Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers will promote dealing with concentrated disadvantage through collaboration between governments and local communities.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
“In aggregate,the economy is recovering and that’s a good thing but we want more Australians to get a slice of the action,” Dr Chalmers will say according to a draft of the speech. “For 2 million Australians who can’t find a job or enough work or those caught in long-term unemployment at 20-year highs,it still feels like a recession.”
Labor leader Anthony Albanese last week promised a$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund that would invest in tens of thousands of social and affordable homes.
However,Dr Chalmers is steering away from further plans to substantially ramp up spending on benefits for unemployed and impoverished Australians and will instead say there are more efficient ways to use the existing budget.
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While Labor has agreed spending programs are needed to help stimulate a struggling economy,both Dr Chalmers and Mr Albanese have criticised the “quality” of the federal government’s spending choices.
“What concerns us all is that despite growth in aggregate prosperity over the last generation,globalisation and technology-led disruption threaten a further polarising of opportunity in Australia,” Dr Chalmers will say. Inner suburbs typically have good health and economic outcomes but he will warn outer suburban and regional areas have mixed results.
One of the biggest changes in welfare at the height of the coronavirus pandemic was the effective doubling of the dole with the temporary addition of an extra $550 a fortnight payment as unemployment skyrocketed. The federal government permanently lifted JobSeeker by $50-a-fortnight when the coronavirus supplement ended in March.