The prime minister says 99% of people on the income support get other payments – but for most it’s a measly $1 extra a day

Newstart: what are the facts about the unemployment payment?

“They don’t just live on Newstart alone,” is how Scott Morrison defended his opposition to an increase in the unemployment benefit.

“It goes up twice a year and 99% of people on Newstart are also on other payments,” he told Triple J Hack’s Tom Tilley on Monday night.

“So they’ve got enough?” Tilley asked him. The prime minister was briefly forced to elaborate.

“They have rental assistance,” Morrison continued. “They have a range of other forms of assistance and what we’ve done for people who have been on Newstart is we have got them off Newstart and actually got them into a job.”

Morrison then pivoted, unprompted, to the issue of youth mental health.

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And so the question of what these “other payments” are and whether they were “enough” went unaddressed.

We’re going to unpack that here, but first, let’s deal with the suggestion that Newstart “goes up” twice a year.

‘Goes up twice a year’

Morrison is right that Newstart “goes up” twice a year, but Newstart is indexed to prices, rather than wages like the age pension.

Since 1994, when the unemployment benefit was last increased in “real terms”, wages have grown 40% faster than prices, according to a Deloitte Access Economics report last year that modelled a $75-a-week increase to Newstart.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison is opposed to raising the unemployment benefit Newstart. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

The result, the report said, was that “the age pension has doubled in real terms since 2000” while Newstart has “barely budged”.

In September last year, indexation delivered Newstart recipients an extra $2 a week, an increase labelled “laughable” by recipients.

‘They don’t just live on Newstart alone’

The prime minister is also right that 99% of people on Newstart get other payments. But there is more to it than that.

The latest publicly available figures, from Senate estimates, show that of the 733,088 people on Newstart at June 2017, only about 5,500 didn’t receive other government payments.

Newstart is currently $277.85 a week, or about $39 a day, but some Newstart recipients can access what are called supplement payments.

These can cover the costs of things like being a carer, living in a remote area or transport for people who cannot easily use public transport.

On top of that, all Newstart recipients get the energy supplement, which is worth $4.40 a week.

When the department broke down the data for the Greens senator Rachel Siewert last year, it found 51.9% of Newstart recipients also got another supplement. (The energy supplement was not separated out of the data, so it is unclear how many received that, and another supplement.)

So for the majority of Newstart recipients, the average value of the “other payments” is $7.32 per week.

That is, they don’t live on $39 a day, but about $40 a day (before other costs).

Charmaine Crowe, a senior advisor of social security at Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss), said it was “disingenuous” to suggest “supplementary payment makes Newstart adequate”.

“We’ve obviously considered the supplementary payments people receive,” she said. “That supplementary payment is around 60c a day, so it does not allow people on Newstart to make ends meet.

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“Newstart and the energy supplement equate to $40 a day, which is why Newstart needs to be increased by $75 per week.”

Rent assistance and family payments

Newstart recipients who rent in the private market can also access rent assistance, while those with children often receive family tax benefit.

On the department’s figures, Newstart recipients who also get rent assistance (about 28%) get an extra $55 a week on average. So they live on about $48 a day.

For people to get the maximum rate of rent assistance of around $10 a day, they had to spend twice as much in rent to be eligible, Crowe said.

The largest additional payment for people on Newstart is the family tax benefit (FTB), which goes to people with dependent children. The 9% of Newstart recipients who also get FTB payments, but not rent assistance, receive an extra $200.70 a week on average.

They receive $68.35 a day – but that money is to cover their own living costs as well as those of their dependent children.

A further 9% get Newstart, rent assistance, FTB (as well as extra supplements). That adds $282.07 to their weekly incomes, meaning they have about $80 a day to live on.

Crowe said: “Even with the other payments a person would receive, their total payments still fall $96 per week short of the bare minimum required to cover housing, food and transport.”