UNEMPLOYED and on welfare was just the start of a long list of problems for Glenn Taylor. The stigma of being jobless was the next.
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"How's it make you feel? It makes you feel less of a man, knowing that you can't support your family. You can't hold your head up high; you try to but at times it gets to you," the single father said.
As NSW faces its worst unemployment crisis since the 1990s, more people than ever are turning to the government for income support.
A former Tamworth bus driver, Mr Taylor said thousands of Australians are going to be going through a financial and personal hell.
He spent six months on Centrelink benefits when he first came to Tamworth a few years ago, and being jobless in Tamwoth was financially "very hard".
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"I couldn't afford to live in a house, we were living in caravan ... I was a single father with my daughter," he said.
"We didn't buy any brand name foods, everything was home brand and we lived on a budget, you know what I mean. It was pretty hard."
After growing up in a "broken home", Mr Taylor worked in a series of low-skill hard-labour jobs. He started full-time work at 14; he's now 44.
When his body finally gave up a few years ago, he was forced onto the Centrelink system.
The story of Mr Taylor has a happy ending - he's now working for a disability service, though he was briefly unemployed this year after losing a job driving a bus to the coronavirus pandemic.
But he still remembers his time on the dole.
Knowing locals look down on those on the dole had smashed his self esteem, he said.
"People need to be more understanding," he said.
According to the latest figures, more people will face that grim prospect than ever before.
Nearly one-in-ten residents of the New England electorate are on JobSeeker benefits in May, according to analysis released this week.
Another one-in-five locals who are working receive a fortnightly JobKeeper wage supplement from the Commonwealth.
Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday show the state unemployment rate has increased massively across NSW since the March COVID-19 lockdown. According to the July statistics, unemployment is now 6.9 per cent, the highest since November 1998.
The Unemployed Workers' Union, an organisation which advocates on behalf of the now-millions of Australians receiving Centrelink benefits, said many of those people will be experiencing a payment system that, today, offers them just enough to scrape by.
But the government has repeatedly said it intends to cut the rate of JobSeeker by September back down to $40-a-day. A rate the UWU Spokesperson Kristin O'Connell was so measly many people went without regular meals, doctors visits or paying electricity bills.
Ms O'Connell anticipates Treasurer Josh Frydenberg could use a mini-budget on July 23 to announce a rate cut.
"[The old JobSeeker rate] was so severe that even if the rate does not go all the way back down to $40-a-day, any reduction is going to be really difficult for people to manage, especially people who are new to the payment but also for those who, for the first time, are being able to treat their health properly and eat properly, to catch up on bills," said Ms O'Connell.
"The payment right now is just above the poverty line so any change will throw millions of people into poverty.
"Our question right now is how deep will the government throw those people into poverty."
Andrew Messenger
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Politics, environment and energy journalist at the Northern Daily Leader. I also write about health, bushfires and occasionally music. I'm a Brisbane boy by way of Charleville and Hobart who now lives in in beautiful New England. Get me at andrew.messenger@austcommunitymedia.com.au
