With 300,000 claims yet to be processed, department expects number to rise to 1.7 million in September
More than 1.3 million people are now receiving unemployed benefits
across the country, an increase of about 450,000 in less than one month.
But a further 300,000 dole claims are still yet to be processed and department officials acknowledged on Thursday they expected about 1.7 million people to be receiving the jobseeker payment in September.
On the same day the report from a nine-month Senate inquiry into unemployment benefits recommended an permanent increase to the rate, official statistics tabled at a hearing into the Covid-19 pandemic showed 1,340,000 people were receiving jobseeker or youth allowance jobseeker payments on 24 April, up from 891,000 at 27 March.
As unemployment has soared, the government has batted away calls for a
permanent boost to jobseeker payment, despite increasing the rate
during the pandemic by an extra $550 per fortnight.But a further 300,000 dole claims are still yet to be processed and department officials acknowledged on Thursday they expected about 1.7 million people to be receiving the jobseeker payment in September.
On the same day the report from a nine-month Senate inquiry into unemployment benefits recommended an permanent increase to the rate, official statistics tabled at a hearing into the Covid-19 pandemic showed 1,340,000 people were receiving jobseeker or youth allowance jobseeker payments on 24 April, up from 891,000 at 27 March.
But the data provided to the Covid-19 inquiry suggests that the Coalition now faces the prospect of halving unemployment benefits in September while more than one and half million people are still on the dole.
In December, there were only 728,000 people receiving the equivalent Newstart payment, meaning the number of dole claimants in Australia has close to doubled in only four months.
Separately, the same committee heard on Tuesday that 540,000 employers had formally registered for the jobkeeper wage subsidy scheme, which covers an estimated 3.3 million employees.
The Department of Social Services told the committee on Thursday it had initially forecast about 1.7 million people would be receiving the jobseeker payment by September.
But Kathryn Campbell, the secretary of the department, said officials had not since changed or re-costed that estimate since the government’s first pandemic welfare package was legislated.
Campbell was also grilled about the decision to exclude disability support pensioners and carers from the coronavirus supplement.
Guardian Australia reported in March that people with disabilities or the carers of children with disabilities will now receive substantially less per fortnight than jobseekers.
“The government took the decision for the Covid supplement around those people who were in the workforce,” she said.
About 9% of disability pensioners and 7% of carer payment recipients also had earnings in December 2019, government data shows.
Campbell said the government did not consider extending the coronavirus supplement to these welfare recipients.
The hearing comes as the government faces growing pressure to consider a permanent increase to the jobseeker payment, which has received a temporary $550 per fortnight boost for about six months.
Asked if the government had asked the department to provide advice on a permanent boost to jobseeker, Campbell was reluctant to respond, saying only that work on the issue was still in its preliminary stages.
She also declined to say whether the department would be providing advice on the impact of retaining the base rate of the payment, which is about $40 a day.
Her reluctance to canvass the possibility of a permanent increase came as the Senate inquiry into the rate of the Newstart payment, now known as jobseeker, called for the government to increase jobseeker, youth allowance and parenting payments.
The committee, which was controlled by Labor and the Greens, did not nominate a specific increase, but also argued the government should hold an overall review into the income support system and should follow in the footsteps of other countries such as Canada by setting an official poverty measure.
The committee chair, Greens senator Rachel Siewert, said the committee had heard from jobseekers through the inquiry hearings who were “really, really struggling”.
“They couldn’t make ends meet,” she said. “They were trying to manage their money … They talked about not eating properly, they talked about missing medication.”
Siewert she her personal view was that the $550 per fortnight coronavirus supplement should remain beyond the pandemic and be made permanent.
“I am very strongly behind the campaign and am campaigning to make sure the raising the rate is being retained, that it’s there for good,” she told the Guardian.
In a dissenting report, the Coalition senators on the inquiry, Wendy Askew and Hollie Hughes, said they “generally do not endorse the recommendations” of the inquiry.
“Income support for unemployed people in Australia does not function as a wage replacement or as part of contributory or time limited schemes, as is the case in some other countries,” they said.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said on Thursday the government would need to explain the “contradiction” in lifting income support only during the first six months of the crisis.
Albanese, appearing alongside the retiring Eden-Monaro MP, Mike Kelly, told reporters in Canberra that national issues, as well as local issues, would feature in the byelection campaign, including “what the government has said during this period and ... whether it returns as if nothing has happened”.
“During this period the government has said it needs to increase jobseeker because $40 a day wasn’t enough to live on,” he said.
“If it’s not enough to live on now, it wasn’t enough to live on before. Does it go back to being enough to live on down the track? It’s up to the government to explain that contradiction.”
It also emerged on Thursday that some jobseekers may miss out on the final instalment of the $550 coronavirus supplement at the end of September.
Although it was touted as a six-month temporary boost by the government, the way the legislation has been drafted means the fortnightly additional supplement will start on 27 April and will end on 24 September.
It means some recipients will only receive their first payment as late as 10 May, but will still lose the payment from 24 September.
Campbell acknowledged there “may have been some confusion” about the length of the supplement.
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