Abbott government unveils plan to restrict how young people spend dole
Tighter conditions for disability support pension among other likely changes to welfare system
no one will be forced off the disability support pension. Photograph:
Gary Schafer/AAP
Controlling what young people can spend their unemployment benefits
on, and moving thousands of people off the disability support pension
(DSP), have been flagged in the federal government’s review of the
welfare system.
An interim report, titled A New System for Better Employment and Social Outcomes, has been released in the form of a discussion paper, without recommendations.
It
suggests streamlining welfare payments into four categories: the age
pension; the DSP; a tiered work-age payment and a child payment. There
would be more conditions attached to receiving welfare payments, and
sanctions that would strip people of income support, for varying lengths
of time, if they did not meet the “mutual obligations” requirement.
It
says young and single unemployed people should receive lower rates of
payment than other unemployed people, and that rent assistance should
be reformed into a subsidy scheme for both public and private housing,
rather than having public housing rent based on a percentage of a
person’s income.
The report also identifies single parents as
needing higher rates of payment as their children get older and it is
more expensive to support them.
Only people with permanent
disabilities should receive the DSP, and people who have partial, or
short-term, disabilities should be given unemployment benefits instead,
the report suggests. In addition, income management could be expanded
into a national scheme so that young, unemployed people could only spend
their benefits on certain things, such as food and petrol.
The
head of the review, Patrick McClure, said the present welfare system
was complex and inefficient, and there were actual disincentives to
work. He highlighted people with mental health problems as needing
different support to what they receive at present.
“Thirty per
cent of people on the disability support pension have mental-health
conditions which are episodic in nature; for example, severe depression
or anxiety. Experts in the field express the importance of a vocational
rehabilitation approach, which links them not only to clinical
intervention but also to education and work,” he said on Sunday.
The
social services minister, Kevin Andrews, has repeatedly called the DSP a
set-and-forget payment, but he would not put a figure on the number of
people who could lose the disability pension and be moved onto
unemployment benefits.
“This is about recognising that the people
on the DSP are not one group; they’re not the same. One of the largest
groups on the DSP … is people with psychological illnesses and [a] … lot
of that is episodic. There are occasions when people can and can’t
work, yet the system doesn’t recognise that at the present time,” he
said.
“Will they be forced off the disability support pension? No.
This is about the future, as I said, not about the current system at
the present time, but about how we can structure a system in the future
which will give people the opportunity for what they usually want to
do, and that is to be able to work, to be able to contribute. The
current system is very inadequate in that regard.”
He said the
committee would consider making the unemployment payment higher for
people with partial disabilities. The government would get advice on
how to classify people with a permanent disability.
Andrews
endorsed moving young unemployed people onto income management schemes,
giving them welfare in the form of debit cards that could only be used
in certain places.
“We would say, you can have a debit card that
precludes certain expenditure. It could, for example, preclude
expenditure on alcohol. You get a card, go to the bottle shop and they
say ‘sorry, transaction declined’,” he said on Network Ten’s Bolt Report
on Sunday morning.
The report says income management could be
used to “build capabilities as part of a case-management approach to
assist the large number of disadvantaged young people not fully engaged
in either education or work”.
Andrews stressed that the government
would have a consultation process before making final decisions about
which welfare recipients would be subject to income management.
“The
government believes that income management is important. We believe
that it’s had very positive effects for quite a number of people, not
the least of which are women and children in indigenous and
non-indigenous communities around Australia,” he said.
“In my
conversations with them I’ve received many anecdotal reports about how
beneficial this has been in terms of, particularly, their ability to buy
food; to provide the necessities of life; to provide for their
children, etcetera, but [an] extension of this, which we think is a good
principle, how you do it, and what you might do, is part of this
consultation process.”
The 170-page report has four main pillars,
or aims: a simpler and sustainable income-support system; strengthening
individual and family capability; engaging employers; and building
community capacity.
There will be six weeks’ consultation on the
interim report before the government is given a final version, complete
with recommendations.
The Opposition’s support for the review is
not guaranteed. The shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, attacked the
government’s approach to reviewing the DSP after reading a preview of
the report in the Sunday Telegraph.
“I
am sick of opening the Sunday paper every week and seeing Mr Andrews
demonising disabled people. Labor supports measures to help people on
the disability support pension back into work, where it’s possible and
appropriate,” he said on the ABC’s Insiders program.
“That's
what we did in office, with quite positive and remarkable results. What
we don’t support is cutting people’s benefits on disability support in
some brutal and blunt effort to force them back into inappropriate jobs.
We won’t support that.”
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