Break the Poverty Machine: the voices of Australia’s poor (part 2)

Aeryn Brown is one of nearly 900 000 Australians who are either unemployed or underemployed and who receive either Jobseeker Payment or Youth Allowance (Other). Aeryn has written this open letter to Amanda Rishworth, Minister for Social Services in preparation for an upcoming protest hosted by the Anti-Poverty Centre and the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This is their story.

I have relied on Centrelink as my sole source of income for nearly 15 years, since the end of January 2008 - Newstart for three years, Austudy for nearly six years, and (currently) a second stint on Newstart/Jobseeker for another six years since completing my Bachelor's degree in October 2016.

I am also disabled - one of the approximately 420,000 people on Jobseeker who have been locked out of receiving the Disability Support Pension due to not meeting the stringent criteria or who simply cannot afford the cost involved. My disabilities are psychiatric (major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder), neurological (migraines) and neurodevelopmental (probable autism and ADHD).

To be completely honest with you, trying to survive on Jobseeker is something I would not wish on my worst enemy. Every two weeks after my public housing rent and water have been paid, and money has been put toward my next electricity bill, I am left with $442.40 to somehow buy groceries, fill the prescriptions for the medications I take, pay my bus and train fares, and pay bills. 

I can no longer count on both hands how many times during the last decade that my strict budget has gone into the red and left me unable to afford my medication or enough food. I consider myself extremely fortunate that the $442 I'm paid every second Tuesday only has to support one person - myself. If I had to support a child or a partner as well (or even both), it would be impossible to survive.

Additionally, because I remain unemployed almost six years after finishing my degree, I'm required to engage with an employment service provider. I was previously linked with a jobactive provider (between October 2016 and February 2018), but their harsh treatment of me during the 16 months I was a client of theirs caused me to have a mental breakdown. 

After a 12-month exemption I was placed with a Disability Employment Services provider that, again being completely honest with you, are utterly useless. I have lost count of the number of consultants I have been shuffled between during the three years, eight months and one week that I have been on their books. I no longer bother to build any semblance of a relationship with them because I see no point. 

The only job I have found in the last three years, eight months and one week I have been with my current provider was a temporary position as a polling officer for my local council's election last December. Nearly six years of being knocked back for virtually every job I apply for has left me demoralised, depressed, furious at my DES provider, and with constant thoughts of committing suicide. In fact, the only reason I continue to apply for jobs is because I am required to do so. 

Were it no longer a condition of continuing to receive my Jobseeker payments, I would abandon what I have come to consider an increasingly futile attempt at getting into stable, steady employment and focus solely on studying for my Master's degree. 

And were I not terrified of dying, and were I not concerned for the feelings of my friends and family, I would have killed myself when I was first diagnosed with depression in 2011. Because honestly, what's even the point anymore? At least if I'm no longer around, your government no longer has to waste $683.40 on me every two weeks. I have told my DES provider that my mental health is currently on a knife's edge, and I was brushed off. They did not care. I could have killed myself right after that, and they still would not give a damn.

I have felt hope and like a human being precisely once in the last decade - that one time being the short period of time in 2020 where the previous government temporarily doubled Jobseeker.

For the first time in my independent adult life, I was no longer just barely surviving - I was thriving. I had more than enough money to pay my bills, to fill the prescriptions for my medications, to buy groceries, and to pay my bus and train fares whenever I needed to go out. I didn't need to add up the cost of groceries I was buying as I was putting those groceries in my shopping trolley. I was able to save for Christmas presents. I was finally able to replace my 30-year-old refrigerator and my 20-year-old mattress. My DES provider got off my back and left me alone for a little while. 

But most importantly my depression went into remission. For the first time in nearly a decade, I wasn't depressed. My mental health was the best it had ever been because my low income was no longer a stressor. In the two years since, my depression has returned with a vengeance and is now even worse than it was previously, because I no longer have hope. I can't plan for the future because frankly, I don't know if I even have one.

This story, of being given a chance to thrive, is repeated for people across the country. The evidence is in. Raising the rate improved wellbeing, security, health, education and employment outcomes. All there is to do now is raise the rate, permanently.

I know you probably don't care about what I have to say. Why would you? I'm just one of nearly a million of your fellow Australians who are lazy, shiftless bludgers, right? We deserve to be punished for the supposed crime of being unemployed, after all.

But I have to hope that you do care, even just a little. I voted for the Greens in the election earlier this year, but I directed my preferences to Labor because I believed that you and your government would do the right thing by your fellow Australians and leave nobody behind. Because right now, by refusing to raise the rate of income support after nine years of castigating the previous government’s refusal to lift Australians out of poverty, that is precisely what you are doing. You are leaving us behind. So do the right thing - do what your party was voted into government to do. Raise the rate of income support to the Henderson Poverty Line, currently $88 a day - and not just Jobseeker either. Youth Allowance, Austudy, Abstudy, pensions - all of it. Abolish the "mutual" obligations that don't help us into work. Relax the criteria governing the DSP. Show us that you give a damn.

This is the second of a series of open letters we are publishing in the lead up to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. You can read Marina’s story too.

ID: A group of protestors, including two in wheelchairs, hold anti-poverty signs and placards