Posts tagged welfare-to-work
From welfare recipients to Labor without love: a response to the Albanese government’s first budget  - part 1
From welfare recipients to Labor without love: a response to the Albanese government’s first budget  - part 1

After the 2022 Federal Government budget, The Antipoverty Centre asked people on Centrelink payments – the real social policy experts – for their reactions. One example: “This budget is an exercise in austerity & cruelty for the poorest, most vulnerable Australians, but for the wealthiest Australians it's an exercise in government handouts.’

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Advocacy, Lived experience, Policy and governance, PoliticsPower to PersuadeLived/consumer experience, Disadvantage, welfare reform, welfare conditionality, welfare-to-work, social justice
Break the Poverty Machine: the voices of Australia’s poor (part 1)
Break the Poverty Machine: the voices of Australia’s poor (part 1)

Marina is one of nearly 900 000 Australians who are either unemployed or underemployed and who receive either Jobseeker Payment or Youth Allowance. This open letter is to Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Social Services in preparation for an upcoming “raise the rate” protest hosted by the Anti-Poverty Centre and the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union on International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

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Advocacy, Lived experiencePower to Persuadewelfare-to-work, welfare conditionality, Wealth inequality, Poverty, NDIS, Disability, Disadvantage, employment, unemployment
Ramping up punitive mechanisms in employment services: Single mothers are the canary in the coalmine
Ramping up punitive mechanisms in employment services: Single mothers are the canary in the coalmine

This week Parliament will release their report on the Coronavirus supplements that have been added to selected income support payments, most notably JobSeeker. It is therefore timely to consider the impacts the government’s plan to taper off the supplement until payments are back to pre-COVID levels will have on the thousand who are currently relying on income support. In today’s analysis, Simone Casey (@SimoneCasey) of Per Capita (@PerCapita) shares her research into the impacts of the pre-pandemic ‘activation’ mechanisms on single mothers, which presages the wider impacts to be felt as the supplements disappear and mutual obligation requirements are reintroduced. This analysis is drawn from a recently-published article in AJSI which can be accessed here.

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Womens Policy Action TankWomen's Policy Action TankCOVID-19, employment, welfare-to-work, Social Welfare, Single mothers
Cashless Debit Card Expansion under COVID-19
Cashless Debit Card Expansion under COVID-19

This post questions the Morrison Government's recent decision to extend the Cashless Debit Card trials until the end of 2020. Dr Shelley Bielefeld (Law Futures Centre, Griffith University), Susan Tilley (University of South Australia), Priya Kunjan (University of Melbourne) and Dr Elise Klein (Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University) argue that the decision is unjustified by research and evaluation, and will do more harm than good during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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AdvocacyPower to Persuadewelfare reform, welfare-to-work
Will COVID-19 kill the 'lifters and leaners’ welfare trope?
Will COVID-19 kill the 'lifters and leaners’ welfare trope?

In today’s post, Sue Olney (@olney_sue) examines developments in Australia’s welfare-to-work system and rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic. She argues that the premise on which the system is built – that unemployment is an individual problem and that anyone the government deems capable of working can find a job if they’re pushed hard enough – has to change.

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Policy and governancePower to PersuadeCOVID-19, welfare-to-work, employment