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The Forum > Article Comments > The welfare revolution that has passed disability pensioners by > Comments

The welfare revolution that has passed disability pensioners by : Comments

By Jessica Brown, published 12/10/2011

Around two-thirds of disability pensioners have mild or moderate disabilities, yet let less than 10% earn any income through work.

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This article and the CIS report released last week offer the usual rhetoric about "disincentives", presuming that DSP recipients simply do not want to work. If we follow the arguments, a more realistic outcome is:
1. Identify those who can realistically perform some kind of work. Asking people would establish this for many DSP recipients, especially the younger entrants to the payment.
2. Create rules and ensure recipients stick to them. This point implies that DSP recipients have no interest in working, and are not already seeking employment. While acknowledging the lacklustre performance of Disability Employment Services, and low employment rates, the writer still assumes that DSP recipients are not working because they don't stick to the rules. No mention is made of the discrimination faced by people with disability, nor the fact that even the public service employs fewer people with a disability than ever before. The lack of accessibility of workplaces, transport, supports and adaptive technologies contributes to the ongoing difficulty securing employment; current levels of disability discrmination complaints in schools does not suggest improved prospects in the near future.
3. Reduce the rate of DSP for those who can work, but don't. The final step in this proposal places a financial burden on people with a disability who are unable to secure employment, despite the fact that there is demonstrated reluctance from employers, lack of support from governments, and documented inability to access basic equipment and services.
This "reform" will simply ensure more people with a disability live in dire poverty. There is a reason that long term payments pay more - short term welfare funds food, long term welfare funds a fridge to put it in.
Until we as a community are able to clean up our act on disability, get an NDIS in place and functioning, enforce disability discrimination legislation, and improve public service participation rates, there is little likelihood the private sector is going to step up. Only then would it be fair to say that the problem is incentive on the part of DSP recipients.
Posted by NaomiMelb, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 8:52:22 AM
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NaomiMelb has hit the nail on the head. She has said everything that I would have said. It is entirely predictable that a paper from the CIS would perpetuate myths about the DSP and its recipients. Perhaps these authors should think about the possibility that they suffer a disability in the future.
Posted by AnneLiz, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 9:40:49 AM
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What these calls for tightening up the DSP ignore are the barriers that PWDs, especially those with "hidden" disabilities like autism spectrum conditions face in finding employment.

Many PWDs would gladly work, if someone would offer a position in a workplace with the right supports. In some cases, "reasonable accommodation" is nothing more than sound management providing a workplace safe from social bullying, which would benefit productivity overall. Also, accommodations in the recruiting process is often needed. Recruitment is another area that's overlooked. Suffice to say that for people on the autism spectrum, it's a maze of unknown expectations.

To the Federal Government, please consider ways you can assist PWDs to find meaningful employment at fair rates. I suspect you'll reduce the welfare bill significantly, and it will be a win-win for all.
Posted by TonyL, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 9:49:40 AM
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The problem is if people with genuine disabilities - but with some capacity to work - are driven off of DSP.

Such people can still be significantly impaired in terms of their capacity to work even if still able to work 'in some form'.

Sometimes 'invisible' disabilities can be worse than people realise. (eg: post-traumatic stress, chronic fatigue)

This needs to be factored in; so they remain on DSP if looking for work; and are given subsidies if they do find work for the sake of distributive justice.

This is why the current govt policy is not fair.
Posted by Tristan Ewins, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 9:58:46 AM
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the other problems still being ignored are

#1, our DISABLED public health system means that many people with chronic conditions get little or NO treatment, therefore remain too ill to work.

#2, as already mentioned ALL employers discriminate & why shouldn't they try to reduce their costs, by avoiding employing people with health problems, that are going to COST them more than able bodied people.

#3, unpaid voluntary community work is being done by many pensioners, of all kinds, now. if we punish these community workers many important community services that are saving our governments heaps of money will be weakened, if not destroyed.

There are other ways to streamline centrelink or make our welfare system more efficient.
Posted by Formersnag, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 11:02:34 AM
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Mention must be made of all those DSP recipients who work in supported workplaces, often for slave wages. These wages are assessed by a process that is often unfair or unethical. Providers are funded to give meaningful employment to people who cannot work in open employment. Wages often do not reflect the true productivity of the worker, but rather the fact that the DSP is the main income. Where else in Australia would we sanction an adult wage of $1.50 per hour? If these workers were paid what they were worth, they may not cease being pensioners but their pensions may be reduced and in some cases, substantially reduced.
Posted by estelles, Wednesday, 12 October 2011 3:39:48 PM
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Naomi Anderson says, in her OLO article 'Separating fact from fiction in the disability support pension debate', published on 28 September 2011, that:

"Australians are less critical of welfare payments if we
believe that we could be in the same situation ourselves;
it is rare to hear criticisms of the Aged Pension."

Naomi Anderson (OLO userID 'NaomiMelb', who has posted in this discussion) went on to say:

"Over half of [the 800,000 claimed by the author of
'The welfare revolution that has passed disability
pensioners by'] DSP recipients are over the age of 50,
with the largest increase in those over 55."

I drew attention in the discussion thread of Anderson's article to an unquantified possible overlap in classification as between DSP recipients and age pension recipients that may have arisen as a consequence of the option given to DSP recipients upon reaching pensionable age to retain the description of their benefit as a DSP. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12667#218863

With over half of DSP recipients being over 50, it would seem important to quantify the extent to which some of this group would, irrespective of disability, currently qualify for the age pension. Failure to do so could result in an effective double counting of welfare recipients that would doubtless be used in support of policy recommendations aimed at the 'soft' target constituted by the disabled.

Could such an overlap in categorisation explain the apparent conundrum of a claimed continued increase (the author, Jessica Brown, paragraph 2 of http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12727&page=0 ) in the number of DSP recipients over a period in which "for the majority of older Australians workforce participation has increased, and welfare dependence decreased from 38 per cent to 17 per cent" (Anderson, paragraph 8 of http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12667&page=0 )?

Given the proven misrepresentation surrounding the DSP 'debate' already noted by the Press Council (Anderson's article, paragraph 1), in contrast to the already noted rarity of criticism of the age pension, it would seem all the more important that those seeking to influence policy in relation to the DSP use sound and relevant statistics.

Better scholarship, and clarification, required.
Posted by Forrest Gumpp, Thursday, 13 October 2011 7:49:04 AM
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I am appalled at Jessica Brown's lack of understanding about disability politics and the key number of environmental, economic, social and political realms that challenge this oppressed group. For too long, people living with disability (PLWD) are often viewed as 'others', and have long endured medical model ideologies that frame us.

As a woman living with severe disability, I love to work, I love to make money, and I do my best to give back to my community. But I have endured many self-esteem destroying attitudes by some employers who have major issues with my wheelchair, my disability. Unfortunately what is prevalent in our community, and clearly perpetrated by less-rigorous research by Jessica Brown, is the 'unconscious prejudice' is alive and well in Australian society.
Posted by Path-Maker, Thursday, 13 October 2011 8:39:03 AM
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Jessica Brown asserts/assumes “Australia has been at the forefront of ... welfare payments ...”. If so, Australia leads a race to the bottom. Like Government and big business, she blames people with a disability (easy targets) avoiding that Government and business are the real problem.

Ms Brown and the authors of the Government's latest federal disability bashing in the Budget are too lazy themselves to understand the issues.

The Shut Out report (see http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/disability/pubs/policy/community_consult/Pages/default.aspx) shows clearly that “By far the biggest barrier identified was employer attitudes” and

“... people with disabilities want to work. What most lack is not ability but opportunity.”

If Ms Brown and her Government mates were not so incredibly lazy, or if they actually wanted to know rather than just wanting to kick people with a disability while they are down, they would analyse Centrelink's data to check this. They would look beyond the superficial. They would show some respect for people with a disability who desperately want jobs and try very hard without success to get a job.

Not only does Ms Brown expect people with a disability to deal with a disability system that the Productivity Commission found is “underfunded, unfair, fragmented, and inefficient, and gives people with a disability little choice and no certainty of access to appropriate supports” (see http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/111270/disability-support-volume1.pdf), she wants people with a disability enslaved in a psychologically damaging and soul-destroying treadmill of failed job applications. She disregards the consequences for the vulnerable people involved.

If Ms Brown were serious about employment for people with a disability, she would be calling for a revolution in HR practices. Major employers would have HR plans with targets for employing people with a disability. Rates of employment for people with a disability would be rising instead of falling. And disability would appear in the same sentence as addressing skill shortages.

Clearly people like Ms Brown are not serious … just malicious. And sad to say Australia probably is at the forefront of this political disability-bashing.
Posted by bobb, Thursday, 13 October 2011 9:13:12 AM
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