The group aims to invoke conditions that would see all Australians granted a liveable wage.
And the group is not alone advocating for such an ideal as more than half of all Australians like the idea and just recently it was endorsed by Anglicare’s national executive director Kasy Chambers.
She said it was time Australia introduced a basic income, lifting people above the poverty line.
“Last year, many Australians had a form of basic income for the first time. JobSeeker was lifted to the poverty line, mutual obligations were removed and JobKeeper gave stability to people in insecure work,” Ms Chambers said.
“Lives were transformed and hundreds of thousands of people were lifted out of poverty. Our study shows that a permanent basic income would lock in these benefits and bring many more.”
Anglicare’s deputy director Maiy Azize, who was a guest at recent Basic Income Australia event, said the universal basic income had absolute support from all at Anglicare, particularly those on the service’s front line who saw the catastrophic impact of what exists.
Implementation of a UBI is not a matter of cost as Australia can easily afford it, rather it is about understanding the benefits it will bring to individuals and the broader society.
Statistically, and this is no great revelation, about half of those in Shepparton are female and so what happened in Canberra a couple of weeks ago, seemed overwhelmingly relevant.
The women’s safety summit cast about searching for answers and early this month Women's Safety Minister Anne Ruston said the conference would not just be a "talkfest" but would establish the priorities for the next national plan to not just reduce family violence, but to end it altogether.
Not realising what she said, Ms Rushton largely solved the problem when she talked on Radio National with RN Breakfast host Fran Kelly.
Ms Rushton said there was “absolutely no doubt that a women’s economic security underpins their safety”.
That observation takes us directly, and logically, to the implementation of a basic income as it would give everyone, in this case especially women, economic security.
Boston in the United States, in a physical sense is a world away from the Goulburn Valley, but the good sense talked by the fellow behind Boston Basic Income, Alex Howlett, could just as easily apply here in Australia as what he is advocating for in the US.
Alex, who is only in his 30s, retired from being a software developer to become a full-time advocate for the basic income, strips ideas to their fundamentals.
He sees that what exists as nothing more than a mechanism for getting money to people and that basic income is simply another such mechanism.
What exists, is wasteful, inefficient and forces countless people into using their time doing things devoid of personal fulfilment, adds nothing to society’s broader wellbeing and worsens, and hastens, the broader degradation of society.
And, of course, we can afford it as our PM had just written what is effectively as blank cheque (probably $100 billion) for eight submarines that will do little but worsen our anxiety, while a basic income will cost much less and in fact enrich our economy, will provide sweeping relief, contentment, comfort and happiness to all Australians.
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