-back fourth and fifth lockdowns?

Now in our sixth lockdown, I’ve yet again lost casual work. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to access disaster payments or not. It has sent me into an awfully dark head space.

I don’t know how people in similar positions to mine, here at the bottom of the rungs – the casuals, students, those with disability or on single parent payments – will ever recover their losses.

I’m 34 years old, I’ve left a career built over 15 years in an industry that will take years to return to its previous scale, I’m back in university restricting my availability for work, I have next to nothing left in my superannuation. I am broke, stressed, worried, defeated, anxious, and physically sick from it all. 

The future for me looks, frankly, bloody grim. 

A grandparent who’s recently taken custody of her two grandchildren and had to give up work. She’s never accessed welfare support and is too embarrassed to speak to the kids’ school when she’s struggling to pay for textbooks, uniforms, shoes, devices, excursions.

An Aboriginal sole father of four children, two in primary and two in high school. He parents full-time, and about half his Centrelink benefits are eaten up by rent. He wants to support his kids through their education, including by giving them access to fun and healthy extra-curricular activities, but this year he struggled to pay for basics like car registration.

And the parents of three kids, one of whom is on the Autism spectrum. They don’t speak much English and also care for their elderly aunt. They want to make sure all their kids can fully participate in school, but a lot of their money goes on medications and medical tests and they struggle to afford uniforms and textbooks.

One link between these people is that they all just want to give their kids the best possible start in life through education.

Another is that they’ve all received help from a small community organisation which, among other things, delivers a school support program to assist people with the cost of keeping their kids in school.

VCOSS spoke with Leanne Petrides from Community Information & Support Cranbourne (CISC) about how hard parents and care-givers are doing it, and what needs to change.

The way we operate at CISC is about responding to the particular needs of our local community.

How our school support program started is we noticed that from December to February every year we had a massive spike in the number of people coming to us for basic emergency relief support – food and petrol and help buying medicines, that sort of thing.

What we learned was that, for many of these families, there was an underlying story – they only needed emergency relief because of the amount of money they were having to spend on education costs for their children.

If children don’t have the right uniform or textbooks there might be consequences from the school, or they might be bullied. They might not want to go to school.

In the first year we provided the school support program, in 2005, we managed to assist around 60 families. Last year we were able to help nearly 200.

Over the years we’ve developed kind of a tri-fold approach.

Part of it is talking to families about what they do and don’t have to pay for. Things like ‘voluntary fees’ – what does that actually mean? Particularly for families for whom English is a second language, they often think, well, this is what I have to pay. So a big part of it is unpacking that, and also discussing book lists, stationary lists, that sort of thing.

A second prong of the approach is talking to some of our local schools. Especially in the early days of the program we found that some schools weren’t quite aware of the situation for a lot of families.

If children don’t have the right uniform or textbooks there might be consequences from the school, or they might be bullied. They might not want to go to school.

So schools might be putting kids in detention for not wearing the appropriate uniform, particularly school shoes. We’ve had conversations with local schools over the years about the reasons kids might not be wearing school shoes, and about being careful what sort of textbooks might be on the book lists, things like that.

And of course the final part of what we provide is financial assistance for families.

We were very lucky to be part of CISVic’s pilot program with State Schools’ Relief, so we’re able to assist many more families with school uniform items.

Now though, as well as help with uniforms and textbooks and things like that, we’re seeing the most requests coming for big-ticket items like laptops, computers and iPads, the devices that kids are needing now as everyday items.

We’ve been really lucky in that, while the only government funding we had was some support for a few years from our local council, we’ve been supported by donations from a lot of local community organisations like the Salvation Army and Rotary, and others – sometimes very diverse groups within the community who were so supportive of local families being given help with education expenses. It was wonderful because there’s that element of working collaboratively with another local welfare service, which can only benefit clients in the long run.

We also had some support from a pretty large philanthropic organisation, but unfortunately they changed their priorities last year, so we lost $25,000 a year. Last year was the first year that we had a pretty massive reduction in funding for the program.

It’s a tough year for people, with the post-COVID recession and the reduction in JobSeeker payments. We’re looking down a pretty dark hole of a financial shortfall and my gut feeling is that we’re going to really struggle.

We’ll be looking for donations, making applications to other philanthropic organisations, but we all know how competitive that is at the moment; there are lots of great programs needing support and philanthropy only has pockets that are so deep.

So in the next year I think we’re going to have to knock a few people back and prioritise who we can assist. Do we focus on families who are at high-risk times, like the transition from grade six to seven? Lots of new school costs and it’s an important time for children. But year ten can also be really tricky because you’ve got all those elective costs, when children are starting to hone in on what they’re wanting to do. And then of course the VCE years, years 11 and 12, are critical as well.

We find ourselves in a place where we have to make decisions about who we have to say no to. None of those decisions are taken lightly.

It feels a bit like being on a roller coaster, on the slow uphill climb. It sort of plateaus out a little bit in the middle of the year but we know what’s coming. Come November when we’re moving into that period of school costs, right when there’s Christmas and school holidays, in an area where we have a high number of families in need. It’s just a massive confluence of factors, rattling down that edge of the roller coaster.

Education, keeping kids in school, can be a cut-through in terms of breaking the poverty cycle.

In next week’s state budget we hope the Victorian Government funds state schools to a level where everything in the curriculum can be covered, including textbooks and devices.

And community organisations need secure ongoing funding so we can keep helping families to meet any shortfall.

Because ‘free’ education needs to actually be free.

Victorian social service agencies are bracing for a spike in requests for help, as temporary measures introduced to support people during COVID-19 are wound back.

The Federal Government is ending the JobKeeper wage replacement scheme and cutting the national unemployment benefit, JobSeeker. 
At the same time, a state ban on rental evictions is ending and most rent relief payments will also cease.

VCOSS CEO Emma King said Victoria was heading into choppy, uncharted waters.

“These are big changes, all happening at once and at a time of great uncertainty,” she said.

“Nobody quite knows how this will play out.”

“The one sad certainty is there will be more people out of work, in financial distress and struggling to pay their rent, buy food and afford the basics.”

“This is going to be brutal and bruising for many Victorians.”

“VCOSS members are bracing for a fresh wave of requests for help, after what’s already been an extremely challenging 12 months.”

Ms King said there was some good news in Victoria, with long-planned changes to rental laws also about to take effect, providing some extra protections for tenants.

“These simple yet significant changes are extremely welcome. They will help level the playing field between tenants and landlords.”

Ms King labelled the Federal Government as “heartless and foolish” for cutting JobSeeker.

“JobSeeker is designed to put a floor under people, so they don’t slip into poverty.”

“But the new rate of JobSeeker will push people below the poverty line, driving them into extreme hardship.”

“The Federal Government is essentially telling thousands of Australians that they don’t deserve to eat decent meals or stay warm in winter. That’s just wrong.”

The Federal Government is essentially telling thousands of Australians that they don’t deserve to eat decent meals or stay warm in winter. That’s just wrong.

She is encouraging anybody experiencing distress to ask help.

“Contact your energy retailers, talk to your landlord, reach out to your local community support organisation.”

“There are people and organisations there to help you.”

“Equally, if you know somebody in distress please ask if they’re okay and help refer them to a support service.”

“We need to look out for ourselves and our community,” Ms King said.

Quick stats

• 388,986 Victorians currently receive JobKeeper.
• Nationally, up to 250,000 people are forecast to lose their job when JobKeeper ends. 
• 338,725 Victorians already receive JobSeeker/Youth Allowance.
• On April 1, JobSeeker will be cut from $51/day to $44/day (for individuals)
  

By Caitlin McGregor

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about life beyond the pandemic, and about building back fairer. 

More than three million people are living in poverty in Australia. Of these, 774,000 are children under the age of 15, and 1.2 million are under 24. People cannot rely on Australia’s current social security payments to escape poverty—even though the nominal purpose of these payments is to prevent poverty.

When VCOSS asked me to write this article, they wanted me to describe what the higher JobSeeker rate during the pandemic meant to me, as a young sole parent on social security payments, and what it will mean to go back towards the dismal old Newstart-era rate.

Since that brief, the Federal Government has announced a meagre permanent raise to the JobSeeker rate: $50 a fortnight. That’s around $3.50 a day, and still leaves the rate well below the poverty line.

There was no shortage of personal impact stories shared in the lead up to this decision; you can Google ‘jobseeker cuts stories’ and read as many as you like. The format of these stories tends to be familiar: stats + stats + Pat’s* story, stats + stats + Maria’s* story.

But as Rick Morton writes for the Guardian: ‘The problem is not necessarily that [the prime minister] has not lived this life, but that he refuses to accept the testimony of the millions who have.’

Put another way: it’s not that the government doesn’t know, it’s that the government doesn’t care.

In this context, it can be painful to tell our own stories (again, and again, and again…), because it can feel like we’re only adding to what should already be an unignorable pile of testimonies, to which no one in power has any intention of listening.

*

Of course, I do have anecdotes if you need them. I have anecdotes that prove life has, at times, been tough—a whole repertoire of little indignities. 

Caitlin’s* story: Upon finding out that postgraduate study wouldn’t count as a ‘mutual obligation’ for my ‘job plan’, and that I therefore couldn’t afford the childcare that would allow me to continue my studies, I cried in the Centrelink office. I explained that my degree was structured under the assumption that students would continue to study after undergrad. ‘Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do?’ The woman behind the desk said, ‘I think you’ve been helped more than enough. What you’re supposed to do is be grateful, and start doing some work.’

It is currently the Liberal Party of Australia deciding to drop the JobSeeker rate. But this runs deeper than simply being a partisan issue. Back in 2012, the Gillard Labor government announced that recipients of the Parenting Payment—mostly mothers, who were parenting on their own—would have the payment cut once their youngest child turned six. They were to be pushed, instead, onto Newstart* (now called JobSeeker), which was worth $180–$200 less a fortnight. Defending this decision, Gillard said: ‘I’m a big believer in the dignity that comes from work.’ But as Anne Manne points out, ‘She did not mean mother work or care work or volunteer work … Her definition of work was narrow. She meant paid work.’

Of course, I do have anecdotes if you need them. I have anecdotes that prove life has, at times, been tough—a whole repertoire of little indignities. 

I sometimes wonder what I should have said to that Centrelink worker who told me it was time to ‘start doing some work’, after I’d spent three years juggling study and parenting on my own. Perhaps I should have pointed to my child as a direct product of my labour. Listen to him read! Observe his emotional intelligence! Measure the joy he experiences, and that he brings to other people! Look at the corn he planted in the backyard! Look at the surgical work that has been done on his feet to treat his talipes, look at his insulin levels—I feed him food, I manage his illnesses, I am keeping him working. Is he not a top quality model, an impressive product—and proof—of all my work?

I did not do this, of course, because it’s messed up to think of care and relationship-based work in this capitalist, productivity-driven way. Quite apart from the fact that thinking of people as products erases humanity and agency, it is simply not reflective of the way good care works. It’s also not how good art or good writing works, it’s not how good community works, and for many of us it’s not a framework through which we can measure the value of the work that we do.

And this, perhaps, gets to the crux of the issue: it’s not that there aren’t enough testimonies to how difficult it is to be living on an income that’s below the poverty line, and that amounts to $41.2% of the minimum wage. It’s a matter of ideology. Of what—and who—is deemed to be worth investing in. 

*

Politicians often cite wanting to ‘incentivise people to find [paid] work’ as a reason for not raising the Newstart/JobSeeker rate above the poverty line. I tell you what, though: if you’re a single parent on social security payments it also ‘financially incentivises’ you to not be single anymore, preferably by dating a man (they earn more than women) with a job. Coincidentally, this is precisely what I did a few years ago.

This man and I moved in together quickly—far too early in our very new relationship—partly because he was moving from Melbourne to start a job near the country town where I lived; and partly, on my end, because I was tired. Tired of being broke, tired of waking up shaking from nightmares where I ran out of money, tired of having panic attacks when I went to get the mail from the letterbox, dreading a speeding fine or an unexpectedly high bill. 

I am now financially better off than I ever was on my own, not because I work harder—I don’t think I could have worked much harder than I did in those years as a single parent—but because I have a partner.

Having such a low JobSeeker rate not only values paid employment to the detriment of all other work, but reinforces the gendered division of labour and forces people who rely on these payments to also be dependent on the people around them: often on men, who are statistically more likely to be doing the kind of work that is rewarded with salaries, and who don’t have to offer up their personal stories in order to convince anyone they deserve to be paid. 

*

Not to go all John Lennon on you, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of imagination in social change. One of the things the temporary increase to the JobSeeker rate meant to me was that it made it easier to imagine what that change could feel like permanently. I can, now, more easily imagine a world in which I’d have time to do the work that I believe matters most. 

I can imagine how much tension would dissolve from my relationship if my child and I weren’t financially dependent on my partner. Imagine the stress knots around my neck and shoulders dissolving, imagine the tight sick feeling that sits at the top of my stomach clearing. Imagine the joy of my dogs, the extra walks they would get. Imagine the book I would write, imagine the food I would grow, imagine the time I would spend playing boardgames and reading and learning with my child. 

I can imagine—and start workingtowards—a future in which Pat* and Maria* won’t have to tell their most painful stories for reports anymore, and can start living and telling better ones instead.

*Name has been changed. 

The amendment proposes an increase to the permanent rate of JobSeeker of about $25 per fortnight. That will not be enough to keep people out of poverty and will have long-term impacts on people’s health, wellbeing and prospects of employment.

To alleviate poverty, VCOSS strongly advocates the government increase the rate from the proposed $44 per day to at least $65 per day and commit to ongoing indexation of payments in line with wage movements at least twice per year.

The rate of JobSeeker should raise people above the poverty line

13 per cent of Victorians currently live in poverty.[1] Poverty exists in every Victorian community, with rates highest in regional and rural Victoria. Poverty stops people living healthy and happy lives. It can lead to isolation, to children disengaging from school, and to poor physical and mental health.

Receiving JobSeeker is the biggest risk factor for living in poverty. In January 2021 there were approximately 333,000 JobSeeker recipients in Victoria[2] or approximately 10 per cent of the Victorian labour force of 3.4 million people.

The proposed increase to the base rate of JobSeeker will leave these Victorians living well below the poverty line. For example, a single person without children will be $166 per fortnight short of the poverty line.

The Coronavirus Supplement lifted people out of poverty

The Australia Institute estimates that 425,000 Australians were lifted out of poverty due to the Coronavirus Supplement alone.[3] JobSeeker recipients told VCOSS that when they received the Coronavirus Supplement they were able to buy fresh food, eat three meals a day, and pay their bills for the first time.

All income support recipients, excluding disability support pensioners, “found themselves moving from incomes well below the poverty line to incomes above it, sometimes substantially so” as a result of the Coronavirus Supplement.[4]

People in households with two partners unemployed were the biggest beneficiaries, seeing their incomes rise collectively from between 10 to 20 per cent below the poverty line to between 35 per cent and 65 per cent above it.[5] This resulted in a rise in living standards for many JobSeeker recipients.

The proposed JobSeeker rate will send many families back to a life of poverty, forced to choose between medical care or energy bills, food or school supplies.

It’s hard to get a job when you live in poverty

Getting people back into work, post-COVID-19, is a worthy goal. But an inadequate rate of income support actually makes it harder for people to get work. It is more difficult to travel to interviews, pay for childcare, afford job-searching resources like the internet and devices, or look after your health, making the job hunt virtually impossible.

The impacts of an inadequate rate of JobSeeker may be particularly acute in Victoria. Victoria experienced a more prolonged COVID-19 related lockdown than any other Australian state or territory. As a result, Victorians have been hit harder by job losses than people living in other states and territories.

For example, between the week ending 14 March 2020 and the week ending 30 January 2021, payroll jobs in Victoria decreased by 3.7 per cent, the largest decrease out of all the states and territories.[6] Victoria’s unemployment rate is 6.3 per cent – the third highest in the nation, behind Queensland and South Australia.[7]

The system should enable and empower people to work and participate in society, and set them up to succeed. Overly strict and punishing compliance regimes may do more harm than good. Forcing people to apply for inappropriate jobs, or those they are not qualified for, to meet unreasonable mutual obligations does nothing to help people move into decent and secure employment. 

As well as making it harder for people to find jobs, the decision will likely have economic impacts. Most people who received the full Coronavirus Supplement last year reported they spent it on household bills, supplies and groceries. As the diagram shows, the lowest income quintile are in fact “dis-savers”, spending more than what they earn.[8]

That’s economic stimulus during a time when many Australian businesses are struggling. If the rate is low, people will have less money to spend on basics in local economies.

Demand for community services will increase if JobSeeker is inadequate

The inadequate rate of JobSeeker will place additional pressure on community service organisations. Prior to the pandemic, demand in the community services sector was already high and growing. Three-fifths of community sector staff surveyed in 2019 reported the number of clients that their service was unable to support had grown in the last twelve months.[9]

Many community organisations are reporting increased demand from people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.[10] This includes a large group of Victorians who have never needed support from the community sector before.[11]

Rates of financial hardship are growing. Many Victorians are already accessing credit, savings and superannuation to spend on essential goods, and are worried about their ability to pay bills.[12]

When the JobSeeker rate is cut, and other COVID-19 measures end (like the evictions moratorium), there will be further increases in demand for Government and community services. This will mean stretched services, exhausted workers, longer waiting lists and people unable to get help when they need it.

To discuss this submission further, please contact Brooke McKail, Manager Policy and Research on  brooke.mckail@vcoss.org.au

[1] VCOSS, Every suburb, every town: mapping poverty in Victoria, November 2018.

[2] Department of Social Services, JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance Recipient – month profile, January 2021.

[3] Grudnoff, M, Poverty in the age of coronavirus. The impact of the JobSeeker coronavirus

supplement on poverty, Australia Institute Discussion Paper, Australia Institute, July 2020.

[4] Dr David Hayward, Liss Ralston and Hayden Raysmith, Social policy during the coronavirus recession: a fairytale with an

unhappy ending? A case study of Victoria, VCOSS Occasional Paper, 2020.

[5] Ibid.

[6] ABS, Weekly Payroll Jobs and Wages in Australia, 13 February 2021

[7] ABS, Labour Force, Australia, 18 February 2021,

[8] A Beech, R Dollman, R Finlay and G La Cava, The Distribution of Household Spending in Australia, Reserve Bank of Australia, March 2014.

[9] ACOSS, Demand for Community Services Snapshot, December 2019.

[10] VCOSS and FSSI, Stories into Evidence: Covid-19 adaptations in the Victorian community services sector, 2020, p.7.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Consumer Policy Research Centre, COVID-19 and Consumers: from crisis to recovery; Monthly Insights Report: October – December 2020, 2020.

Victorian energy companies have resumed disconnecting households at an alarming rate, despite the pandemic being far from over and cuts to JobSeeker and JobKeeper just around the corner.

New data from Victoria’s Essential Services Commission—released today—reveals 123 electricity users and 172 gas consumers had their services cut off by various retailers in January alone.

The disconnections are in stark contrast to a commendable lull last year, when no households were disconnected between April and November.

“These companies played nice during the height of the pandemic, but they’re already slipping back to their dodgy ways,” Victorian Council of Social Service CEO Emma King said.

“Thousands of Victorians are struggling to afford the basics. They’re worried about their jobs, their income and their next meal.”

“Now is not the time to be denying power or gas to people who can’t pay the bill.”

“Power companies must remember these customers are real people and energy is an essential service.”

Ms King said the move was out of touch.

“Disconnections are meant to be an absolute last resort, even in the best of times.”

“But anybody who thinks now is a good time to turn off somebody’s power is spending too much time in the boardroom, and not enough time in the real world.”

###ends###

A comprehensive new energy and cost-of-living package announced today by the Victorian Government will help people save money, stay healthy and protect the planet.

The package includes:

• $1,000 rebate for 250,000 low-income households to replace old, inefficient and expensive heaters with a modern split system.
• A $250 rebate for roughly 950,000 Victorian energy users, including concession card holders and JobSeeker recipients.
• Upgrading energy efficiency in 35,000 social housing properties.
• The introduction of minimum energy efficiency standards for all private rental properties.

VCOSS CEO Emma King said the package would have immediate and significant positive benefits for the state’s most vulnerable.

“Everybody needs a home that stays cool in summer and warm in winter,” she said.

“That hasn’t been possible for everybody.”

“Thousands of Victorians are living in substandard housing with power-guzzling old appliances, that cost a lot to run and do a poor job.”

“These changes mean more people can now upgrade their old appliances and live in better quality housing; cutting bills, creating healthier homes and reducing emissions.”

“It’s good for people, good for the economy and good for the planet.”

“It’s good for people, good for the economy and good for the planet.”

###ENDS###

This media release has been updated to clarify that JobKeeper recipients are not eligible for the one-off $250 payment.

Social policy during the coronavirus recession: a fairytale with an unhappy ending?  tells a story of Melbourne during the pandemic you might not have heard.

It’s about how various government measures announced in response to COVID temporarily ended pre-pandemic poverty for a some groups, in particular some JobSeeker recipients.

In mid-2020, those measures helped propel people above the poverty line and facilitated Victoria’s introduction of tough public health measures to combat the spread of COVID-19.

The report questions why the Federal Government isn’t capitalising on this success, embracing policies that would keep people out of poverty in the long-term.

DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

Lead researcher Dr David Hayward (RMIT University):

This research tells the story of one Australia’s most extraordinary social policy successes, and how we’re about to let it all slip away.

The Federal Government made a lot of big and tough decisions during the pandemic, and managed to free thousands of Australians from pre-existing poverty.

The Victorian Government worked with them in lockstep to fill the gaps left to be filled, helping people experiencing homelessness and a variety of other highly marginalised groups.

The report warns we’re poised not to capitalise on this good work, but instead to let people slip back below the poverty line.

VCOSS CEO Emma King:

The JobSeeker Rollercoaster

By Miray Yilmaz

This story is part of the My Corona series. We’re publishing personal stories about the pandemic, life in isolation and Victorians’ hopes and fears for the future. We have changed Miray’s name at her request. 

I’m a 21-year-old uni student, studying a double degree in law and global studies.

I definitely feel a big generational divide, and I feel like our experiences of the world are very different to our parents’ ones. In some ways better, but in a lot of ways worse.

There’s a lot more uncertainty. I feel like the times of being able to plan out your career and know that you can afford a house one day, those times are over.

And I think it drives a lot of intense competition in our generation, because we know that only a few of us will be able to have those things. Even at uni there’s hostility between students because of the intense competition, and it really takes a toll on your mental health when everybody is like that.

I don’t begrudge anybody for being competitive, it’s a system we’ve been handed down. We know we have to be very competitive to get a job, or even an unpaid internship. I think I’ve done six unpaid internships now, many of them for six months at a time. We have to do that to be able to get a job one day. Unfortunately that’s just the way it is; we do hours and hours of unpaid work to try and one day, hopefully, get paid work.

I live in the city with a housemate, and Coronavirus has impacted me in many ways. It’s been really difficult, particularly with the lack of certainty.

Prior to COVID I was employed by three different organisations that I would do casual work for, and I also did private tutoring.

As soon as COVID contaminated the world I was told by all those organisations that we wouldn’t have work. At that point they said for the next few months, but there hasn’t been any work for the whole year.

And with my tutoring as well – at the start of the year I had 12 students, but a lot of them were very reluctant to do online tutoring, so after Coronavirus I was only able to maintain three of them.

I have a few diagnosed mental illnesses, the most prominent of which is an eating disorder. That coupled with the fact that I haven’t had secure employment has been really stressful. Psychiatrists aren’t covered by mental health care plans and they cost a few hundred dollars a session, so that’s been quite a barrier to accessing mental health help.

And generally Coronavirus has exacerbated my mental illnesses anyway, because of the isolation, and because eating disorders are premised on trying to attain a sense of control over your life. The fact that we’ve had severe restriction on our movement already lends itself to making eating disorders worse.

It feels really sort of paralysing in terms of what I want to do in the future. I feel very stagnant.

I’ve been interested in anything to do with women’s rights advocacy, and prior to this I was doing an internship at a women’s development agency. That got cut short, which was devastating because I’d just started and it was quite a difficult process to get into it. They said it’s been postponed but really it’s been cancelled.

It feels really sort of paralysing in terms of what I want to do in the future. I feel very stagnant.

I have access to youth allowance, which has been really helpful, but there’s a great lack of certainty around when they’ll take it away or how much they’ll decrease it by. When I was getting $1,100 a fortnight I could absolutely live on it, but now that it’s been decreased I’m dipping into the small amount of savings I have. It’s quite stressful.

If it got to the stage where I couldn’t pay rent I think my landlord would just kick me out. As a young person you don’t have that much leverage with your landlord.

I think our generation has a lot to deal with, to be honest. The weight of capitalism, the lack of employment, the amount of our uni fees. Just the fact that we’re paying uni fees, whereas the politicians, a lot of them didn’t even pay for uni.

And on top of that we’ve got climate change. And at the same time traditional media seems to hate young people and depict us as very entitled, whiny, privileged children.

Thankfully so far I’m keeping afloat, but I have a few friends who haven’t been turning their heaters on and haven’t been eating much. I’m very privileged that I haven’t had to do that.