Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill 2020 Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee
CPSA is a non-profit, non-party-political membership association founded in 1931 which serves pensioners of all ages, superannuants and low-income retirees. CPSA’s aim is to improve the standard of living and well-being of its members and constituents. CPSA receives funding support from the NSW Government Departments of Communities & Justice and Health and the Australian Government Department of Health.
CPSA does not only represent Age Pensioners. It also represents mainly older Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment recipients under pension age, as well as people on JobSeeker over 55. What all these people have in common is their horror of this most undignified, patronising and useless program. CPSA is concerned that IM is being rolled out gradually with a view for it to become the universal social security payment delivery vehicle not only for recipients of working age but also for those of pension age. There are several indications that this is the intent. First, the current Minister for Social Services was reported as saying that for CDC “to be a mainstream financial literacy tool for Australia it does need to be rolled out away from just rural and regional communities, and that’s the conversation we need to have with the Australian public over the coming months”. She added: “It does need to have a broader application than perhaps the social harm reduction that the original policy was designed on”. A letter by CPSA asking the Minister for Social Services to specifically rule out extending Income Management to Age Pensioners received no response.
Also note that on page 4 of the Bill’s explanatory memorandum it says that making CDC permanent will “signal the Government’s long-term commitment to the future of the CDC with financial institutions”, the big banks in other words, which apparently are only interested if CDC is rolled out to much larger numbers of people. Including the largest category of social security payment recipients, Age Pensioners, in IM/CDC would be likely to sharpen the appetite of financial institutions. Clearly, there’s a plan, but that plan is not about income management, lifestyle concerns and protection of vulnerable people. Second, IM is framed in legislation as a universal program and specifically includes Age Pensioners and Age Service Pensioners by including their payment type as a trigger payment. Rather than specifically excluding people of pension age from participation in the Income Management program generally by excluding their payments from the list of trigger payments, a separate provision for each trial area individually excludes people of pension age from participation. The proposed transition from Income Management to CDC would be a good opportunity to put a general exclusion of social security recipients of pension age in place, but the Bill contains no such exclusion. Third, Income Management measures are targeted at people assessed by the Department of Social Services (DSS) as requiring protection from economic abuse. As recent inquiries have shown, financial elder abuse is rife in Australia, making it logical (if you believe in the effectiveness of IM/CDC as the Government does), to compulsorily include social security recipients of pension age as participants
