Anglicare Australia has released A Clear Choice, a paper showing that the Government could raise JobSeeker and other payments over the poverty line, and tackle the shortage of social homes, for less than the cost of the tax cuts.
A Clear Choice was prepared by Anglicare Australia by comparing major costs of addressing poverty with income foregone from the upcoming Stage Three Tax Cuts. It draws on costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office, which projected the costs of raising income support payments to $88 per day. This rate is above the Henderson Poverty Line. Figures on the social housing shortfall, and the projected cost of addressing that shortfall, are sourced from peer-reviewed modelling conducted by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. The costs of each of these projects are then compared to the income foregone from the Stage Three Cuts, as projected by the Parliamentary Budget Office.
A Clear Choice shows that:
- The JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment, and Carer Payment could be raised to $88 per day
- This would pull almost 2.3 million Australians out of poverty, including 840,000 children
- The Government could also build 36,000 social homes each year
- This program would end the shortfall and provide affordable homes to hundreds of thousands of people
- These measures would cost $208 billion over ten years, less than the $243 billion cost of the tax cuts.