Two years ago, the Coalition government moved to change the criteria for the Disability Support Pension (DSP). The original bill was rejected by the Senate. Now, in its new term of office with a Senate majority from July 1, the same proposed changes are likely to be reprised.
It doesn't take much to get wind of what the government has in mind, as any cursory reading of the mainstream media will give the impression that disability pensioners have transcended the present vogue for mutual obligation and are living the "life of Riley" at the hard-working taxpayer's expense. We are being told that a disability pension is too easy to obtain, that many pensioners don't have a "real" disability and that those who manage to work part time are proving to the rest of us just how able bodied they can be when they try.
In case you missed the core message, the government is keen to make it harder to obtain a disability support pension so that a lot more people with disabilities will ipso facto find jobs and go off welfare. Access is to be culled primarily by restricting eligibility. The maximum time a disability support pension recipient can work will we be cut back from 30 hours to 15 hours per week. That means that to qualify for a pension, a recipient must be unable, due to disability, to work for 15 hours or more in any job per week.
Recipients are going to have to be much more disabled than is presently the case before they can qualify for the DSP. If you are already an invalid pensioner then you may be conscripted into various job access programs, such as a work-for-the-dole scheme, as a means to "encourage" you to re-enter the workforce.
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has estimated that the net result of these proposed changes would "divert 60,000 new applicants for the disability pension onto lower social security 'allowance' payments such as Newstart Allowance (or no payment at all in a minority of cases) over the next three years".
Since 1991, disability pensioners have been allowed to engage in part-time work for up to 30 hours per week without automatically losing their pension. The proposed changes reduce the scope for that supplementary income and sentence pensioners to even less engagement with the work force or the prospect of losing their pension altogether. As it is, only 9% of DSP recipients have a part-time job. This is not indicative of a reluctance to look for work on their part, as the media scam would have it, but reflects the underlying conditions that inhibit their lives.
About 5% of Australians of work force age are on the DSP. This figure represents much more than a few "bad backs" and it is not confined to people who were born with a disability. As ACOSS points out: "The medically verified disabilities of DSP recipients are diverse. For example, one third have 'musculo skeletal disabilities' (e.g., loss of mobility or limbs), one quarter have psychiatric illnesses and one tenth have intellectual or learning disabilities."
On top of this, the figures for long-term job participation are very low among those with disabilities — regardless of employment assistance programs. Continuing lack of employer support for people with disabilities and the decline in the number of low-skilled jobs in an economy dedicated to rigorous productivity thresholds are factors that serve to separate the DSP recipients from the work force even on a part-time basis.
Punishing recipients for conditions that are out of their control, as these proposed changes project, is being engineered as part of a broad frontal assault on the welfare system. The new work force participation minister, Peter Dutton, has made it very clear that the newly enshrined principle of mutual obligation, which absolved the overhaul of unemployment benefits, is now to be extended to other welfare payments. After being diverted via a racially driven skirmish at ATSIC and Indigenous Australians, the commandment of "mutual obligation" is now to be driven roughshod over the disabled.
Dave Riley
[Dave Riley is a member of the Green Left Weekly-Socialist Alliance editorial liaison board].
From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.