Sometimes the do-gooder/bleeding heart image can be an asset.
Surprising? Not really. It’s been one of Labor’s traditional selling points: voters perceive Labor as “caring” about fairness.
Using his mum as example, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has gone to great lengths to highlight that.
 |
(source]) |
There is a historical reason for that perception. Although the term “welfare state” is no longer fashionable, the Australian Labor Party was key in its adoption here, and its governments established its general institutions, including public health (under Medicare). They also created the main welfare payments. The age pension, for example, dates to 1908, during the Fisher Government; the unemployment benefits (currently called JobSeeker) was product of the Chifley Government in 1945. More recently, in 2013, it was under the Gillard Government that the National Disability Insurance Scheme was created.
So, unsurprisingly the Albanese Government launched the Robodebt Royal Commission last year.
----------
A brief background of the Robodebt scheme is in order.
As Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison (Liberal Party of Australia, main COALition partner) established Robodebt in 2015. The idea was to “recoup” $1.5 billion from social welfare payments recipients. They – top decision-makers alleged – were often overpaid (often too as a result of their deliberate defrauding the government). It considered welfare payments ranging from those to students to those to age pensioners, but its main targets were JobSeeker and its recipients.
It was evidently absurd. Using fairness as a pretext, those payments, without exception, are highly targeted to ensure that those who don’t need them are excluded (they all are “means tested”, meaning not that they depend on applicants’ net wealth – as could be reasonable – but on their assets, regardless of liabilities – which is not). They are also highly regulated, with ever-changing rules and procedures and requirements (including so-called “mutual obligations”).
The Government has unlimited access to – and closely spies on – the financial transactions of recipients.
On top, as a rule, those payments in general aren’t generous.
 |
| (source) |
Let’s focus on JobSeeker and compare Australia with other rich nations. Luxembourgers, for example, losing their non-qualified, minimum wage jobs get unemployment benefits of between 80% and 90% their wages. Aussies get a miserly 26% – if they actually get anything, after all the bureaucratic hassle they need to go through[*]. Only Poms and Kiwis, among workers in OECD countries, get slightly less than Aussies. Most OECD workers get between 50% and 80%.
And, by the way, to call JobSeeker miserly is no exaggeration:
 |
| (source) |
(You see that spike around 2020? We’ll come back to that in a moment.)
Robodebt, in other words, was an overreaction to an essentially non-existing problem. But it was much worse than that.
First, with Robodebt it was the alleged debtor who had to prove that no debt existed: it shifted the burden of the proof, from the accuser to the accused. The Government could and did make up debts; it was those the Government harassed as deadbeats who had to prove the Government wrong. If there was a cheater and a rorter, it was the Government.
Second: the timing. It targeted people when they were under constant pressure to find a non-existing job opening (in the process, lowering the wages of those actually employed: “So, you ain’t happy with yah job? That’s the dough-ah. There’s plenty who won it”), pestered by never-ending paperwork, while struggling to live on the pittance the Government deigned to throw at them.
Third: the people targeted. By design, JobSeeker recipients are near destitution and are frequently uneducated and unable to argue their own case.
Fourth: macroeconomic policy creates the same unemployed (as even RBA Governor Phil Lowe has admitted in public) that Centrelink persecutes.
Fifth, Robodebt was defended in public by ministers, top ranking bureaucrats and footsoldiers at every Centrelink office, even as repeated public challenges against its lawfulness were launched and judicially upheld and internal doubts were vox populi among the bureaucrats.
Sixth, in a touch of demonic malice and cruel irony, the Government assigned a law enforcement agency, the Australian Federal Police, to enforce their unlawful scheme.
 |
| (source) |
5 years the democratically elected, legitimate COALition Government of democratic Australia lied to the public, extorted money, persecuted, threatened, slandered, humiliated and mocked over 400 thousand Australians with that unlawful abomination. At least two youngsters took their own lives while harassed by Robodebt.
----------
Last Friday the Commission released its report. Commentators say it was scathing. Among other things, it referred some as yet undisclosed individuals – potentially ranging from ex prime ministers to top ranking bureaucrats – to the Australian Federal Police (delightful irony!). Commissioner Catherine Holmes said Robodebt was an extraordinary saga of “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.
I can be blunter. This hellish bureaucratic nightmare was the product of a monstrous, immoral abuse of power, concocted by evil bastards and enabled by inept, cowardly and corrupted bureaucrats, including cops who, lacking a commitment to justice, follow the laws.
----------
Why did this happen? Why didn’t we see torches and pitchforks as a response to Robodebt? Those are the questions one hears repeated by talking show hosts and panelists.
They are good questions, but they deserve better answer than the usual “it’s all about the culture”.
I’m sorry, folks, but “cult-cha” is not a good answer because it doesn’t explain where “cult-cha” came from and why it endures. If culture explains everything in general, it explains nothing in particular.
Robodebt happened because the unemployed and the marginalised are living, tangible, concrete, visible warnings to the employed: “Be grateful for what little you may have. Accept your situation. Keep your head down and behave, because you could be them”.
This is not how unemployment benefits began or how they were sold as policy. And as international comparisons (and COVID, btw) show it doesn’t have to be this way. But soon enough politicians realised that is how it works and it’s functional for capitalism in Australia.
----------
To his credit, PM Albanese called for this Royal Commission.
But, sorry Albo, that is not good enough. To see why let’s go back to the spike in Prof. Mitchell’s chart. Remember?
During the pandemic the Morrison Government, out of fear of what could have been the mother of all recessions, renamed the until then NewStart Allowance as JobSeeker and lifted it above the poverty line. Just like that, for a few months hundreds of thousands of Australians were lifted from abject misery.
That is the clearest possible demonstration that when there is political will, the money appears. It’s not a matter of magic. There’s no “how are you gonna pay for that?” Financially, the difference between lifting the JobSeeker rate and paying for the piece of shit nuclear subs is that nobody really gives a rat’s ass about people on JobSeeker: the decision to spend or not comes first, the question “where’s the money coming from?” comes later, only to justify the negative.
Morrison’s unprecedented generosity towards the unemployed didn’t last. As soon as the recession was essentially averted by the spending, the Government decided they could no longer spend. And just like that, the unemployed were thrown again back into poverty.
But now we have a Labor Government. Will it do much better? Call me pessimistic, but I doubt it.
I’ll give it a try anyway. Instead of following in Morrison’s footsteps, instead of adding another nail in the coffin of the welfare state Labor created, walk your talk, Albo. Prove me wrong. And make sure some heads actually roll.
Notes:
[*] Adding insult to injury, the 2021 minimum wage in Luxembourg (equivalent to AUD15.55 per hour) was higher than its Aussie equivalent at the time (AUD14.21).