Public Policies Forget Single People

2020, A business woman in her forties trips in a carpark and fractures her knee. She’s triaged and diagnosed in a state hospital then transferred to a private hospital for emergency surgery since she has health cover. The operation is successful but she can’t bear weight for six weeks. The private hospital won’t provide home support because she is not over 65. Paradoxically, the state hospital would have provided ongoing home care. She requests a social worker who appears briefly then never returns, so the woman researches support for herself. Her health insurance only covers rehab at home once she can bear weight. The local council can’t even consider helping her for six weeks. Professional cleaners, gap fees, and medical costs will put her into debt. Unsurprisingly, her Crohn’s Disease has flared. She frets about sleeping in dirty sheets, using an unclean toilet, and not showering for six weeks. She will struggle to prepare meals and eat while using crutches, and she doesn’t know how she’ll get to her review appointment.

We imagine everyone lives with someone, or has someone immediately available in a crisis. Hence, single Australians are absent from public policy, overlooked in service provision and emergency support, and fall through the loopholes in a three-tiered system of government.  

Single people, particularly single women without children, are forgotten in:

PANDEMICS: 2020, Victoria: During the pandemic a single woman without children in her forties, was ineligible for Jobkeeper because she was a sole trader. Predictably, her work dried up, so she applied for unemployment benefit. She was refused because she had $10,000 in the bank. She was expected to spend her nest egg before the government gave her a weekly payment that has been below the poverty line for almost a decade.  

Pandemic Victorians living alone, mainly single women, were denied ‘bubble buddies’ for 176 days­—a right afforded those with romantic companions living anywhere in Victoria, no matter how loosely committed, and amounting to an extended solitary confinement for those living alone.

CATASTROPHIC WEATHER: 4 am February 2022: A 42year-old self-employed tattoo artist woke to evacuation sirens. Water was about to breach her home, there was no way out. She called the SES. They wouldn’t come until she was waist deep in water. She was saved by friends who had the time and a kayak. She said, Go into your kitchen right now, imagine scraping every single shelf into the bin. Imagine buying everything you own all at once. Fifteen different herbs and spices, a bottle of tomato sauce, mayonnaise.You’ll spend $200 on condiments before you get around to food. Her rental wasn’t insured. Her car was. But the price of second-hand cars had skyrocketed due to pandemic induced supply chain blocks. This is what happens to single women without children in the era of catastrophic weather. —The Guardian

Disaster support payments are based on the number of people per household. Hence, families with the financial buffer that two incomes provide receive more government assistance than those living alone, often, women with limited savings, and few to help in a catastrophe.

HOUSING POLICY: September2023: Adelaide had the lowest rental vacancy rates in Australia, and SouthAustralia’s main homelessness service handed out tents to single women without children since available accommodation was, understandably, prioritised for single mothers. Impossibly limited resources meant single women without children, and without a car, were sleeping rough under bridges and in parks. At that time 6,600 were homeless in South Australia, under half of whom were living in tents simply because they didn’t have children. —ABC News 

2024: A marketing and publicity consultant searches for temporary accommodation while holding down a full-time job. She’s been looking for six months. Listings are bidding wars, real estate agents are tricksters, flatmates are, well let’s just say—incompatible. She’s scraped together the bond, got a loan for the first month’s rent, and is approved for a property. Lease signed, bond and rent transferred, she emails the agent to collect her keys.Her home has been given to someone else. The agent says she didn’t send the funds in time. Our woman discovers the property was also listed at a higher price and is faced with living in her car. —The Guardian 2024

In an environment of severely limited resources, prioritising services and support based on relationship status and parental status can deny a woman’s human right to safety and dignity.

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