A man left homeless after his mother died says there will be “burglaries every day” if the federal government makes unemployed people under 30 wait six months before receiving welfare.
Hobsons Bay youth workers and council condemned the federal budget measure that will leave young jobseekers without the Newstart allowance for six months, during which time they will receive no income.
Jack, 23, who did not want his surname used, said he was “scraping by” on Centrelink benefits and living in transitional housing sourced by Altona homelessness service, Latitude: Directions for Young People.
“In 2010, I was living with my mother and when she died I had to look for my own place to live,” Jack said.
“If they decide to cut off the pension completely, it wouldn’t surprise me if some kind of civil war happened because a lot of people, especially in the lower class … are going to be angry.
“The crime rate’s going to go up stupendously. People are going to get robbed in the streets, people’s houses are going to get burgled every day.’’
Latitude manager Rhonda Collins said axing a young person’s benefits, amounting to more than $7000 for six months, would lead to homelessness and make poverty “the norm”.
“It’s insane, totally insane,” she said. “What are people going to do? There seems to be this idea that you might be 25 and living at home supported by parents, which I just find is kind of bizarre and archaic.
“If you’re homeless or at risk of homelessness, you will become homeless. Even if there is a way that you can pay your rent, how do you actually support yourself in other ways like eating and transport?’’
Ms Collins questioned how many young people were supposed to survive in a “job or training” world.
“How do they get to a job interview? Do they incur a public transport fine because they actually can’t get to the job interview?’’
“Has [the government] actually thought about what it means to not have any kind of income for six months? Even if I’m just thinking about that, I break into a cold sweat.
“For the woman escaping family violence – how are they going to cope?”
Asked how he would cope in such circumstances, Treasurer Joe Hockey told ABC radio: “I would expect to be in a job, that would be the starting point.”
Hobsons Bay mayor Sandra Wilson said: “It beggars belief that any government would take such a punitive approach to what are often vulnerable young people who have already had to do it tough in life.”
Laverton Community Integrated Services chief executive Michael Pernar said living on nothing was “an impossibility”.
‘‘There’s an assumption there that everyone has got supports,’’ he said.
‘‘We have a lot of transitional people coming through Laverton who have absolutely no community or family supports.
“We’re talking Utopia. That’s where I think this new government exists: in the Utopian world, which we all know doesn’t exist.”
