Marie Jentner’s husband was dying when Centrelink gave her some more bad news: she was now a jobseeker. At 62, she had quit her job of 27 years to care for Siegfried, who had testicular cancer and couldn’t walk or look after himself. When he was moved into palliative care the following year, Jentner’s carer’s payment was cancelled and she was put on the lower Newstart allowance. “I retired in 2017 to stay home and look after my husband,” Jentner, 64, tells Guardian Australia. “I’ve worked nearly 45 years of my life, and there’s no way I wanted to go back to work. And they said, ‘Well, you need to do something because the government has changed things. You need to be on Newstart. You could do either community work or volunteering.’” There is growing empathy for those on Newstart. The dynamics of welfare politics are changing | Peter […]