The social services minister Christian Porter has accused welfare bodies of lacking imagination for calling for an increase in the Newstart unemployment payment.
Porter has released plans to use improved data systems to target intergenerational welfare dependency, including young students and young carers, with purpose-built programs.
He says the alternative to the Coalition’s approach, such as an increase in the Newstart allowance of $53, put forward by groups such as the Australian Council for Social Services, would cost $7.7bn over four years. He said the extra money would need to be borrowed by government or raised by new taxes.
Currently, the fornightly rate for the Newstart allowance is $528.70 for singles and $477.40 each for couples.
“That is a perfect example of just applying massive increases in money to all of the same processes and systems,” he told Sky News.
“It’s just more money ... more of the same and it carries with it no guarantee that anything will change, that any lives will be improved in terms of their long-term progress.
“I don’t think that is an an acceptable way to spend massive amounts of taxpayers’ money. It really lacks imagination; it shows a unwillingness to do things a little bit differently.”
Porter called on welfare groups to be open-minded and join the government to use its new $33m data system which would be open to “preferred and registered users” such as Acoss, academics and not-for-profit groups to study the “secrets inside the welfare systems”.
“We are inviting them on this journey with us to try and assist us and I would just expect them to be open-minded,” Porter said.
Porter said in the past governments had been afraid to end one welfare program and move funding to another because of criticism.
“At least if we have evidence that might show the newer alternative will work better than the existing program, then that offers any government some sort of rational cover to go out and explain to people,” he said.
He said the welfare system into the future was unsustainable and said data could be used to understand and amend programs to to work out what “helps people succeed”.
Porter said 400,000 students were currently receiving $3.3bn in cash payments to study.
“Yet this data is showing that at any given point for the next 60 years, 30% of that group of 400,000 students will be inside the welfare system in that year drawing welfare.
“I find that an amazing and really unhappy result. You would expect that is a group [that] would do a lot better.”
Porter took issue with his Labor shadow, Jenny Macklin, who suggested his speech was missing the point of the welfare system, which is to keep people out of poverty.
“In large part the welfare system is about allocating assistance, a helping hand to make people’s lives are better over time,” Porter said.
“To target them when they are most in need but don’t let that targeting become a draw into a system that locks them in, in some cases for life.”
He said the Coalition’s Try, Test, Learn Fund, announced in the last budget would cost $96m to provide programs for young carers, young students and young parents.
He said applications would be taken from program providers in December and the programs would be delivered early next year.
