I'll explain more in a minute.

In the meantime, I cannot believe I am being gaslit by the government. Look, sure, this happens all the time.

Governments across time and space say they are committed to fixing one thing and then never taking any real action to address the said thing. Equality. Environment. Housing. Welfare.

But here we are, two and a bit weeks before release of the federal budget and the government folks, as one, are saying it won't fix the poverty problem except with some small, non-systemic, tweaks.

A bit of energy bill relief here. A bit of rent assistance there. I think this is gaslighting of a different kind.

It's saying, people including the federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers, are saying, that the government will not take on board the recommendations of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee interim report, the brainiest brainchild of local senator David Pocock.

What if all these denials are just so Chalmers and friends on the expenditure review committee can look like the good guys on the big budget day?

I think the ground is shifting. On the one hand, we have background noises saying that there is really no way the government can afford to raise the rate of JobSeeker.

On the other hand, we have other background noises saying there is no final decision yet. Let us hope and pray (and I have no faith that either of these tactics will work) that Labor will recognise we need to raise the rate of JobSeeker and ditch the ludicrous stage three tax cuts which will benefit people who are already managing just fine, thank you so much.

Here is where you come in. Ring your local member (be lovely, the people who pick up the phones are wage slaves. They do not need you to bully them).

Explain you think we need to raise the rate of JobSeeker. Explain you voted for Labor because you expected the party to uphold Labor values. Ask them what is the point of Labor if it can't help people on the margins?

I ask you to do this because Labor insiders say they think Labor, already equivocating about the early firm no, needs encouragement to do the right thing.

Remind Labor that it won election based on the impression it gave to voters that they would do better than the last lot. That it would actually give a flying you-know-what about Australians on the margins.

My view is now that these denials about raising the rate are gaslighting and we will all feel terribly grateful and relieved when they deliver a modest increase.

The government is out there flying kites like it's the Festival of the Winds. Now is our time to show them which way the wind blows.

A couple of weeks back, two unlikely co-conspirators came together to launch the Parliamentary Friends of Ending Poverty, Labor's Alicia Payne and bolshie Liberal Bridget Archer.

Payne has already been brave enough to say we need to raise the rate, Archer too. The room was apparently very full with a number of Labor MPs who RSVPed enthusiastic yeses.

The appetite for massive improvements in rates of support payments is huge among backbenchers. I'd argue that there is a huge appetite in the community too - but perhaps we haven't made it clear enough.

That's why you need to ring your local member. And if you have friends and family who live in Logan, Queensland, perhaps you could ask them to call the Treasurer's office on 07 3299 5910.

Hell, since he's Treasurer and is doing work on behalf of us, maybe it doesn't matter where you live. His seat of Rankin has, as its capital, Logan.

I asked the kind people at Per Capita to do a quick calculation of the number of people on JobSeeker in Chalmers's seat alone looking at DSS data from the end of last year.

Kill me. There are many more than 5000 people whose needs Chalmers could accommodate on budget night.

It's a high proportion for an electorate of his size and the conservative estimate would be 8 per cent unemployed in Rankin, compared to 3.5 per cent nationally. These are people doing it tough.

Payne says she will be continuing to advocate internally right until the budget is delivered.

"We need to raise the rate. The evidence is clear," she says. Archer, whose life is f---wit adjacent, says one of her friends, is desperate to raise the rate.

She's from northern Tasmania which is struggling. The only other Liberal at the launch was Dean Smith. Sure, we understand why we tossed that mob out but is the one we elected any better? Guess we will have to wait to budget night to find out.

At the same time as Pocock's report on economic inclusion landed, so too has a letter to the Minister for Women Katy Gallagher from the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce with recommendations for the 2023 budget.

READ MORE:

Compared to the interim report, it has just six requests, including the reinstatement of the parenting payment for women with children over eight, the abolition of the hideous Parents Next program (oh yes, the Coalition knew how to do punitive all right), increasing commonwealth rental assistance, an interim payrise for all those industries (childcare, aged care, I'm guessing also disability care) where women do all the work and get none of the financial recognition, abolition of the Childcare Subsidy Activity Test and super on paid parental leave (we get super when we take long service leave. That's not even producing a future taxpayer).

I love that David Pocock and Alicia Payne are social justice advocates, despite living in God's own electorate. There is hardship but not the same reliance on the essential JobSeeker. Bridget Archer knows her people have it hard.

Now we just have to convince the people who hold the pursestrings to get what the rest of us already know. Ring your local member but don't forget to DIAL 1800 ASK JIM.