Last week I wrote a story about JobSeeker. It was an attempt to analyse some data, but now I realise it was a bad take. I apologise for that and am writing this as a clarification. 

The story was intended to be about something I found in data on JobSeeker recipients — that between March 2020 and February 2022, the increase in the number of JobSeeker recipients had been equal across the socio-economic geography. High socio-economic areas saw a rise in JobSeeker recipients equal to low socio-economic areas. (Equal in absolute terms, higher in percentage terms for the higher socio-economic areas because they were coming off a lower base).

I found this to be surprising because the socio-economic data measures disadvantage. The rules that made getting on JobSeeker during the pandemic easier have expired. So discovering that JobSeeker payments remain elevated in areas of socio-economic advantage was unexpected.

An unexpected fact usually contains a grain of insight. My job was to find the insight. I failed.

Where I went wrong was in three key places. Foremost I did not consider a good range of possible explanations. I leaned on the idea that what I saw was, in part or in whole, likely to be something of a rort. This had the effect of demonising recipients of JobSeeker, based on their postcode.

Demonising welfare recipients was not my intent when I set out. I’ve not written an article doing that before. I’m on the record as supporting increasing unemployment benefits. But extensive feedback informed me that demonising recipients was what I accomplished. I own that. I apologise for it. (I also apologise to the people I fought on Twitter before coming to the realisation they were right and I was wrong.)

A good explanation that deserved more time in the article is that the pandemic spread disadvantage into places where it might not have been found much historically. Especially among older demographics who may have been in situ in an area before it grew wealthy.

Second, the lazy demonisation in the piece caused a member of the production staff to pen a “write-off” at the top of the article that distilled the article to its pure essence. I take responsibility for that, the write-off was understandable if you accept that its job is to create a zingy summary of the article. I don’t enjoy it when journos rely on the “Well, I don’t write the headlines” excuse and I don’t intend to use it here.

Third, I made a lazy causal link between Labor’s recent decision to not increase JobSeeker and the phenomenon in question. If I’d taken a second to consider the probability Labor’s decision was about the socio-economic geography of welfare recipients, I’d have realised it almost certainly wasn’t (it’s more likely about remaining a small target on matters fiscal). I shouldn’t have done that.

I owe it to readers to reflect deeply on how I wrote a story containing ideas I disown. It’s not something a person who prides themselves on clear thought should forgive themselves for.

For me, the revelation is in the term “lazy tropes”. Behind deadline, I wrote the article too fast and with too little reflection. In doing so I relied on ideas that came to mind fast, rather than actually searching for the truth. I am guilty of typing without thinking. I thank everyone who pointed this out. My intent is to do what I can to restore trust in me by remembering, every time I set out to write something, that being wrong is much quicker and easier than being right, and to instead choose the slower, harder path.