‘I couldn’t live on it’: Barnaby Joyce backs calls to raise JobSeeker

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to permanently increase the JobSeeker rate once coronavirus supplements are withdrawn, telling The Australian on Friday he could not live on the current fortnightly welfare payment of $715.70.

Joyce’s comments come after Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe said he wants a permanent rise in the JobSeeker payment during his National Press Club address this week.

“It’s not a macroeconomic management issue, it is a fairness issue,” he told the National Press Club on Wednesday, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. “As a society, what level of support do we want to provide to people who don’t have a job? And different people legitimately have different views on the level of support stopping, [but] my own view is that some increase is justifiable.”

The coronavirus supplement worth $150 a fortnight, which has been paid on top of the $565.70 JobSeeker payment, will be withdrawn at the end of March. As a result, the dole will then return to as little as $40 a day. At the height of the pandemic Aussies on welfare payment were receiving an extra $550 a fortnight, but the government reduced that amount in September last year to $250 a fortnight and then again in December.

“I would never be so bold to say I could live on $715 a fortnight,” Joyce told The Australian. “If your rent is $250 a week, cheap rent is $300-400 a week, you won’t get by on that. You’d have to be living with other people.”

It’s a frank admission from the politician who once cried poor despite earning a staggering $211,000 yearly salary. In July 2019, Joyce told The Courier Mail that he was spread so thin he had to turn off his heater at night to save money – and considered a cup of coffee a treat.

“I’m not crying in my beer because there are thousands, thousands doing it much tougher than me. It’s not that I’m not getting money it’s just that it’s spread so thin,” he told the news outlet. “I’m just saying these circumstances have made me more vastly attuned … it’s just a great exercise in humility going from deputy prime minister to watching every dollar you get.”

There have long been calls from the public for politicians to have a go at living on the welfare payments so many Aussies rely on from month to month. Morrison avoiding committing to a position on the payment’s future when questioned by reporters on Monday, while Labor has promised to lift the Jobseeker payment but won’t reveal by how much until the May budget.