Welfare being privatised The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, November 11th, 1998. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Centrelink's announcement that it will cut more than 5,000 of its 24,000 staff as part of the ongoing privatisation of Australia's welfare system signals a reduction in services for the unemployed as the Howard Government continues to abandon its social responsibilities to the community. Formerly the Department of Social Security, Centrelink acts as an agent for seven government departments. It handles unemployment registrations and benefits, sickness and disability benefits, health cards, aged pensions, Abstudy, Austudy, rent assistance, and all the other social security functions as well as the administrative side of the new Job Network. Centrelink operates independently of the public service. It is on a contract to the government for three to four years. At the end of that period the work being performed by Centrelink will be put to competitive tendering. Centrelink will compete around Australia to win contracts to go on providing social security services for the government. If it follows the same path as the Job Network, then around half of Centrelink's offices could be closed down and agencies with no experience in the area take over. There is also a possibility that the actual arrangements for payments to beneficiaries could be hived off and handed over to one of the major banks. Rural and isolated communities will be hit especially hard yet again as they see more of their services taken from them. The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) Assistant National Secretary, Sally O'Loughlin, warned that the cuts would jeopardise services for the most needy in the community. "The need for welfare services in Australia has not dropped. The problem is the Howard Government's cost-cutting, and it is the unemployed and economically disadvantaged who are paying the price", said Ms O'Loughlin. Centrelink staff have already suffered substantial job losses (2,000 last year), transfers and the need to continually re-train to keep up with the government's changes to the system and the changes in areas of work as CES and other offices closed or merged. At the same time as the volume and complexity of their workload multiplied many times over, the staff have had to contend with an increasingly hostile and even at times violent clientele who are being denied benefits or finding the administrative hurdles too much to deal with. Having to make decisions on a daily basis that deny families in need a few dollars to meet a crisis or avoid eviction adds to the stress. Massive failures in the Department's computer data system have only compounded the problems of staff and welfare recipients. This was highlighted following the introduction of the Common Youth Allowance when, at one point, only 10 percent of those phoning for information could get through to Centrelink. The Commonwealth Ombudsman in his annual report said his staff had received more than 10,000 complaints about the system during the 1997-98 financial year. Instead of addressing these profound and obvious shortcomings by increasing the number of staff, Centrelink plans to shed 2,700 jobs this financial year, followed by another 2,315 over the next two financial years. Centrelink says that staff will be reduced by 21 per cent in the National Support Office, 13 per cent in Area Offices, and 10 per cent in the delivery network. To purge staff under these conditions is to set Centrelink up to fail. Needy suffer The union blames the cuts on the Howard Government, which has squeezed over $1 billion from Centrelink's budget. "The consequential cuts to staff are being done on a pure, arbitrary cost-cutting basis ... and they are not being done in consultation with either the staff or the union", said Ms O'Loughlin. "It will be of severe consequence to the clients of Centrelink, whether they are unemployed people, pensioners, people with disability, students who receive payments through Austudy, or Veterans Affairs pensioners. "According to Centrelink's own figures there is a 10 per cent cut in their service delivery network, which will make what is already a very hard area for people to work in, much worse", said Ms O'Loughlin. A statement from Centrelink management on its plans for a leaner, and certainly meaner, Centrelink says it is making "a place that is creative and modern". The statement talks about "productivity", "efficiency", and "best practice" so as to "improve customer service" and deliver "more value for money". It makes claims that productivity will increase by up to 300 per cent in some areas! The cost-cutting restructure includes the use of the Internet and interactive computer voice recognition that allows people to access personal information over the phone. But such technology should be put in place to improve the service, not be used as a means to dump workers. The union said that if Centrelink finds that the use of technology has removed some jobs, then why not use those extra staff in other areas of Centrelink that are struggling to provide adequate service? And if their record on new technology to date is any guide, the system is now headed for total chaos. "Efficiency" and less staff means more impersonal service in the form of recorded messages and long queues on the phone. The Centrelink statement contains phrases such as "life events", which refers to the "points of transition in peoples' lives" (i.e. becoming unemployed). This deliberately obscure and empty jargon is a continuation of the government's propaganda, such as Howard's "mutual obligations" tag attached to the exploitative work-for-the-dole scheme. This is to cover up the fact that the government has no plans to create jobs and begin turning around the terrible injustice of unemployment and that, on the contrary, their policies are going to make the situation worse. It is clear for everyone to see that the Job Network, the privatisation of the CES through the contracting out of its work to a range of private job placement agencies, has been a disaster. The creation of Centrelink was the first step of a similar plan to privatise the whole social security system. The Guardian | Phone: (02) 9212 6855 65 Campbell Street, | Fax: (02) 9281 5795 Surry Hills. 2010 | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sydney. Australia. Website: http://peg.apc.org/~guardian
