We demand and campaign for Living Incomes For Everyone.

We are a network of grass roots organisations, with endorsements from around Australia. We encourage people to join our broad movement to win an adequate income for everyone, to have a home, food and the other necessities for an adequate standard of living. We demand:

1. Keep the Rate!
· NO cuts to JobSeeker and JobKeeper payments.
· JobKeeper direct to workers.

2. No-One Left Behind!
· Raise all other allowance payments and pensions (Aged Pension, Disability Support Pension, Youth Allowance and Carers Pension) to a minimum $1100 per fortnight.
· Extend the JobSeeker and JobKeeper allowances to recent migrants, asylum seekers, overseas workers and international students.
· Increase the minimum wage.
· Keep free early childhood education and care.

3. End Harassment! For Social Security with Dignity.
· Abolish Mutual Obligation. End Work for the Dole and the Community Development Program (remote Work for the Dole), and forced income management provisions such as the Cashless Welfare Card and Basics Card.
· No return to Robodebts.
· Stop harassment by dodgy Job Providers.
· Public ownership and control of Social Security and Employment Services.

4. Secure homes for everyone
· Extend and expand the eviction ban, ban repossessions and provide rent and mortgage amnesty for the length of the pandemic.
· Forgiveness of all rental/mortgage debts accrued due to the impacts of the pandemic.
· Empty dwellings and vacant hotel rooms to be decontaminated and made available to homeless and displaced people.
· All those on the waitlist for State Owned and Managed Indigenous Housing (SOMIH) to be housed.
· Massive new investment in public housing and an end to further investment in “community housing”.

Our campaign began when JobSeeker doubled the dole, and other government responses to COIVD-19 unexpectedly met people’s needs for the first time. At the same time the PM announced this would last only for 6 months, till September 2020. An informal group of union and anti-poverty activists began discussing the need to keep the new rate of social security payments, extend them to people who had been excluded, and to stop harassment of people on income support. We developed the LIFE demands and held a hugely successful launch on 20 July 2020, which you can watch on video.

[last updated 3 Sep 2020]