labor turns the screw on the disabled

regardless of who is in power these people always get screwed, it's sad

from The Age today

Labor turns the screw on the disabled
May 12, 2010

Strugglers have been forgotten in this ''boring'' Labor budget, except for people with disabilities - and their life will become harder.

The Rudd Labor is plunging in where the Howard government feared to tread in cracking down on those applying for the Disability Support Pension. Howard's welfare-to-work initiative failed to make a scintilla of difference to the growth in numbers on the disability pension, which had reached more than 777,000 by last December.

As harsh as it seemed to many at the time, the change in the eligibility rules for the pension from an incapacity to work 15 hours a week to an incapacity to work 30 hours a week proved insufficient to curb the inexorable growth. The sick, broken, mentally ill and disabled poured forth and still managed to qualify at the same rate as before.

Labor's crackdown is more direct and designed to cut by 25,407 in the years to 2013-14 the number of people normally expected to go on the rolls. The savings to taxpayers will be $383.4 million over four years. For the first time new applicants will have to provide sufficient evidence that they have been unable to get work, even with support.

New applicants will first undergo a ''job capacity assessment'', as they have always done. But the government is reviewing the impairment tables to make it a tougher assessment and harder to get to first base. After that unless people are manifestly incapable of any paid work, or clearly incapable of working even 15 hours a week, they will be put on the Newstart Allowance. Then they will be sent on a training course, either with a special disability employment agency or a regular one. The training is meant to increase the numbers who can work at least 15 hours a week, thus disqualifying them from the pension.

Efforts to curb the growth in the numbers going on the pension would be admirable, given people mostly stay on the pension for life. But the move is not admirable in the absence of an increase in the level of Newstart Allowance, or a loosening of its income test, which exacts harsh punishment on those who get a little work.

On the disability pension a single person can live a frugal life on $350 a week. On Newstart a single person is plunged into poverty on $231 a week. How many of the 25,407 people who might once have qualified for a disability pension will end up, not in work, but unemployed and in poverty? Or in a bit job, still financially worse off than before?

People on disability pensions need help and encouragement to get part-time work. But the government will need to take care that the numbers living in poverty do not grow under its watch just because it shifts more to an unreconstructed Newstart. Already there is some evidence that many single mothers who were forced by welfare-to-work into the labour force instead of onto a pension are financially worse off, even when they get part-time work.

The forgotten strugglers include the 600,000 unemployed on whom Ken Henry in his tax review took pity, recommending an increase in their Newstart payment. Low-income renters also get no extra relief even though rents have risen at an annual rate of 10 per cent over the past three years while government rent assistance has risen by only 2.7 per cent. Again Henry pointed out the need for more generosity. Not in this budget.

The increased investment of more than $660 million in training programs is a positive aspect of a tough budget. But training is not always the best way out of poverty for older unemployed, and the disabled in particular. Research has shown a wage subsidy to employers is most effective. But there is no sign of it in this budget.