After months spent trying to stretch jobseeker payments amid a cost-of-living crisis, Paulene Hutton hoped for some relief in the budget. But there was none.
Instead she said she was coming to terms with the government’s estimate of a 50% increase in electricity prices by 2023-24 – an amount that would raise her power bill from an average of $350 a quarter to $525.
“I have no clue what I’ll do, I don’t even have the brain space to contemplate it,” she said. “I’m so disappointed.”
That disappointment has been shared by welfare groups, many of them saying the budget should have raised income support payments and increased support for people struggling with relentless cost-of-living demands.
“This is absolutely not a welfare-friendly budget, that’s for sure,” Duncan Bainbridge, who works for the Anti-Poverty Network in South Australia, said. “It’s absolutely deplorable they have not raised the [welfare benefit] rate – people are already struggling to cope.”
The Albanese government had ruled out raising welfare benefits prior to the budget, pointing to the routine indexation of payments, which, as a result of rising inflation, lifted jobseeker payments to a base rate of $48 a day earlier this year.
The Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss) welcomed the government’s investment in affordable housing, aged care, childcare and parental leave, but it expressed deep unease about the lack of action in the budget for people on income support payments, continuing its call for the rate to be increased to at least $73 a day.
“This is extremely concerning for people on the lowest incomes,” the Acoss CEO, Cassandra Goldie, said. “People do not have anything left in their budgets to cut back on, and we are really worried what further sacrifices people will be forced to make.”
As of March 2022, there were already more than 270,000 Australians in energy debt, according to the Australian Energy Regulator, with the average debt of people in hardship programs at $1,700. Acoss told Guardian Australia it expected this figure to increase.
Hutton, a single mum living in Brisbane, earns around $1,000 a fortnight from her jobseeker payment and the work she can pick up at a clothes shop. She said she was already struggling to pay her bills, currently waiting until her bill was overdue so she could request a payment plan of around $60 a fortnight.
But her main concern, and the reason she was holding out for some relief in the budget, was that her family had been asked to move out of their rental so the landlord can renovate. Struggling to find anything she can afford in a city that is embroiled in a housing crisis, she said she was seriously considering moving to a campground.
“I’m so busy keeping all the balls in the air, I don’t have the brain space to think about [my bills going up], so I’ll just wait until that ball drops and see then how I’ll juggle it.”
Kristin O’Connell, who is the co-founder of the Antipoverty Centre and lives on the disability support pension, said she already did her best to keep her gas bill low.
“I barely use gas, I mostly eat hummus and crackers,” she said.
She had managed to keep the bill around $30-$40 a quarter, but it recently jumped up to $70, which put huge pressure on her budget. She was apprehensive about it climbing by 50% to $95 a quarter.
“People on income support have already cut back on so much – every dollar counts, so it’s going to hit hard,” she said.
The Greens senator Janet Rice, the party’s spokesperson for social services, condemned Labor’s decision to maintain the stage-three tax cuts and not raise income payment support.
“While one-third of Australian households are struggling to put food on the table and the cost-of-living continues to escalate, Labor is providing $9,000 a year for the wealthy and doing nothing to raise the rate of income support,” she said.
The Greens were calling on Labor to raise income support payments above the poverty line to at least $88 a day.
