“TRILLION DOLLAR HANDOUT.” This was plastered across the front page of the Herald Sun on Monday this week. This was followed by every morning show on commercial television citing the fact that we spend “$300,000 per minute” on welfare in Australia. Now, I’m no economist, but since when do we measure these things in literal minute terms? Did they ever calculate how much we spent on the Iraq War per minute?
What a news day! We already know that the welfare system (which, by the way, includes not only the unemployed, but also the aged pension, disability support, youth allowance and bereavement payments) takes up a large percentage of our national budget. And so it should! This is not news to anyone. What it is, however, is just another beat up to get people outraged by ‘dole bludgers’. The same people who are outraged by these figures would also be the ones who would be aghast if the government ever tried to cut the aged pension.
No, this wasn’t news. It was a rally call for all those who feel hard done by. An absolute travesty in journalism on what those news agencies considered a slow news day. There are wars going on in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, fighting flaring up over the Kurds’ right to self-determination in Iraq, Catalans demonstrating in Barcelona for their independence, a man in the White House who somehow manages to mishandle condolence calls and threatens ‘fire and fury’ against North Korea via Twitter, and even the total mess that has been made of the NBN which has been a headline all day on the ABC. Barely a slow news day. But alas, another attack on society’s most vulnerable is what Australians really need to read about.
I haven’t had an opportunity to write for Centrethought in some time as I’ve been working every single day in my capacity as a humble waitress. But seeing that headline and the television commentary on Monday regarding welfare has motivated me in my exhausted state to denounce it as the blatant scapegoating and lazy “journalism” that it is. It is one of the many strategies the mainstream media uses to reel in readers and viewers that leaves me completely disgusted.
Photo credit: Gary Houston
No one on a welfare payment lives in particular comfort or security. Newstart Allowance hasn’t even kept up with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the cost of living. Nor has it, in those terms, increased in two decades. My parents with two children to support spent years on and off this payment and always struggled. Joe Hockey once, quite famously, (and much to the delight of #auspol tweeters everywhere) said that “poor people don’t drive.”
My own response on Twitter to the #otherthingspoorpeopledon’tdo tweet was “Live in North Sydney (Hockey’s former electorate).” Of course, it was an absurd thing for Hockey to suggest. But at some points in my childhood, my parents did not have access to a car. This is not an argument for the fuel excise being okay, because it doesn’t affect the impoverished (it definitely does). But rather, it is an argument that people who aren’t wealthy should be able to drive and it should actually be a problem we try to address, rather than brush aside.
Why do we demonise those who need the most help in our society? Because it’s easy. Because these people don’t have prominent voices. Because writing articles and television segments on this issue is so incredibly easy, even the most incompetent journalists or interns can do it. Because it sells, it gets ratings – it gets people talking. “Why are my taxes going to some deadbeat who won’t look for a job?” I won’t even begin to get into what the job market is like right now (five applicants per entry level job available does not make it particularly easy), but I do have a rebuttal: why are my taxes going towards subsidising coal? Or bombing civilians in the Middle East? Or building toll roads? Or a $150 million non-binding postal survey?
You don’t have to agree on how your taxes are or are not spent. But I would suggest that perhaps using them to support those who are struggling to feed and house themselves is a slightly more critical cause than supporting someone being able to negatively gear their fifth investment property.
Maybe some people just need to re-evaluate who their “enemy” really is. I don’t think it’s the single mother down the road receiving Family Tax Benefit A or B, or the 20-something-year-old applying for their fortieth job this month.
But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Kiersten is pursuing a Master of International Relations at Monash University, holds a Bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science and considers herself a humanist and an atheist. Find out more about her here.