Jobseeker payments should be raised to 90% of the age pension and indexed to prevent people going “without life’s essentials”, the government’s poverty experts say. The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee released its pre-budget report on Friday, warning that jobseeker and other working-age payments were still “too low” despite last year’s $40 increase in the base rate. The Albanese government has promised further cost-of-living relief in the budget, beyond its revamp of the stage three tax cuts, but has played down expectations of changes to welfare. The EIAC report found that increasing the jobseeker base rate reduced the gap with the age pension “from around $362 per fortnight to $339 per fortnight, a reduction of 6.4%”. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup But “people receiving [jobseeker] payments told the committee that they regularly go without life’s essentials because they simply cannot afford them,” it said. The government should at least “commit to a timeframe for the full increases of jobseeker and related payments to be implemented, if increases are to be staged”, it said. The inadequacy of jobseeker was “in part the result of unsatisfactory indexation arrangements over many years”, as...