Defective Stories

 On Friday the 18th, the Morrison government rejected the recommendation of the bipartisan parliamentary committee enquiring into homelessness, that Australia should develop a 10-year national plan. The government's written response refused any new funding (including for provision of accommodation to women and children facing domestic violence), described homelessness as a matter for the states, and only agreed to fully support two of the 35 recommendations in the committee report.

The following Monday, the government confirmed it would continue funding the hiring of private eyes by Services Australia, as part of its welfare "crackdown". (In 2019, with the post-election rush-of-blood-to-the-head, Services Australia was the agency created by Scott Morrison to replace and clean out the Department of Human Services.) Investigators are given the power to follow, photograph, film and bug recipients of social assistance, despite previous audits and department stats confirming levels of fraud to be vanishingly small. Surveillance can be undertaken when Services Australia deems there is "reasonable suspicion" and asserts potential benefits may result. The agency refuses to say how it defines those terms, but lists allegations of undeclared employment or relationship-status as sufficient grounds. The budget for private investigators remains undisclosed, but it's worth remembering other "crackdown" expenditures. In 2020, Services Australia contracted an Israeli digital-intelligence company, Cellebrite, to use spyware in its fraud investigations - that contract was extended in August 2021, attaching a price-tag of $1.2 million. Services Australia refuses to specify any details of the spyware's use.

In January, ACOSS and the CPSU highlighted that Services Australia itself had been subject to long-term neglect, with chronic understaffing, 30% of its workforce on short-term contracts, and high staff turnover leading to under-training, mistakes and delays. The agency administers Centrelink, Medicare, and Child Support, and shares responsibility for the myGov platform. Anyone accessing those services can attest to the decline.

Meanwhile, the government continues to refuse calls to raise the rate of "JobSeeker" up to the poverty line. Such calls now come even from the business community.

Last week, Social Services Minister Anne Ruston told Senate Estimates that "poverty" was hard to define, and - quite seriously - rejected the suggestion that a minimum level of income is required to avoid living in poverty. It was not Minister Ruston's first time displaying her personal competence-impoverishment - in 2019 she declared that an increase to social security payments would "do absolutely nothing" except "give drug dealers more money and give pubs more money". (ABS data shows that the bulk of payments, of course, actually go on essentials such as rent, groceries, transport and medicine.)

The Australian Council of Social Services assesses that avoiding poverty, given the cost-of-living in this country, requires an average of $457 per week. JobSeeker payments are currently $315 per week.

The government says the payment's low level is about national financial responsibility, and pushing the least-well-off to help themselves.

This would be the same government that just gave fully $27 billion (or by the AFR's calculation $40 billion) in JobKeeper payments to businesses that experienced no downturn at all, and which has declared itself not to be interested in recovering those funds.

The Prime Minister even says the suggestion that the corporates trousering those billions should return them to the public is an example of "the politics of envy". Sure - in the same way the victim of the purse-snatcher might be envious of the item newly acquired by the thief.

Conventionally, in the old pulps, the private detective was not hired by the gangsters. But truth is stranger and here we are. These cartoon villains are using all the means at their disposal to press their advantage, with a combination of greed and sadism that's apparently insatiable. Kleptocracy and rule by division are ugly, corrosive things, that encourage the absolute worst in a nation. It's just a few months to the next election. Let's close this dark chapter and start work on something better.