Call to lift Newstart by $50

    From: AAP
    May 01, 2013 7:32AM
    The Australian.

A GROUP of 40 prominent Australians have made a call for the unemployment benefit to be lifted by $50 a week.

In an open letter, heads of welfare and charity groups, unions and indigenous organisations as well as World Vision's Tim Costello, human rights lawyer Julian Burnside and feminist Eva Cox have urged the federal government to lift people on the Newstart Allowance out of poverty.    

"The Newstart base payment of $35 a day has not been increased in real terms since Prime Minister Keating's increase in 1994," the letter says.

"The rate is now so low it is unbearable to live on and has become a major barrier to supporting people into paid work."    

Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie said the $1.8 billion price tag was affordable.    

"Increasing Newstart by $50 a week will help lift over one million people out of this despairing situation, and provide a welcome stimulus to the economy because every single cent will be spent on mere survival," she said.    


However, the call is likely to fall on deaf ears.

Early this week, Prime Minister Julia Gillard revealed a $12 billion budget revenue shortfall.

If it doesn't happen this budget, we can forget it, for at least the next two electoral terms.

It'll never happen under Abbott.

I don't know whether Gillard might give it based on the fact that she won't win anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Or will she continue to hold back, chasing the hardline conservative vote she'll never get.

After all, that was why there was all this BS about a surplus.

That sounds fine on the surface.

But we are taking the welfare spend from the truly needy and using it to buy votes off the middle-class.

It's there where the cuts should be made, not at the bottom-end.

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Jun 10^th, 2013 at 12:59pm:

That foreign aid paid to developing nations, would be better considered to be compensation for the pain and suffering Australians have caused in their pursuit of materialism.

Many nations in Africa for example supply the leather, silver and diamonds we use to make our cheap fashion statements. The first world demands that these items be produced cheaply else we won't purchase them. Follow the business model in use, and what you will find is a First World Wholesaler pulling the strings.

The workers suffer shocking and dangerous conditions for enough reward to cover their substandard shelter and food for the day.

So, rather than take the foreign aid from these nations, better to give that aid with strings attached.... meaning essentially that we control the funding and how that funding is used, then use that funding to lift the standards of those we First Worlder's have caused to suffer greatly.

Nor affordably before the election with a likely result going to the group who believe that making the most vulnerable suffer is a good thing.

Sappho wrote on Jun 11^th, 2013 at 4:55pm:


Is there evidence that Australia oppresses Africans economically?

I think these 40 prominent Australians need too GET OFF Their FCKN Arse and make JOBS available to unemployed people, rather than push for a measerly $50 Increase in welfare.

YOU CAN"T Solve Unememployment by just Ignoring it.

IT won't just magically disapear off the face of the earth.

A Welfare or charity group has done nothing to help me.

That is why we are relient on government, because people FAIL.

PEOPLE DON"T CARE.

I received my fortnightly NSA payment on monday.

Then I lost $200 to the bank for repayment of credit debt.

That leaves $300 to live on for the next 2 weeks with NO accomodation to live in.