After graduation, she got stuck. She knew academia wasn’t for her, but she didn’t know what else to do with her degree. She got a job as a receptionist at a real estate company, but she didn’t perform too well. She was on a very low wage and was struggling to eat and feed her cat and pay her rent. “Administration is one heck of a job too,” she said. “I missed a few things and there were other times I messed things up, so eventually they fired me. I was 23 or 24 at the time. I was feeling worse and worse going back there every day, so it was kind of a relief when they pulled the pin on me.” It took Ms Balmer nearly a year to find another job: working in sales on commission, without a base wage. She worked 80 hours a week but still earned so little she still got a Centrelink payment. After eight months Centrelink told her she was earning so far below minimum wage that despite the long hours she was working she was still technically unemployed in their eyes. She would have to go into a work for the dole program to keep her benefit, and to do this, she had to leave the sales job.

She kept looking. She sent out resumes, but back then, she said, she didn’t understand about tailoring resumes to jobs. Even when she discovered jobs she might like or be good at, she never got a call back or an interview. “All I was qualified for really were similar jobs to the one at Macca’s,” she said. “But by that point, I was too old for most of the fast food places. They were going for cheaper, younger staff.” And living on the Newstart unemployment benefit was not easy. “I don’t know if I would call it living,” she said.

“I was at home all the time. I tried to go for a lot of walks around the neighbourhood to get out but I couldn’t afford public transport or petrol for anything other than to go buy groceries. I spent a lot of time at the library doing my resumes because I didn’t have the internet. All my bills were always overdue. “I was starving myself to keep the house. I could only afford soup. My mum thought I was on meth because I was so skinny. It was only later she told me that.” Ms Balmer had some interview clothes ready, saved from her receptionist days, in case of an interview. But she found it took more than clothes to appear job-ready. “I could manage to look presentable, but I didn’t feel capable of presenting my best self,” she said. “You have to be nice and smiley and accommodating, but I was so anxious I could barely talk to checkout staff because I was so uncomfortable spending money.

“I felt like desperately wanting the job would make me really, obviously anxious. “I felt like I wasn’t welcome in the employed level of society. Like, if I couldn’t keep my mentality up I didn’t deserve to have a job and work.” Eventually, she couldn’t afford to rent by herself, and she didn’t have the emotional energy to find herself a housemate. Her mother was living in York at the time, far from any jobs, so she moved back in with her father. “I was really grateful my dad was able to accommodate me. So many people don’t have that extra support system ... I had literally no idea where I would have gone next,” she said. And then, when she least expected it: salvation.

The next work for the dole program placed her at Green World Revolution, a small not-for-profit urban farm in East Perth supplying microgreens to restaurants and doing other small-scale gardening projects. “I could breathe again,” Ms Balmer said. “It doesn’t sound like anything much, shovelling and digging holes and planting stuff. It was basic but I loved it ... I could feel like I had accomplished something.” She kept in touch with the chief executive, Toby Whittington, and kept volunteering there after the program ended. Eventually as the charity grew in size he was able to start paying her. Then Green World Revolution was contracted for a revitalisation project installing and maintaining planter boxes throughout East Perth. Jessica Balmer and Edward Collins tend to a planter box in East Perth. Credit:Emma Young

Ms Balmer now tends the planters with co-worker Edward Collins three days a week, seeds and cares for the microgreens at the farm two days a week, and also maintains the food garden at a nearby apartment block. “One of my favourite things there is helping it grow and thrive and coming back and seeing the residents harvesting it and eating the produce,” Ms Balmer said. “I’m working full-time hours. “It’s happened in such small increments that I don’t notice until I look back; but now in the mornings, instead of being exhausted and sick of myself, I look forward to getting stuff done. “I’m still living with my Dad but I have been looking for places to rent and I am able to save and budget better.

“Everyone should have a garden.” Raising the rate Newstart has not increased in nearly 25 years, or in line with other welfare benefits, and pressure to raise it is growing. Recipients live on $277 per week, the lowest unemployment benefit in the OECD and less than half the OECD average. The Faces of Unemployment report released last Friday, by The Australian Council of Social Services and Jobs Australia, showed 64 per cent of recipients get stuck on the payment for more than a year. Most Newstart recipients are on the payment long term. Credit:File image.

Almost half of these were aged over 45 and almost a third had disabilities. Jobs growth had been largely stagnant over the past decade and most jobs created were part-time, the report said. Also, the low-skilled jobs many unemployed people sought were shrinking in number and were increasingly part-time or casual in nature. And as they became unemployed for longer periods their job prospects sharply diminished. “The fact that almost two-thirds of people on unemployment payments have received them for over a year underscores the importance of an adequate income for unemployed people, and employment services that help them prepare for a job and support them in paid employment,” the report said.

The Australian Greens last week introduced a bill to increase it by $75 a week. On Monday, Deloitte Access Economics released a further report commissioned by ACOSS: Analysis of the impact of raising benefit rates. Loading The report found boosting the payment by $75 a week would have ‘prosperity effects’, boosting consumer spending, creating 12,000 jobs and lifting wages. “Any given dollar spent on this policy proposal would [also] have a very tightly targeted fairness impact, with the overwhelming bulk of relative improvements in disposable incomes going to Australia’s lowest income households,” it said.

“There is also a relatively tight correlation between the least well-off districts across Australia ... and the boost to regional spending from this proposal, meaning that the regional economies most in need of help would receive it.” WA Council of Social Services deputy chief executive Jenny Gray told Radio 6PR this week the 87,000 West Australians on Newstart included many children and young people who are supported by parents receiving that payment. “So it includes the hidden cost of child poverty,” she said. “By giving these recipients the extra money they need to live a more dignified life above the poverty line, we will generate more jobs, a trickle-up effect that will lead to more economic prosperity for the state.” The Greens’ bill will be debated in October.