Joe Hockey says he is really, really, sorry the disadvantaged may have somehow got the impression he, or the government, did not care about them.



Because in fact the government is doing its “very best” for the disadvantaged – by making the welfare and health systems “sustainable” with the policies outlined in the budget.

Those policies include the cuts to health, pensions, welfare, education and family payments which have resulted in multiple sets of modelling concluding that the impact of the budget is unfair. And they don’t include numerous other ways spending could have been cut, or revenue raised, and the budget brought back to surplus, which would not hurt the poor.

If this is really Hockey’s idea of a budget that shows compassion for the disadvantaged, he is even more out of touch than people thought he was after his ridiculous comments about poor people not driving very far.

Perhaps he could read the submissions to a Senate inquiry into the budget’s welfare changes, where I came across a case study of a man who had sought help from St Vincent de Paul.

He was a 64-year-old from somewhere near Bathurst who had been forced to give up his lifelong job as a truck driver in 2013 after a serious heart attack. He could no longer work, even casually, and was living on a disability support pension. After he had paid rent and power he had $135 a week – which also had to cover around $40 a week in medical prescription costs.

The man had sought financial counselling and had tried to save money in many ways but he still couldn’t make ends meet and was forced to ask for help from Vinnies several times before deciding to move to a shack on a small bush block he owned, without power or running water.

“He will have to use lanterns and a battery radio, and work out ways to heat water and keep food cool. He is willing to live there even though it is not designed or insulated to be a home, and every time it rains the roof leaks, so that he is obliged to put out buckets to catch the drips. The move takes him further away from his beloved daughter and grandchildren. Mr X feels that the only way that he can cope with the cost pressures on his small income is to quit town and move to barely habitable accommodation in a remote location,” Vinnies writes in its submission.

The budget proposes to index the age and disability pensions by the CPI, usually a lower amount than the average weekly earnings that have until now been the benchmark for an annual increase.

The fact that unemployment benefits have been indexed by the lower amount is the reason they are now worth $7,500 a year less than the pension.

Once the pension is also indexed by the lesser amount, the former truck driver on his back block with no power will, over time, have even less money to meet his needs. And almost straight away, if the budget gets through, he will have to find $7 for his first 10 visits to the doctor.

Did the government’s “very best” extend to thinking about the real lives of pensioners like this man?

The budget also proposes that around 100,000 unemployed young people under 30 should receive no unemployment benefits for six months of the year.

According to the explanatory memorandum this is because “there is a need to provide greater encouragement to jobseekers to make a genuine effort to enter suitable employment, including, if necessary, by moving to a different area, rather than remaining on income support.”

But given that figures this week show unemployment for 15 to 24 year olds nationwide running at a record 14.1%, the idea that the “yoof” could get a job if they could just be forced to get up off the sofa doesn’t actually correlate to the facts.

The explanatory memorandum also says that the policy focuses on young unemployed because “young persons often have access to family support to enjoy an adequate standard of living”.

This might have made sense around the expenditure review table, it would certainly be the case if there was ever a young unemployed person in the Abbott or Hockey or Andrews families, but in the real world some “young persons” don’t have access to family support. No one in the government has yet provided anything like an explanation of what they are supposed to do.

And if the aim is to force young people to move to places where there are jobs, why would the government be simultaneously filling those same jobs with overseas workers before it finds out whether its new hardline welfare policies are effective.

Darwin is one place where there is a drastic labour shortage, as local workers flock to the new $34bn Ichthys gas project, and as my colleague Helen Davidson reported this week it is also an eligible location under a new government incentive scheme which offers unemployed Australians up to $9,000 to move for work.

Not many have taken up the offer yet, and we probably won’t get the chance to see whether the new hardline welfare policies make a difference to that because the government has just designated Darwin as a special migration area where employers can fill jobs in 19 occupations with foreign workers.

In 2012 the Business Council of Australia told yet another Senate inquiry that the then level of unemployment benefits ‘’presents a barrier to employment and risks entrenching poverty’’ because ‘’job-seekers are severely disadvantaged in their ability to maintain active job search and present themselves decently for job interviews’’.

Unemployment benefits have not risen in real terms since, and now the government is suggesting that young unemployed should be able to meet even more stringent job search requirements, should be able to pay for clothes, and grooming and transport fares and resume printing, and also somehow find money for food and rent, while earning nothing at all for six months of the year.

As Tony Abbott said on Friday, it is difficult to explain a budget that involves taking things away from people.

But if this really represents his best effort to help the most disadvantaged people in Australia, his government really is a very long way removed from the lives and circumstances of the people from whom they are taking the most.