A full time pension is $271 per week and the recipient can earn up to $64 per week without penalty. It costs more for disabled or sick people to live as they often are on medications, can't use normal transport.

If you get really sick, say cancer or a heart attack you can't get a disability pension because your condition hasn't stablised. The 42 yoer old fella in our office who had just seperated and become a contractor wasn't able to work for 6 weeks then returned to work for 3 hours per day initially. It took 6 months to return to full time work - with no income whatsoever.

Lose the tax cuts and improve the social safety net, Kevin.

Voters who thought that Labor was going to save them from the ‘ravages’ of the previous government are going to find that many things about the Rudd Government will prove to be “outrageous”.

Very soon, Labor voters will be looking back with longing at what they had for three decades

The one good thing that has come out of all of this, is that the community at large has been made aware of how poorly our nation has been treating carers. Now is a good time to lobby our new and allegedly compassionate government to do something real, instead of just talking about it. The opposition, under Brendan Nelson should also be encouraged to keep tightening the screws until carers of their own disabled children at home get the same allowances as foster carers do.

David

This whole thing is an extraordinary media beatup. There is not so much as a shred of evidence that the Government intends, or intended, to reduce the amount of money provided to carers.

Woops?

http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2008/03/tuesday-column-hypocrisy-over-carers.html

Many years ago I wrote a journal entry which I called "WHen care in the community becomes despair in the community"
Since 1995 I have been involved with mental health advocacy and awareness raising. It is now 2008 and Australia has regressed in terms of social responsibility. The social and economic divide is increasing exponentially as those with social and economic advantage access the best services and support available to them through the private sector. A carer who can afford a cleaner and other domestic support, who has family infrastructure to facilitate holidays, companionship, still lives with the anguish of caring for their loved one. Programmes such as early intervention, (for autism for example), which are not subsidised by governments, are more readily available to those who can afford a suitably trained private individual providing one on one early intervention.
Others sacrifice their all, emotionally, financially, to provide for their children. Or the child and the carer slip through the cracks of inadequate and non existent services. Across the social and economic divide, carers are suffering. I urge that government and community support should be universally available to all carers regardless of financial means.The Rudd Government urgently need to recognise the needs of carers and to improve, not dismantle support.