Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 9:41:44 to 9:46:30
Assessment of the adequacy of job seeker and pension rates relative to increasing household cost pressures and indexation mechanisms.
Topics: Social services, Employment
Speakers: Speaker 20, Michael Lye, Matt Flavel, Hon Katy Gallagher, Ellie Whiteaker
Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Um good afternoon. Um my questions are around the national redress scheme. Um, how many applications are currently awaiting a determination and how many have been awaiting a determination for more than 12 months, 18 months and two years?
We're not in outcome two. We're in outcome one now.
Oh, okay.
Um really looks at all the payments and things like that.
Then is this the correct place to talk about income support rates and financial counselling services? Okay, so um what assessment has the department undertaken of the relationship between Commonwealth income support rates and the demand for financial counselling services.
Senator Financial Counselling Services, I don't want to be unhelpful, is in outcome two as well. So it's more likely the officers in outcome two will be able to help with that.
I'll ask my second question, that might hopefully bring that back. Um what advice has the government provided government since 1st of July 2025 regarding the adequate? It's too late in the afternoon. Uhdequacy. Adequacy of job seeker payment, disability support pension, and age pension rates relative to increase in living costs. That's still outcome two.
No, that's outcome one, but I think the government's on the record is saying that they look at those rates at every budget, they take into account advice from a wide range of stakeholders, including the economic inclusion advisory committee, um, and then make decisions on those, including taking into account the broader fiscal and economic circumstances.
There's historically been quite significant uplifts in um I think $40 uh fortnight into job seeker relatively recently, uh two different increases to Commonwealth Rent Assistance Payments. Um I think in relation to age pension, the benchmark of the age pension to male total average weekly earnings is rising. Um driven by um changes in um cost of living. Uh and so those those have obviously been passed on through the regular indexation to both the pension payments and the job seeker and youth allowance payments.
Is there so what I'm trying to understand is whether the department's taken any undertaken any assessment in or an analysis on uh which income support recipients are experiencing various household pressures, whether that's uh you know utility, housing or just consumer debt. Um is that an analysis that you undertake as a department?
I'd have to come back to your notice on what specific we've done. I think um, as Mr. Lye said, one important feature of the system is that all payments are indexed by at least inflation. So to the extent that cost of living is rising, i.e. inflation's rising, then people on income support are getting their payments regularly indexed twice a year to take account of that, and we're seeing at the moment in a period of higher than um usual um inflation that indexation is adding you know reasonable amounts of additional support um for people, say on job seeker each March and September when those payments are indexed.
And and do you track whether that's actually having material benefits on the ground to people's lives? Because there may be increases and index twice a year, but is that enough?
Well, they're matching they're matching changes in cost of living. Um and certainly we've looked at in recent times um some of the sentinel payments which we would regard as as things that are move with cost of living pressure, like crisis payments, and we that the demand for those has been relatively flat.
Okay. Yeah, just things I'm hearing people are struggling to pay rent, for example, because that's not obviously reflective of um how much people's payments are indexed by. So that increase does not match how much they're able to, you know, cover their rent, uh groceries plus other bills on top of that, let alone you know the cost of transport or fuel for um their vehicles. But um the other questions that I've got, I'll leave for outcome two. Um that was nice and okay, excellent.
Thank you, Senator Payman.