First lift JobSeeker, then add on fully-funded unemployment insurance
- Written by Steven Hamilton, Visiting Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

A chorus of voices is calling for the government to “raise the rate” of the JobSeeker unemployment benefit, among them the Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe. And they’re right.
Once about as much as the age pension (and until recently called Newstart) JobSeeker now less than two thirds of it.
When the...