Mr. Paul Ginnell:

One of the things to highlight is that based on the MESL research, a large number of organisations has been calling for the benchmarking of core social welfare rates to adequacy as a key point. On top of that then you need additional payments and the additional supports we have been talking about for disabled people, for lone parents with children and so on. If we look at the poverty data, those who are unemployed have a consistent poverty rate of nearly 19%, which is among the highest of all households. Those who are unemployed cover a wide range of households, not just the groups about which we have been talking. What we need is a broad benchmark for core social welfare rates and then the additional supports on top of that for other family types that we have been talking about, and disabled people and so on, as an additional cost on top of that.