How Australia’s skyrocketing cost of living is pushing people into poverty

Julie-Marie Hay didn't always struggle on her nurse's salary - even as a single parent and the primary carer of her three children.

"I used to be able to afford what we needed when we needed it, and only struggled on the odd occasion when something big came in. Even a couple of years ago," Hay says.

Hay, 41, is an enrolled nurse and works full-time in Perth. Her fortnightly take-home pay comes in at just under $2,000. She receives small stipends from the family tax benefit and carer's allowance from Centrelink, and occasional child support payments. And it's not enough to keep the family's heads above water.

"I'd say I'm shorter each fortnight by about $300 in the last year alone," Hay says. "I don't have any debt at all. I don't have any loans. Even that's not enough for me to survive. If I had a loan, I would drown."

Hay is far from alone in her fears. With a federal election imminent, the rapidly rising cost of living is shaping up to be a hot-button issue.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Monday that the government was "very aware" of the strain on household budgets. "These cost of living impacts are real, and the Australian government understands that," Morrison said.

The federal government's current solution to the issue of astronomical rises in the cost of living is to propose tax cuts.

But the opposition says it is a matter of raw income. "Families are under massive pressure - everything is going up except people's wages," the federal Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said this week.

In a speech to the Australia Institute on Tuesday, Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O'Neil said that in 2021, workers earning the average income of $68,000 effectively had a pay cut of $832, as price increases outstripped the minor raises negotiated in enterprise bargaining. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, consumer prices rose 3.5% and wages just 2.3% last year.

Hay says she does her best to provide everything her family needs, juggling costs fortnight by fortnight, but it's what she has to go without that is the most telling.

Hay's children, aged seven, 11 and 16, all have attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). One of them is also autistic. They require regular visits to a paediatrician (around $600 every six months), medication (approximately $220 a month) and GP visits in between for supplementary scripts. They are inflexible about what they will and won't eat, so budgeting opportunities in the weekly grocery shop are limited.

So Hay restricts her own food "so I don't have the excess costs". She taught herself to service her own car so she could save on routine maintenance. She had to access her superannuation so she could pay for dental work. She borrowed money from a colleague to pay for Christmas presents. And although she was diagnosed with ADHD too, she hasn't yet been able to seek treatment for herself. "I couldn't follow up on it because I couldn't afford it," she says.

Hay's small Mazda3, which she needs to drive to work each day, used to cost around $60 to fill. Now it costs more like $80 or $90.

And then there's rent, which has "skyrocketed" in Perth. Hay's rose $60 per week last April and she is terrified it will rise again next month. "I don't have any savings, so if they say to me 'you're out', then I'm stuck."

Hay is concerned that even the relatively ambitious pay rises on her industry's agenda are unlikely to make a dent on her day-to-day life.

"We're asking for 4% in this next raise, and even that scares me because I don't think that's going to cover what I require to be able to survive. And if they push my rent up, then it's not going to cover anything."

"The wage system in this country is broken," says Tim Kennedy, national secretary for the United Workers Union. "This is not by accident; it is by design."

The economic crisis caused by the pandemic exacerbated already existing inequalities in Australia, Kennedy says.

"Unless Australian workers are given the capacity to obtain a fair share in wages, then more people will fall back into unnecessary poverty."

It's not just wages that aren't keeping up with the cost of living. If even those on a full-time income are struggling, things are even tougher for people who need to rely on government support payments.

Desanka Ogrizovic, 36, supports her 12-year-old daughter and herself on jobseeker payments. Having worked as both a counsellor and in the beauty industry, she has been looking for jobs and trying to build her own business, but has struggled to land work.

Ogrizovic is luckier than some: she and her daughter have been able to live rent-free in her grandmother's apartment since her grandmother moved into aged care. It cuts out one of the biggest cost burdens - at least for now. But it's not a permanent solution, especially as she knows that there is literally no housing in the cities that is affordable for people on jobseeker payments.

"It's not an easy situation," Ogrizovic says. "I know married couples that live together also struggle but I feel like it's harder when you're just one parent.

"Sometimes I'm left with $5 by the end of the fortnight. My daughter knows how hard we budget. I don't try to bombard her with that stuff but you can see that she can see how little I have."

Jobseeker payments are scheduled to rise on 20 March - by $13.20, taking the base rate to $629.50 per fortnight. The change, a routine indexing increase, was described in a media release from Senator Anne Ruston, the minister for families and social services, as "a boost" that would "help [people] keep up with the changes in the cost of living".

The sting feels particularly sharp, coming two years after the federal government doubled those same payments as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and then halved them again a year ago.

Cassandra Goldie, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss) has condemned the decision to cut back the rate to pre-pandemic levels as "shameful".

"It is a scandal and international disgrace that despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Australia is back to having one of the lowest rates of unemployment payment in the OECD," Goldie says.

"We know from personal testimonies and surveys that the majority of people on these very low income support payments will struggle even more to feed their families and keep a roof over their head.

"They sink into debt because they can't pay their energy bills, keep a car on the road or meet unexpected costs for appliances or computers. We are facing a homelessness and housing affordability crisis as more people struggle to pay increasing rents."

Hay says she feels like the struggles of ordinary people aren't being heard by those in power.

"I think the government needs to listen to the people who are actually working on the ground, doing all the essential things that are keeping [the country] going.

"I'm on the frontline trying to help keep our city and our country and people safe and alive. And we're getting no recognition for that. None at all. It's almost like they're saying, we're going to penalise you for doing that, that's how it feels."