There’s a strain in the Australian consciousness that conservatives routinely tap to undermine momentum for redistributive policies: that confronted with inequality people’s attention shifts not up the socioeconomic ladder but down.

Downwards envy is a powerful force that entrenches power and privilege, channelling the anxieties of those who are struggling to resent any support for those who are actually going under.

I’ve witnessed the phenomenon in countless focus groups: talk about high level tax evasion, family trust rorts and executive salary and the conversation inevitably leads to hand-wringing about dole bludgers and single mothers who apparently breed to maximise their welfare cheque.

It was a subtle force in the May election, where lower-income voters turned against a party that was vowing to close income loopholes for the wealthy to fund things like free dental for pensioners.

Play Video 2:39 'It's literally like counting your coins': the growing momentum to raise Newstart – video explainer

Having emerged from the ballot as the champion of the ordinary battler, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, has been upping the ante, dismissing growing calls to raise Newstart as “unfunded empathy” while asserting a tax cut for the very rich is justified as a higher income is a sign someone is working harder.

It’s in this context that results in last week’s Essential Report make for interesting reading because recognition that Newstart is too low is significantly stronger among lower-income earners.

In a separate question, support for an increase in Newstart is running at 75%, again driven disproportionately by householders earning less than $52,000 a year, where support for a $75 bump is running at 80%.

This seems to me evidence that the dynamics of welfare politics in Australia may be changing. And if I’m right, it’s because of the common lived experiences that drive empathy.

Despite the official joblessness figures that on their face remain reasonably stable, lived experience is of more tenuous work and the looming impact of automation, which is only going to accelerate as the next wave of AI technology matures.

The modern Newstart recipient is not some cartoon slack arse nor some precious job snob. More likely they are an older person whose job has been “reformed” out of existence. They are people like Mike Presland, who spent 40 years in the labour market, adapting to change, changing up his skills but still ending up on Newstart.

In this context Morrison’s political radar is partially sound; he is right that there is growing “empathy” for those on Newstart rather than disdain. But there is little truck with his argument that the cost of increasing Newstart is too high. Indeed, support for an increase to Newstart grows when lined up against the stage three tax cuts that the government has legislated for over the long term.

Although Labor has kicked the stage three tax cuts down the road, these findings suggest there is an argument to block the tax package for high-income earners when the time comes to frame its policy for the next federal election.

A separate question in the most recent Essential Report suggests the government is also sailing against the public mood with its robodebt scheme, the automated system that purports to identify and dock recipients based on data-matching analysis.

Bill Shorten’s call to scrap robodebt may have seemed like a post-election howling at the moon, but it actually has majority support. Of those who have actually heard of robodebt (about little over half the population), a clear majority support pulling the plug.

Again we find concern is greater among those who may be a restructure away from being in the computer’s sights.

It is instructive that when the government’s knee-jerk response to calls for a Newstart increase was to reheat the dole-bludger stereotypes by claiming 80% of its recipients were in breach – based, no doubt, on more computer-generated data.

But with concerns that the big data model of government compliance is set to spread to flood and drought relief and family payments, it seems like the government may be about to hit another empathy wall.

If the cliches collapse, the government might actually have to confront the reality of life for nearly 750,000 Australians.

• Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential