Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt to live on dole for a week
News Limited Network
January 02, 2013 1:19PM
GREENS deputy leader Adam Bandt has challenged Families Minister Jenny Macklin to join him in spending a week living on the $35-a-day dole.
Mr Bandt issued the challenge in response to Ms Macklin's claim that she could live on the Newstart allowance, which has drawn outrage from welfare groups.
The Greens MP said living on the dole wasn't living, it was barely surviving.
Ms Macklin, a Cabinet member earning $903 a day, pushed 84,000 single mums off the parenting payment and on to the dole yesterday as part of a budget cut designed to save $738 million over four years. The move will cost a single mum who works part-time up to $233 a week.
When asked: "Could you live off the dole?", Ms Macklin told reporters at the Mercy Hospital in Melbourne: "I could".
Macklin dole gaffe edit 'a mistake'
A SENIOR Federal Government minister's controversial claim that she could live on the $38-a-day dole has been edited out of an official transcript.
Jenny Macklin's comments on the Newstart allowance have caused outrage.
Mr Bandt said the minister had clearly not listened to what welfare groups had been telling her.
He said for the minister to say it is possible to live on that amount was "an outrageous statement".
"Once you take into account your rent your bills, your food, there's not much change left over from $35 a day," he told reporters in Melbourne.
"There has been inquiry after inquiry, report after report saying this is an income that's below the poverty line, it's not really an income at all.
Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt says living on the dole is not living, it's barely surviving.
"I think the minister needs a first-hand experience of living off the dole and perhaps she will change her mind," he said.
The Greens say the allowance should be increased by $50 a week to help people on the allowance meet some of the most pressing expenses.
"One of the things that is immediately clear is that is you need planning and budgeting to make it work," Mr Bandt said.
Mr Bandt said he had the luxury of being able to return to his well-paid job and nothing he could do would fully put himself in the shoes of someone who lives on $35 a day.
But he wanted to do it to draw attention to the difficulties faced by those living on the Newstart allowance.
"The real issue is whether the dole is adequate in this country," he said.
Terese Edwards, chief executive of the National Council of Single Mothers and Their Children, said Ms Macklin's comments had been greeted with "great dismay and distress" by single mums around the country.
"It has resonated as salt in the wound for these mums who are facing such an uphill battle," she said.
Ms Edwards said she went to her local supermarket in Adelaide on Wednesday morning to check prices and found $35 a day would be impossible to make ends meet.
She said if rent cost a single mum $28 a day, plus school bus tickets for two children, cereal for breakfast, cheese sandwiches for lunch, sausages and vegetables for tea, it came to nearly $54.
That was without fruit, toiletries or cleaning products, not to mention electricity, healthcare, clothes and the rest, Ms Edwards said.
"I think it would be wonderful for many politicians on all sides of government to walk a mile in the shoes of a single parent, who will be forced from already a modest amount to a completely inadequate amount."
Ms Edwards said poverty could lead to a sad and lonely life for children with even small treats like DVDs and popcorn unaffordable.
"They're the kids that aren't going on the school camps, they're the ones that don't have the right uniform, they have the out-of-date books.
"They are marked in the school yard as the poor kids," she said.
The sensitivity of Ms Macklin's dole remark became clear when a ministerial transcript issued just hours after yesterday's media conference described as "inaudible" the reporter's question and the crucial first part of Ms Macklin's reply.
Last night, her office claimed its recording had been affected by a revving car.
Three parliamentary inquiries, the OECD, the Business Council of Australia, former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry and even Employment Minister Bill Shorten admit the dole is inadequate.
A spokeswoman for Ms Macklin yesterday accepted full responsibility for the transcript omission.
Cassandra Goldie from the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) said Ms Macklin would struggle to live on $35 a day.
"The minister's claim is extraordinary and it flies in the face of all of the other evidence,'' she told ABC Radio today.
Ms Goldie said the decreased payments put families already under financial stress further below the poverty line.
"The evidence is clear - they are living below the poverty line and we as a country can afford to address
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