How Australian policymakers ignore the evidence on supporting those living in poverty

It’s estimated that more than three million Australians, or 13.4% of our population, including one in six Australian children totalling 760,000, live in financial poverty.

Yet, the 2025 federal budget has failed to introduce any initiatives to reduce poverty, and specifically ignored longstanding calls by social welfare advocates for a major increase in the JobSeeker payment for the unemployed.

Read more: Federal budget 2025: Tax cuts, turbulence and a looming election

The evidence concerning the social and economic benefits of a large increase in key social security payments is overwhelming.

The 2024 Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into “the extent and nature of poverty in Australia”, based on 253 written submissions and nine public hearings nationally, reported evidence from government and non-government welfare bodies and people with lived experience of poverty that many Australians were struggling to afford core needs such as food, housing and healthcare.

The report highlighted that their financial disadvantage was adversely impacting on their ability to access mainstream social and economic opportunities, including participation in education and employment.

It recommended that the Australian government “take urgent action so that Australians are not living in poverty, including through considering the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of the income support system”.

The chair of the inquiry, Greens Senator Janet Rice, added a precise recommendation that the government increase the base rate of all social security payments, including JobSeeker, to $88 a day.

More recently, the federal government’s statutory Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s (EIAC) 2025 Report to Government identified similar concerns – that many Australians living in poverty lacked access to adequate food, experienced poor health, and were more likely to die by suicide.

That high level of deprivation was particularly prevalent in remote (especially First Nations) communities. The EIAC report recommended a major increase in the rates of JobSeeker payment and related working age payments as the highest priority.

The EIAC report, which was informed by consultations with 65 people who had direct experience of the social welfare system, included a cost-benefit analysis study of the economic impact of increasing the JobSeeker rate for a single adult (currently $778.00 per fortnight) to 90% of the current Age Pension single rate (currently $1047.10 per fortnight).

That analysis identified a gain of $1.24 for every dollar spent, and emphasised that the increase in wellbeing and opportunities of those affected would easily “outweigh any potential costs from reduced work incentives”.

So how can we explain the government’s decision (citing the evocative words of ACOSS) "to do nothing to lift people out of poverty”?

For a long time, both Labor and the opposition Liberal National Coalition have chosen to marginalise concerns about poverty.

Both political parties broadly share the view that secure paid employment within the free market is the best pathway out of poverty.

Both eschew any direct intervention by government either to directly create jobs or alternatively to provide major subsidies to private-sector employers that enhance the labour market opportunities of those groups most excluded.

This consensus in favour of (very) limited government action persists despite the fact that long-term unemployment figures have significantly increased in recent years.

For example, as of March 2023, a majority of JobSeeker recipients (56%) had now been on the payment for more than two years, 17% for five to 10 years, and 8% for 10 years or more.

In the Senate poverty inquiry report discussed above, the Labor government representative opined that “secure, fairly paid work” was “one of the strongest forces for poverty reduction and social mobility”.

But their statements presented no proposals for enabling those experiencing long-term unemployment to access sustainable paid employment.

Similarly, the Coalition representative argued that “the best form of welfare is a job”, and that the inquiry should focus on “facilitating employment” rather than raising social security payments. These statement did not present any new strategies for enhancing the access of the most disadvantaged groups to the labour market.

Neither of the major political parties seem to have actively engaged with the needs of groups disproportionately experiencing poverty, such as young adults transitioning from forms of out-of-home care.

Nor have they considered the detailed evidence presented by the Senate and EIAC reports discussed above on the complex personal, systemic, community, and structural challenges and barriers that prevent many Australians from attaining paid employment.

In contrast, an evidence-based policy approach would introduce targeted, locally-based programs to advance access for groups disproportionately experiencing long-term unemployment to skills training and employment, and raise social security payments to an adequate level for those frozen out of employment.

The current absence of any such initiatives suggests a continued bipartisan consensus that neglects the needs of socially and economically excluded groups.