A single dad struggling to make ends meet on a full-time wage received no answers when he asked a panel of politicians how his son was supposed to find a job.
Widower Peter Carnegie laid bare the harsh reality of trying to survive the cost of living crisis while raising two sons on his own on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night.
His son, 22, has never had a job because he had to care for his sick mum before she died of cancer in August 2024.
He’s now on Jobseeker, unable to find an employer willing to give him a chance due to his empty resume.
‘How can the government help him get a job when it seems no one wants to even give him an interview?’ Mr Carnegie asked.
‘And how can I survive when I’m working full-time and on the family tax benefit and still struggling to not live beyond my means?’
Two politicians on the panel had no idea how to directly answer the question.
Industry, Science and Technology minister Ed Husic expressed his condolences before he launched into a checklist of the Labor government’s achievements since 2022.
Peter Carnegie asked The Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Ed Husic and the Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Ted O’Brien, how his son was supposed to find work with an empty resume
Mr Husic boasted how Labor had lifted the price indexation for Jobseeker and worked to lower inflation before conceding that the results of this progress had not immediate.
He also spruiked the government’s free TAFE initiative which Mr Carnegie said was not helpful for his son.
He explained that his son had dyspraxia, a neurodevelopmental condition that affects fine and gross motor skills and makes it difficult to plan and coordinate movements, which greatly impacted his ability to attend school.
‘He tried to get into TAFE, he tried to get into school but couldn’t do it… so he struggles so much with school [and for him] it’s not an option,’ Mr Carnegie said.
‘When he was 16 or 17 he was catching a bus for an hour or an hour and a half to get to school and back so he was never able to get a part-time job and now I need him more than ever because he takes his little brother to school.’
Despite working full-time as an orderly at Prince of Wales Hospital, Mr Carnegie admitted he would be unable to make ends meet if it wasn’t for the support of his parents.
Household expenses surpass his wage by up to $400 a week.
‘My parents are helping me out big time,’ he said.
Ed Husic and Ted O’Brien had a lot of sympathy but offered few solutions for the single dad
‘But there are a lot of people in the same position as me single parents and if we were living in the place we were before, I’d be spending 70 per cent of my income on rent alone.
‘Then there is electricity, gas, food, car insurance.’
Host Patricia Karvelas described Mr Carnegie’s story was ‘incredibly powerful’.
Shadow energy and climate change minister Ted O’Brien was another politician on the panel who had no specific advice for how the single dad.
‘I don’t know how you’ve done it mate. I don’t know how I could do it,’ he remarked.
Mr O’Brien went on to say that there ‘was not a single member of parliament’ who did not want to help Australians live better lives.
‘There are always going to be people who are just doing it really tough.’
‘So when you hear about the Coalition talking about the economy just know that is speaking to you because we need to get the prices of things down,’ Mr O’Brien said.
While ABC’s Q&A host Patricia Karvelas described the single dad’s story as ‘powerful’, some panelists struggled to answer the question at hand
Ms Karvelas went on to reference a YouGov poll which showed most Australians felt stuck on the economic ladder.
Only 12 per cent reported feeling are better off than they were one year ago while 40 per cent said they felt worse off amidst the current cost-of-living crisis.
Mr Husic said the best the Labor government could do for the time being was to ‘acknowledge the pressure that people are under due to the cost of living’.
‘That doesn’t surprise me in the sense that we’ve done a number of things in order to make life easier for people but we’ve had to do it in a way that focuses on inflation and the impact it has on inflation and interest rates,’ he said.
‘We’re seeing some big drops in inflation … and that’s giving people the first hope that we are able to turn the corner. But having said that, will that be felt straight away? Of course not.’
