Poverty is a policy choice, not a personal failing

The COVID supplement proved this in real time - lifting thousands above the poverty line, stimulating the economy, and reducing social distress. So why, despite the evidence - both theoretical and lived - do we persist in keeping JobSeeker below subsistence?

The answer, it seems, is not economic. It's ideological. It's about power - and the stories we tell to justify harm, deflect responsibility, and preserve hierarchy.

Since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s, Australia has cultivated a narrative that unemployment is a moral failing. The "dole bludger" trope - born of political convenience and amplified by media - recast poverty as a personal defect rather than a systemic outcome. This framing served a purpose: it shifted power in the workplace toward employers by making unemployment so undesirable that workers would accept lower wages and poorer conditions just to avoid it.

Today, that legacy continues to be perpetuated. JobSeeker remains one of the lowest unemployment payments in the developed world. Politicians justify this with vague appeals to "fiscal responsibility" and "taxpayer fairness," yet these arguments collapse under scrutiny. We don't hear about taxpayer dollars when it comes to corporate subsidies, jobs for mates, or inflated defence contracts. The scrutiny is reserved for the vulnerable.

And the cost of that scrutiny is staggering. Child poverty alone costs NSW $60 billion annually - $25 billion in direct economic losses and $34 billion in diminished health and life expectancy. Poverty is not just a private tragedy. It's a public expense. It burdens our healthcare system, our education system, our justice system. It perpetuates intergenerational disadvantage. And it erodes the social fabric that binds us.

So again-why keep JobSeeker low?

Some argue it's about "incentives" - that higher payments would discourage work. But even the federal government's own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee found that raising JobSeeker would have minimal impact on employment incentives, and might actually help people find work by giving them the time and stability to search for it.

Others suggest it's political - raising JobSeeker is unpopular. But that unpopularity is manufactured. It's the result of decades of messaging that incorrectly paints welfare recipients as lazy, undeserving, or morally suspect. It's a damaging narrative that serves political ends, not public good.

And it's a narrative that hurts real people.

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People like Melissa Fisher, who told the ABC she must choose between eating three times a day or seeing a doctor. People who are not numbers on a page, but parents, children, neighbours. People who are suffering not because they've failed, but because our systems have failed them.

We must stop treating poverty as a punishment. It is not a crime to be unemployed. It is not a crime to be poor. And it is certainly not a crime to ask for help.

Australia ranks near the bottom of the OECD for social welfare spending. That is not a badge of honour - it is a mark of neglect. And when former ministers like Amanda Vanstone castigate retirees for wanting to live in the homes they've worked their whole lives for while receiving the pension, it becomes clear that no one is safe from political ire - not the unemployed, not the elderly, not even those who've "done everything right."

We need a new public narrative. One that recognises poverty as a policy choice, not a personal failing. One that sees welfare not as a burden, but as an investment. One that centres dignity, not disdain.

I thought PM Anthony Albanese - a man who ran for election on his public housing story - would be the leader we needed to make this change. While we have seen some improvements, JobSeeker increases have scraped the bottom of the barrel, cost-of-living pressures have worsened, and the most vulnerable in our communities - especially single parents and the long-term unemployed - continue to be left behind, particularly those experiencing unemployment. Poverty and inequality remain entrenched - and this is a message that comes from the top down.

The truth is simple and now clearly evidenced: it costs more to keep people poor than to help them thrive. And the longer we ignore that truth, the more we all pay the price - in dollars, in dignity and in the kind of society we become.