Eleven years after the last major report into reforming Australia’s welfare system it’s clear we’re still stuck with an approach that doesn’t work – for the country or the individuals and families it’s meant to help.
Sure, the past decade has seen some positive reforms, but we still have too many jobless families, too many people on disability support, too many long-term unemployed people wasting away without fulfilling their full potential.
Through the
McClure Report, published in 1999, Australia had the chance for root and branch reform of Australia’s income support system – but we squibbed it.
It’s now time to re-apply ourselves to the challenge.
But let’s not be satisfied with simply tinkering around the edges.
Why not recast a radically different income support system that works for people instead of undermining them?
There is no doubt that a fair Australia must have an adequate safety net that provides unemployed, sick, disabled and vulnerable people with the support they need.
But let’s not kid ourselves that too long a time spent on welfare – particularly for people who are physically and intellectually able to work – doesn’t have a dramatic impact on a person’s health and well-being.
A report released last week by the Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine stated that long-term joblessness significantly increases the risk of heart disease, lung cancer and suicide.
And that suicide among young men out of work for six months or more increases 40-fold.
An unproductive life destroys a person and can spread like a cancer through their family and community.
Witness the destruction and decay passive welfare has created in some Aboriginal communities and suburbs on our metro fringes.
We all know this – governments know it, community agencies know it, the public senses it…and yet it seems we’re determined to persist with the system as it stands.
Take the Disability Support Pension for example.
Between 1996 and 2007 the number of people receiving the Disability Support Pension (DSP) actually increased from 500,000 to more than 700,000.
Growth in the number of DSP recipients was greater than in any other pension category in the decade to 2007.
It’s estimated that 20 per cent of this total – 140,000 people – are thought to be capable of work.
We can’t let this situation go on.
Recently Mission Australia was asked to report on our experiences of job seekers complying with their obligations to look for work while receiving income support.
These obligations are known as a job seeker’s ‘activity test’.
Our frontline staff told us that a significant number of job seekers were using multiple occurrences of illness as a reason for not looking for work but failing to provide the required medical certificates to support their claims.
And if that wasn’t enough, in a large number of cases where we brought such behaviour to Centrelink’s attention for action the matter was overturned.
In the six months between July and December 2009, Mission Australia submitted more than 20,000 reports to Centrelink – known as Participation Reports – for issues of job seekers not living up to their obligations.
According to our figures, Centrelink overturned 45 per cent of these.
Now, on some occasions, having our reports overturned is to be expected.
But 45 per cent?
It is reasonable that unemployed people on income support should be required to follow a set of simple rules when seeking work.
But the rules must be applied – and at the moment it appears they’re not.
I was pleased to see during the election campaign Labor commit to a tightening of the compliance regime as well as the potential to suspend a jobseeker’s income support on their first failure to meet their obligations.
In essence a sharp message to say ‘This is a responsibility that needs to be taken seriously’.
The government should also consider moving all job seekers not exempt from the activity test into community service or work experience within three months of becoming unemployed – not 12 months as is currently the case.
This would help avoid the loss of productivity and engagement that comes from passive welfare. It’s as much about keeping an individual’s work skills up as it is about maintaining their self-esteem and avoiding isolation and depression.
Finally, we need to focus on income support obligations that bolster families and children. Despite the naysayers, I believe linking the receipt of benefits to basic things like school attendance or the payment of rent can make sense.
To this end I think Jenny Macklin’s efforts with income quarantining should be supported.
But we also need to make sure such measures are complemented by well-resourced intensive case management and access to incentives such as matched savings and financial counselling.
A fair and well-managed income support system offers hope for people in need.
An income support system that continues to let people capable of social, economic and community participation avoid such contact does them – and all of us – a grave disservice.
Welfare reform is undoubtedly one of the most difficult areas of policy to address – but address it we must – not for my sake, or the sake of taxpayers, but the sake of the individuals, families and communities at the mercy of a system that seems determined to let them down.
Toby Hall is the Chief Executive Officer of Mission Australia
This piece was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 20th September 2010
