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Keywords: Jobseeker

  • AUSTRALIA

    Are we all in this together?

    • Ursula Stephens
    • 01 April 2021
    1 Comment

      At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government reassured Australia ‘We’re all in this together’ but the truth is that the end of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus supplement payments will leave more than 2.6 million people in poverty.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Locked in and locked out

    • Zaki Haidari
    • 23 March 2021
    9 Comments

    I am a refugee from Afghanistan, and I belong a minority ethnic group, the Hazaras. We have been persecuted for a long time because of our ethnicity, religion and values. In 2012, I was forced to leave Afghanistan. I was 17. Back home, my father was a medical doctor. The Taliban accused him of working with international armed forces in the country at the time. One day the Taliban took him away, and nobody has seen him since.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    JobSeeker needs to provide a reasonable safety net

    • Joshua Lourensz
    • 04 March 2021
    4 Comments

    Many people are still doing it tough. And the many organisations who are tasked with trying to support them share a sense of dismay as we see Federal Government assistance being wound back fast. We need to increase decent work opportunities and ensure a reasonable safety net for those out of work if we want to get through this and still claim the ‘fair go’.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Dreyfus redivivus

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 04 March 2021
    18 Comments

    Any government decision can cause hurt to some groups in society. There is a difference, however, between decisions that are only painful and those that are vindictive. The former may be regretted, but vindictiveness implies a satisfaction in causing pain that does not arise out of need. The reason for it must be sought in the minds and hearts and culture of those who devise the policies.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Without JobSeeker, inequality will rise

    • Julian Butler
    • 11 February 2021
    4 Comments

    The size and spread of government payments in past 12 months has held steady, and to some extent, improved the circumstances of many on low incomes or government support. The withdrawal of that support risks returning many to payments that do not provide for basic human needs.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Let them pick fruit

    • Vivienne Cowburn
    • 13 October 2020
    19 Comments

    An idea that’s gaining traction, in a pandemic where international travel has stopped and many Australians are losing their jobs, is this notion that the unemployed (aka: everyone on JobSeeker payments) should go out into the regions and help the farmers pick fruit.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Jobactive and job service providers are unfit for purpose

    • Izabella Antoniou
    • 03 September 2020
    11 Comments

    Beyond the announcement of the corona supplement falling from $550 to $250 a fortnight in September, and the reintroduction of asset testing, there has been little in the way of a roadmap for our nation’s unemployed in a landscape where job seekers outnumber jobs 13:1.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    An age of communal and civic responsibility?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 06 August 2020
    12 Comments

    If they are to enlist the support of their people in acting responsibly in the face of coronavirus, governments must themselves practice responsibility. They must look to the good of the whole community, and especially to disadvantaged people who are at the greatest risk of contracting the coronavirus.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    JobSeeker and reflecting on government responsibilities

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 02 July 2020
    3 Comments

    Government must respect the human dignity of people who are often regarded as a burden on society. Seen from this perspective the JobSeeker allowance is deceptively named. It conflates two distinct though related responsibilities of government: to promote participation in the workforce by matching jobs available to people seeking them, and to provide for those who cannot work.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We're not all in this together, yet

    • David Manne and Laura John
    • 18 June 2020
    5 Comments

    This Refugee Week, many asylum seekers and refugees are struggling to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are trapped in immigration detention centres across the country in cramped and overcrowded conditions that make physical distancing impossible. Others are living in our community on temporary visas or no visas at all, struggling to make ends meet.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Re-imagining a better kind of society

    • Cristy Clark
    • 12 May 2020
    12 Comments

    But just as the frighteningly precarious nature of our lives has been thoroughly exposed, so too has the inequality of it all. Even in a pandemic, we aren't all suffering equally. Even in a pandemic, structures of privilege continue to operate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    We need to go beyond Australians First thinking

    • John Warhurst
    • 28 April 2020
    13 Comments

    We have done a lot right as a nation during the pandemic, but on the whole we have not treated foreigners as well as we might have. The inequality of treatment has been in evidence during the twin health and economic crises brought on by COVID-19.

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