Hunter area officer for the Salvation Army, Mark Everitt says that Newcastle is much like the rest of the country when it comes to Newstart recipients.
That is to say, after accommodation costs, Novocastrians on a Newstart allowance live on just $17 a day.
"We've got good prosperity, we've got success at a lot of places," Mark says. "But it doesn't take much to find the people who are still struggling, even with all the support we've got people are just doing it hard."
In a damning data report released yesterday by the Salvation Army, it was shown that the Newstart allowance program does extremely little to relieve low-income earners of financial hardship.
90 percent of the 1,267 respondents to the survey were living under the poverty line ($426.80 per week) and 84 percent were paying more than half their income on housing. Furthermore, 73 percent of respondents could not raise $500 in a week in the event of an emergency.
The original Newstart program was designed to help people suffering a period of unemployment or to assist workers not making enough to support themselves and their families. The current Newstart allowance for a single adult is $545.80 per fortnight.
It has been this way since 1994, with no adjustment for inflation. According to the Reserve Bank of Australia, if inflation were taken into account, Newstart recipients would be on $976.73 per fortnight.
The Salvation Army is urging the government to review the Newstart program so that low-income earners are not left in the dust. This, however, seems unlikely as the Turnbull government refused to raise the Newstart allowance just two weeks ago.
Mark Everitt says the best way to raise up to or above the poverty line is to find a job but that is an incomplete solution for some Australians. "Finding employment is obviously going to be a good thing," says Mr Everitt. "But I guess we'll never have 100% employment unless something drastic happens to how we structure our society."
The Salvation Army does what it can to compensate for the Newstart program's shortfalls but the report released yesterday shows that the problem is bigger than people can handle.
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| Source: The New Daily |
