To: Minister for Social Services, Tanya Plibersek • Treasurer of Australia, Jim Chalmers • Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Amanda Rishworth • Parliament of Australia
Everyone Deserves Dignity: Fix JobSeeker, End Suspensions, Raise the Rate
Right now, almost a million people across the country are surviving on JobSeeker.
When the payment is kept at $56 a day, it doesn’t help people into decent work. It pressures people into taking any job, on any conditions. That doesn't help unemployed workers, it benefits the big employers who rely on a desperate workforce, the labour-hire firms pushing insecure shifts, and the private “job provider” companies who profit every time someone is cycled through their programs.
Australia’s outsourced “job services” industry makes a fortune from administering compliance, monitoring, mandatory appointments and tick-box activities that too rarely lead to quality long-term jobs. And automated systems like PBAS and the Targeted Compliance Framework only tighten this grip, cutting people off automatically, feeding people back into the same revolving door, and generating revenue for the same companies again and again.
Australia can afford dignity.
What we can’t afford is a system that keeps people poor so others can profit.
That's why we’re calling on the Australian Government to:
1. Raise JobSeeker above the poverty line
Lift income support to at least 90% of the Age Pension and index it properly. Profiting from poverty shouldn’t be a business model – people deserve stability, dignity and the freedom to rebuild their lives.
2. End punitive mutual obligations and the automated suspension system
Abolish the Points Based Activation System and the Targeted Compliance Framework – the “Robodebt-lite” architecture that wrongfully suspends payments and pushes people into crisis.
3. Ban automated punishments in our social safety net
Algorithms should never decide whether someone can eat, keep a roof over their head, or survive. Build a rights-based system where humans can make decisions with compassion, context and care.
4. Restore and expand access to the Disability Support Pension
Stop pushing older people and disabled people onto JobSeeker, where they face harsher rules, less support and lower payments.
5. Tell the truth about unemployment
There aren’t enough secure, decent jobs in many communities – especially outer suburbs, regions and places with high discrimination. Stop blaming individuals for a structural problem that benefits employers and private contractors.
Why is this important?
Across the country, people are doing their best on incomes that no one could survive on. Parents skipping meals so their kids can eat. Older people choosing between rent and medicine. Disabled people fighting the system just to get the support they’re entitled to. Young people couch-surfing because rent has skyrocketed out of reach.
And hanging over all of it is a digital web of obligations, points targets and automated penalties – a system where your only income can be suspended because an algorithm misread your situation or a provider didn’t update their notes.
This kind of hardship means people are less likely to stand up for their rights. That kind of compliance helps maintain low wages, insecure jobs, and a profitable “job services” industry that survives on churn, not long-term outcomes.
Robodebt showed us what happens when governments automate punishment. Lives were destroyed. Families were left grieving. Rights were ignored. Yet today, many of the same or similar systems remain – just with different branding and a new interface.
People deserve better than this.
They deserve fairness.
They deserve dignity.
They deserve a future where support helps people get back on their feet – instead of pushing them deeper into stress and insecurity so others can profit. Raising the rate and ending automated punishment isn’t just good economic policy, it’s a stand for what kind of country we want to be. One where we look after each other, and where no one is disposable.
