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BRIEF, AUSTRALIA
Pollies: Try living on welfare

Kerry Smith

16 May 2009

Government backbenchers have been challenged to live on $227 a week — the equivalent of the dole — by the National Welfare Rights Network.

In a letter to the treasurer responding to the federal budget, the group said: “It was not just a tough decision to ignore the dire financial situation of single parents and the unemployed; it was also the wrong decision.”

Let us be clear about what these Budget measures actually mean for single parents’ weekly incomes. Essentially, the government has put in place a regressive set of arrangements that will, over time, result in smaller increases to both pension and family payments for single parents.

“The experiences of backbenchers in living on poverty-rate payments could be used to better inform the government on the real experience of unemployed people.”