The virus is out of control and it’s clear that patchwork responses and aggressive policing aren’t going to stop it. We learned in 2020 that generous, easily accessed income support works. Yet we are forced to watch on in despair as the Labor party and their technocratic gatekeepers continue to call for the return of JobKeeper, despite it evidently being nothing but a corporate bailout in disguise.

As antipoverty activists, we know we must unite all low-income workers by centring the relationship between poverty and wages, and the declining wage growth this country has experienced in the past ten years. It is vital that the broad left and our movements begin to see that the rights of waged and unwaged workers are intrinsically linked.