For 23-year-old Zoe Davidson, the financial pressure of living on welfare in Sydney has continued to hang over her, even as life during the COVID-19 pandemic has returned to some normality.
The university student says trying to cover her rent and bills is an ongoing battle, relying on Youth Allowance payments of around $36 a day, which she supplements with casual work.
"I have had to go back on antidepressants for the first time in years," she told SBS News.
"Financial stability can really have an impact on every aspect of your life — your mental health, your relationships, kind of everything."
New research from the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) and the University of NSW shows hundreds of thousands of Australians who escaped poverty during the opening phases of the COVID-19 recession — due to government support payments — have now returned to a position of financial distress.
It's a challenge Ms Davidson can relate to.
She said Coronavirus Supplement payments in 2020 allowed her to more readily afford "basic necessities" for the first time in her adult life.
But without the additional help, she said more support was needed for people on welfare to get by and meet the challenges of daily living expenses.
"Poverty isn't something that happens in a faraway country — we have lots of poverty in Australia," she said.
"I have a laptop, I go to uni, but I really struggle to make rent [and] I really struggle to pay bills without assistance.
"We can ask for more and we should ask for more."
The latest research found the federal government’s Coronavirus Supplement and JobKeeper programs played a key role in pushing the proportion of Australians living in poverty below 10 per cent.
But the end of these financial support schemes has seen this figure rise to 14 per cent - or more than 3.8 million people - despite a $25-a-week increase in the JobSeeker payment.
This compares to pre-pandemic conditions of 11.8 per cent of the population in 2019.
Charities and social welfare organisations said the government's $1,500-a-fortnight JobKeeper wage subsidy and Coronavirus Supplement, which was worth $550 a fortnight to people on welfare, had helped sharply reduce the inequality faced by people in Australia on the lowest incomes.
ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie said the response showed it is possible to seriously reduce poverty across Australia if governments showed the political will to address the problem.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that poverty and inequality are not an inevitable state of being," she said.
"They grow because government policies allow them to, and in many cases, directly increase them."
The latest research also shows poverty among people in households on JobSeeker payment rose to 48 per cent by early 2021, while among sole parent families it increased to 31 per cent, up from 19 per cent.
This compares to poverty among people in households on JobSeeker payment falling from 76 per cent in 2019 to 15 per cent in June 2020.
A spokesperson for Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said the Morrison government had done "more for Australians doing it tough than any other government".
They cited its move to lift the permanent rate of JobSeeker and related payments, as well as provide "billions of dollars in emergency support payments" during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Australia's social security system must be sustainable into the future so that it is in place for future generations to rely on and that means it must be fair for people who need support as well as for the taxpayers who fund it," she said.
The spokesperson also said the government was focused on job creation and people on welfare back into work.
"We know that getting a job is a game-changer in anyone's life and the best way to improve the living standards," she said.
The current JobSeeker rate for a single adult is $629.50 per fortnight or around $45 a day, the Youth Allowance rate is $530.40 or around $38 a day.
The most recent ABS data showed job vacancies are 74.2 per cent higher than prior to the pandemic in February 2020.
But Scientia Professor Carla Treloar, director of the Social Policy Research and the Centre for Social Research in Health (CSRH) at UNSW, said its research showed the financial distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic continued to see people locked into poverty.
"Despite remarkable early progress in reducing poverty and income inequality during the COVID recession, they are both likely to be higher now than before the pandemic," she said.
"That's the legacy of the policy response to the COVID pandemic."
Donna Bennett (centre) is also concerned about the financial challenge posed by those on welfare payments.
"It's a really horrible place to be … [when] you became quite obsessed with using water - using power - all those sorts of things," the 50-year-old said.
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