Morrison Government's Newstart wait times will run down everything you've got
Linda Burney on 4CA Cairns Breakfast with Murray Jones - Thursday, 27 November 2019
MURRAY JONES: To find out a little bit more about this story and what the background is, is the honourable Linda Burney MP. She’s the member for Barton. Got a long title: Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services and also Minister for Indigenous Australians. Linda Burney, good morning, how are you today?
LINDA BURNEY, SHADOW MINISTER FOR FAMILIES AND SOCIAL SERVICES, MEMBER FOR BARTON: I’m well Murray, how are you?
JONES: Nice to have you along. And look, as we said in the intro, particularly for older Australians who might find themselves unexpectedly in the redundancy queues, a real concern because of this liquid assets of $18,000. Can you explain to me a little bit more about what they mean by these liquid assets?
BURNEY: Yes, I can. So a liquid asset – and you’re right – for a single person, up to $18,000 in the bank; or for a couple, $36,000. A liquid asset is what you have on hand really. It can be shares; and debentures; and term deposits. It can be ten year insurance bonds. It can be loans to other people. Or else, it can be compensation payments, which is what you’re talking about; and a range of other things. So it’s not just the actual money that you have in the bank, from a redundancy payment for example, it’s a range of other investments and so forth, that you might have. Now the real concern is that without any reason – without any logic – the government is making the wait time for someone who may be 50, made redundant from their industry, get a redundancy payment – the government wants to make the wait time from 13 weeks to 26 weeks, which is six months; run down all your liquid assets; run down all the cash or the assets you have on hand, before you actually qualify for a social security payment. And I just think that is just completely unfair and unfounded. These are people that have worked their entire lives. They’ve paid taxes. And the only little buffer that they might have is some money in the bank, from a redundancy payment. And for the government to expect you to run that down, it doesn’t allow for any emergencies in your life at all, including sickness.
JONES: You know, there’s been a lot of talk in recent months about Newstart and how difficult it is for younger people; for older people, to actually survive on the type of money that you’re getting per fortnight, so I should imagine that this is really just adding insult to injury.
BURNEY: It is absolutely adding insult to injury. The Newstart payment for a single base rate is $559 a fortnight, and once you’ve paid rent there is very little to live on, and we know that people are doing things like skipping meals; not having scripts filled; not going to the doctor, and that just snowballs into disaster for the individual. And the other thing of course Murray that’s really important is that the demographics of people on Newstart – about half the people are 45 and over, and about a quarter of the people are 55 and over. And the idea that people on Newstart cohort is all young people is just not true. So we are very clearly saying to the government, that this is not fair; you cannot justify this doubling the wait time without any science or logic behind it. And believe me there is no science or logic behind it.
JONES: I mean, social security does cost the taxpayer a great deal of money. You know there’s two sides to the equation. At the end of the day, we want everyone so that they don’t have to – they don’t fall into crime – so that they at least have a bit to at least cover the basics. Where’s the balance here about balancing the books so we’re making sure that we do have that social network for people that do fall on hard times?
BURNEY: Well, that’s absolutely the point Murray. I mean, the social contract between governments and the community should be about catering for the whole community, including the most vulnerable. If people have lost their job through no fault of their own, and the government’s punitive efforts of making you run down every single bit of money you’ve got and some, before you qualify for a social security payment to our way of thinking is not fair.
JONES: It’s pretty tough. No, I certainly accept that that’s pretty tough. If they’re changing the goal posts with something that’s very difficult – the last two sitting weeks of parliament in Canberra – so interestingly this one’s coming up just before Christmas …
BURNEY: A Christmas present.
JONES: We’ll leave that the way that it is and you can make your own decision as to the timing is concerned. And interesting point, and of course my biggest concern is for older Australians that find themselves in that difficult situation, and I do accept the situation where you want to at least keep some buffer and not get to a point where you’re basically living completely day to day, with nothing up your sleave. Interesting point. Great to talk to you this morning. The honourable Linda Burney MP.
BURNEY: Thanks Murray.
LINDA BURNEY
TRANSCRIPT - THURSDAY, 27 NOVEMBER 2019