Some weeks Michelle Jackson, 59, lives on toast. Other times she will be in the shower and will start to worry after noticing there is no more soap or shampoo.
“You can’t afford them all at once,” Jackson said. “Oh, God. It’s horrible. Or a light blows. Sometimes I could have four light globes out. And you’re swapping them from room to room.”
Jackson, who lives in social housing in Hobart, is among about 800,000 people in Australia living on a jobseeker payment that has been set well below the poverty line.
Her experience mirrors those explored in a new report, to be released by the Australian Council of Social Services and the University of New South Wales on Friday, which investigates the lives of people in poverty in Australia.
It comes as the Albanese government agrees to establish an advisory committee to report on the adequacy of Centrelink payments before each budget.
An earlier Acoss report, released last month, found 3.3 million people were living in poverty in the first year of the pandemic, including 761,000 children. Experts say it is likely that figure will have increased after the coronavirus supplement was withdrawn. An Australian Council of Trade Unions survey of 3,000 people released on Thursday found on in four respondents were skipping meals due to cost of living increases, while more than half have cut back on essential items.
The latest report was drawn from in-depth interviews with 33 people on welfare payments between June and December 2021. Of those, 13 participants were living in social housing, nine were privately renting, three were couch surfing at friend’s homes, and three were rough sleeping or in temporary accommodation.
The report included examples of the effect of the low level of welfare benefits on individuals. One person told the report they had stopped buying food from discount supermarkets and instead bought expired food from a food pantry, while another was living in a warehouse because they couldn’t afford a rental property.
“The kids and I, we lived in 16 different addresses in 14 months,” one single mother told the researchers. “A lot of housesitting. Staying with friends. All that sort of thing.”
One participant said: “Physically I have lost a lot of weight. I’m used to it now, but my stomach has definitely shrunk. I’m kind of living on one meal a day.”
Another said: “I went to jail and then I got out and I went back to jail again because when I got out, it was hard during Covid-19 to find a place or somewhere to stay. So I went back to jail.”
One individual who did find work in November last year said he’d gotten a job taking calls with a charity. “But I had no place to live,” the man said. “So I was going from homeless to work to homeless.”
Jackson lives with her 22-year-old son, who is also unemployed. She said living on the sub-poverty jobseeker payment was “the most demoralising thing”.
In Jackson’s case, she lives with fibromyalgia, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder. Her health conditions and limited qualifications – she has previously worked in labour-intensive jobs such as cleaning – have made it hard to get back into the workforce. She has been rejected from the disability pension and is required to see a disability employment services provider to keep her welfare payments, which she said had previously been suspended multiple times by mistake.
Without a good chance of finding work, Jackson said her life was “never going to improve” in the absence of additional support from the government. Sometimes it left her feeling suicidal. “I can’t do anything to fix my health problems, I’m just getting older and things are just going to get worse.”
The researchers for the Acoss/UNSW said the removal of the coronavirus supplement – which returned people on benefits to a much lower rate of payment – had a “pernicious effect”.
“People experienced not only a drop in income, which most people find challenging in any circumstances, but a drop to an inadequate income insufficient to meet basic needs,” they said.
The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie, said the report showed an increase in welfare payments was urgently needed.
“Australia is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet people can’t afford to keep a roof over their head, are eating only one meal a day and buying expired food,” she said.
With the rising cost of living, Jackson has been accessing extra food relief from Hobart City Mission. She said she was dreading Christmas. “I’ve got an older son and he’s got six children … they must wonder, why does one nan buy them stuff and then one nan doesn’t get them anything,” she said. “I try and spend time with them, but you know what kids are like.”
Jackson said she was telling her story because the public did not understand the reality for older people like her living on Centrelink payments. “A lot of older people say, ‘But you’re not on the dole.’ They just assume you’re on a pension.
“I want people to get it, but they just don’t. Only the other unemployed people get it.”
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
