The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper
of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday,
March 13th, 2002. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills.
Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795.
CPA Central Committee: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The Guardian": <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au>
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War against the poor
The "War on Terror" is costing the Government a bomb. So much so they
have foreshadowed major changes to the welfare system in an effort to
reign in social security spending. But while changes to unemployed
benefits and Job Network schemes were paraded in front of the media,
their secret plot to slash disability support pensions in the upcoming
budget is being kept tight.
The Federal Government, led by the infamous Ministers Abbott and
Vanstone, has announced major changes to the Social Security system. The
overhaul however, is shuffling the deckchairs on what remains an
inherently flawed system, one that ignores the reality of 700,000
unemployed workers.
The "public" announcement was in relation to the "breach" system used to
punish the unemployed, and a restructuring of some of the privatised Job
Network functions.
From July 1, the current "breach" system that reduces payments over a
set time, when obligations like attending an interview are not met, will
be drastically changed to suspend payments completely.
Senator Vanstone says the old system was unreasonably harsh on those who
were most vulnerable, for example the mentally ill, homeless or
illiterate. She argues that suspending their payments completely will
"encourage" them to come into a Centrelink office and "discuss their
situation" and "work through" their issues.
Payments may then be restored from the date of suspension for those with
a "reasonable excuse". (It has not yet been clarified how a "reasonable
excuse" is defined or who judges its validity.)
The changes are in response to a draft report on the Job Network system
by the Productivity Commission, which has found significant flaws in the
current system.
Significantly, it reports that "a significant share of disadvantaged job
seekers receives little assistance" from the privately contracted
Intensive Assistance scheme.
One of the flaws of this system is that the private contractors "park"
the disadvantaged in the system; getting paid by the government to have
the person on their books without matching them with suitable jobs, and
without having to structure a program to address a person's specific
problems, e.g. literacy.
The report says that intensive assistance should be available for a
six-month period only, forcing the contractor to achieve results within
a set timeframe.
"The Commission stresses the importance of achieving a balance between
an overly prescriptive approach aimed at protecting taxpayers' funds and
job seekers and one that detracts from efficiency, with greater scope
for targeted risk management", says the report.
Indeed, the overly prescriptive protection of taxpayers' funds has only
been applied when paying benefits to job seekers. When it comes to the
private Job Network contractors it has been a free-for-all.
Intensive Assistance "parking" is not the only rort contractors have
engaged in. Agencies have also been caught creating dummy short-term
part-time jobs themselves, placing the unemployed in them, and reaping a
commission.
After just 15 hours of work the job seeker then goes back on the
agency's books for another commission to be earned later.
However the most alarming of the changes have been kept hidden from the
public, until secret cabinet budget proposals were leaked to "The
Financial Review" last week.
Howard's razor gang are planning to make major savings by placing harsh
new restrictions on the Disability Support Pension (DSP). Besides
redefining the eligibility criteria, they will place the disabled under
tighter scrutiny.
They also intend to remove the disparity between the DSP and other
payments, lowering the amount the disabled receive and placing all
benefits under one umbrella "working age payment". They hope this will
make the DSP less attractive to the unemployed.
As a final insult, they will then throw the disabled off benefits
altogether when they are able to work just 15 hours, without respect to
how much (or little) they are earning for that work.
(The current assessment to grant a person a DSP is that they be unable
to work for over 20 for at least two years.)
In response to the DSP changes, Labor spokesperson Wayne Swan said,
"That's why we say this is a Government that is always strong on
controlling the weak and very weak in controlling the strong.
"They're not out there saying 'oh we're going to solve the black hole in
the budget by cutting out tax avoidance at the top end of town', their
solution is to go out there and target the disabled."
Ultimately the Productivity Commission, the Coalition and the Labor
Party still refuse to acknowledge the truth of Australia's welfare
crisis: the huge disparity between the number of unemployed people and
the number of jobs available.
Throwing the disabled into the "unemployed" pool will only jack the
percentage up higher.
While the Government trumpets Australia's economic "boom", high
unemployment remains. Companies are not employing extra workers, just
skimming off the extra productivity as cash profits.
One of the only budget targets this Government has met during the last
financial year is to keep the unemployment rate at seven per cent.
Yet Minster Abbott claims that taking six years to bring the
unemployment rate down from 9 per cent to seven per cent over six years
"is one of the Howard Government's most significant achievements".
Can we then assume that in 21 years time the unemployment rate will be
zero per cent? Not unless we have a new type of government that gives
priority to social security instead of war.
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