Today's Labour Party boasts their credentials by raising beneficiary incomes. It's so important to them, that a requirement to report regularly on benefit incomes was instigated on advice from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group (headed by Cindy Kiro who was duly rewarded).
Here is a chart from the latest report. It shows that the average benefit income for a couple with two or more children is now $1212 weekly or $5,252 monthly. This is net. For more detail read the report.
This leaves a question I don't think the left has ever addressed apart from inciting Marxist class warfare whereby beneficiaries and low-paid workers are persuaded to unite in a relentless 'them' and 'us' struggle.
That might succeed so long as a margin between income from work and income from a benefit remains.
What happens when that disappears? What happens when benefits pay more than jobs?
Here's one result
Labour's worst nightmare.
Lindsay Mitchell blogs here