BY CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
NEWSTART recipients living on about $500 a fortnight aren’t exactly lording it.
But nor are some quick to seize on an extra $50 a week hand-up, as proposed by Greens candidates at a federal election event at Dandenong Centrelink.
Views were mixed among the long queue outside the office despite many admitting they were struggling to afford basic living expenses on the dole.
Many job seekers signed petition postcards handed out by Greens candidates for Bruce and Isaacs Lynette Keleher and Sandra Miles and Senate candidate Janet Rice.
One of them was Antoine Ithier, who spends about three quarters of his Newstart allowance on renting in a shared boarding house. He is left with little more than $50 a week for food and other living expenses.
He hates the constant fights, drugs, thefts and arguments within the house. Soon after he moved in, about $6000 of his stuff was stolen including his laptop, stereo and perfumes.
“I’d like $50 a week more for better accommodation and a bit more food,” Mr Ithier said. “I can’t afford luxuries. I don’t drink. I buy a packet of smokes every five days.”
He said he’d looked for “hundreds and hundreds” of jobs, including in warehousing “but there’s nothing”.
“But I don’t give up hope.”
Errol Harris, a job seeker who spends nearly half his $630 fortnightly allowance on rent, said $50 more a week was too much.
“Fifty dollars a fortnight would be fair,” he said.
“I live in a modest place and I can live within my means.”
Another job seeker said his $490 fortnightly allowance was fair despite relying on charities for food parcels and vouchers.
“It’s tough but it shouldn’t be giving people a free ride. If we’re paid more, there’s no incentive.”
After paying rent, he has $150 a fortnight to live on.He’s been in and out of jobs for three years because he felt he had been “disrespected” by bosses.
The Greens are also proposing a reversal of the Federal Government’s $150 fortnightly cut to single parent payments. The welfare allowance increases are a point of difference from the ALP and Coalition parties.
Ms Rice said single parents were doing it the toughest trying to combine work with caring for their children.
She said she’d met many doing it tough on her tour of the state’s Centrelink offices.
Many were sleeping on the couches of family and friends or living in dangerous boarding houses. Others were running up credit card debts and seeking emergency welfare payments, she said.
“Staying with friends, couch surfing, being homeless doesn’t help you get a job interview. We can afford this if we can bring in extra revenue from fixing the mining tax and bringing in a small tax on the ‘big four’ banks.”
