Annette Lovell is used to waiting. It is Tuesday and she has $30 in her bank account. She also has two things she needs to buy so one will have to wait until Friday.

“Of course the blood pressure medication is important but so is phone credit,” she said. “If I miss a call regarding a job prospect, I am unable to call back.”

Lovell, 58, is on Newstart, and she was among the crowd of demonstrators urging Labor delegates to back an increase to the payment at the party’s national conference this week. There, too, Lovell learned she’ll have to wait.

The opposition rejected an internal push to tell voters it will increase the rate of Newstart, instead standing by its pledge for a review of all welfare payments within 18 months of a Labor government.

For Lovell, who is among growing group of older women now on the dole and fearing they may never work again, the decision sparked anger and frustration.

“I’m in a situation where my son is helping financially. That would mean an extra two years of him helping me,” said Lovell, who is putting off $2,500 worth of dental work for new dentures and four bottom broken teeth because she can’t afford it. “At my age that’s very likely. That is still me taking money from my son so I can actually live.”

Annette Lovell relies on her son because of the low rate of Newstart.

While the government refuses an increase to Newstart entirely, Labor has acknowledged the $275.10-a-week base payment is inadequate and implied the review will be used to make the case for a rise.

But social service groups and the Greens argue a review is not needed, citing widespread support from across business, unions and the former prime minister, John Howard. A Deloitte report projected the $3.3bn proposal to increase Newstart by $75 per week would boost the economy.

A new cohort of Newstart recipients won’t likely be the only ones affected by a delay to an increase in the payment. Statistics show 44% of people on Newstart have received payments for more than two years and 15% have for five years.

Those numbers are not lost on Dorian Hadgraft, 35, who has been receiving Newstart since February. He has been denied the disability support pension despite having fibromyalgia, he said, because his decision to try new medication means his condition was not considered “stable”.

Given the tightening of eligibility for the disability pension, the Melburnian fears he will still be on the dole in two years when Labor’s review into welfare payments might finally have been completed. If a Shorten government eventually raised Newstart by $75 a week, as advocates hope, recipients would forgo at least $5,850 waiting for the review.

“It’s easy for people who aren’t on Newstart to think that two years is not that long to wait,” Hadgraft said. “But they can feed themselves reliably every week.”

Dorian Hadgraft, who has been on Newstart since February, has been denied the disability support pension despite having fibromyalgia.

An immediate increase to his income would mean he was “less stressed about money”. He could go to the dentist, and would not have to revert to a dinner of lentils or beans with tomato sauce when money was tight.

“I could afford to buy tofu this week,” he said. “I might actually go out with my friends. It’s hard when you’ve also got fatigue … when you’re also thinking about whether you can afford to go and have a pub meal with them, it’s pretty alienating.”

The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie, labelled Labor’s refusal to back an increase “a disgrace”.

“People living in poverty have already been forced to bravely share their stories of struggle for years now – we don’t need to put them through this again to know that they desperately need this increase,” she said.

In a speech to the Labor conference on Monday, the shadow minister for social services, Linda Burney, said the rate of Newstart was causing “poverty, social isolation and hardship”, adding that Labor would “urgently conduct a proper review of Newstart and associated payments and supports like Youth Allowance”.

“It’s important we have a proper process – and build the case for change with the broader community.”

But Goldie said the opposition had not needed a review to “commit to $73bn (over 10 years) in personal income tax cuts for people lucky enough to have a job”.

“We cannot continue to keep people waiting in poverty any longer for a review and the evidence is already in,” she said.