AUWU condemns decision to freeze pension rates
The government is wilfully harming the people most hurt by the COVID crisis
The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union condemns the government’s incalculably cruel decision to freeze pensions and the Carers Payment – on top of having discriminated against people on these payments by excluding them from the COVID supplement.
These payments are already too low. To revoke an expected increase – for the first time since 1931 – is pure savagery.
This is the worst possible time for the government to dig in and refuse to provide this mild relief to some of the most vulnerable people in society.
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have shown extraordinary largesse towards reprehensible job agency operators. The JobKeeper program has seen a huge transfer of public funds to shareholder profits.
They can spare the small amount that pensioners were expecting as an increase to their payment.
Throughout COVID and the subsequent economic crisis, pensioners and people receiving the Carers Payment have been forced to try and survive below the poverty line. At the same time the cost of basic goods and essential supports substantially increased.
The government is dangerously mishandling the looming economic disaster and the result will only be more scarcity for people who rely on the cheapest goods to survive.
Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg have the power to increase pensions – they are hiding behind an obscure economic metric to justify their cruelty.
This decision again shows that from the Prime Minister down the members of this government are not fit to serve.
Media contact: 0413 261 362 / media at auwu.org.au
Sign up to receive AUWU statements in your inbox as soon as they are published.