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Last Updated: November 1, 2009
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SOCIAL SECURITY

On this page: Jocelynne Scutt; Beth Spencer; Belinda Probert; Yvonne Smith; Geraldine Robertson

Dr Jocelynne Scutt

I won most of the cases, too, which was really good. Sexual Harassment cases and Social Security and equal opportunity cases that had to be fought and had to be won.

It was a way to say we have a right to be in the courtroom and we have a right to be making these arguments. In the end, the law says you have a right to be heard and you are entitled to equal time with other side. Those are pretty powerful principles. Of course, the courts can ignore them, but if they do ignore them you have something else to argue about. Procedure can be quite important in getting access to law. It can be inhibiting but still is important because of this principle of equal time. In the end, equal time includes women.

I think that one of the issues today is that we have gone backwards - at a really rapid rate. It is troubling. The backward steps have been in a whole lot of institutions. For example, recently there has been a debate about travel rorting in Federal Parliament.

That is an incessant debate, but this one had a particular focus. The focus was two women members: Trish Draper and Natalia Stott Despoja. I certainly don't condone travel rorting, but the suggestion about this is, I think, of this sort: "Women have been in at the oats for too long". They perceive us getting anything as 'women at the oats' (especially if it is things they think they should have) and it is time for these women to take a back seat again. "You have had your day, ladies. Off you go back to your homes, or wherever it was where you were before. You have begun to take some of these plums from us".

So what they are actually saying, I am convinced, is that there are two men in South Australia who want those seats. I don't think there is any doubt about that.

BETH SPENCER

Another Day, Another Dollar: The way welfare changes affect all of us

(First published in the Age Review, 'Talking Point', 7th May 2005)

They came for the unemployed and the students. Now they've come for the pensioners. Who will be left when they come for you?
... If we allow the most vulnerable groups in society to be bullied into working beyond their capacity and to the detriment of their other roles and obligations in life, with many pushed to their limits so that they completely break down or suicide, all of us will lose.

I have this image lately of a mass of cripples struggling down a road, limping slowly, hobbling, helping each other along, making jokes or singing to keep up their spirits. Then government officials turn up - with one lot up ahead drawing a cart full of carrots (although I'm not exactly sure what the carrots are the government is offering in this case, all I've heard about are the sticks) and the other lot beating at them to make them move along faster.

Of course what happens is that some do manage to speed up to escape the sticks, while others get bruised and bloodied because they just can't go faster, so they end up even more crippled, going ever slower until they collapse. (And of course the singing stops: no room for singing.) As time goes on, more and more drop -- going faster for a little while, then stumbling and falling. Until several miles down the track there are a few left trotting along upright striving after the cart of carrots, with the rest carried off, collapsed and beaten.A successful social experiment in some people's terms: the reasonably able bodied - previously hiding in the crowd of cripples -- have been identified.

* When the federal government takes control of the Senate in July they will be bringing in sweeping changes to the Disability Support Pension. People with disabilities who are deemed to be capable of working 15 hours or more per week will be shifted onto the lower unemployment benefit Newstart, and treated as unemployed.

The government's spin-doctoring of these changes has been streamlined since they were first proposed in 2002, and tailored for different audiences.

For advocacy groups and people with disabilities, it's presented as an opportunity. Peter Costello on Insight on SBS the other week, for instance, exuding a deep sense of compassion, claiming this as a shift in emphasis from a focus on disability to a focus on capabilities. Whereas for the general electorate it's a familiar strategy, honed on asylum seekers. Vilify, sow distrust, create myths, question the genuineness of their need, play on the desire of stressed and busy people to be relaxed and comfortable, and then tell them they have no moral obligation to these others, that it is right to withdraw support.

The pension, we are told, is too easy to get and too generous. As a result too many people are choosing it as a way of getting early retirement and a bludgey life. This is the preferred explanation for the rise in figures over the past ten years; more convenient and more palatable than the other possibility, which is that serious disability and chronic illness might actually be increasing.

* So who are these people on disability pensions? From recent reports and discussions you'd be forgiven for imagining that mostly these days it's people able to work 30 hours, but who just prefer to stay home and watch television.

Well, let's see, there are
- people with cystic fibrosis, who have to be careful of any infections that could permanently damage their lungs;
- people experiencing chronic pain, often from work-related injuries;
- people with severe epilepsy;
- those with congenital or accident-acquired brain damage;
- ones with intellectually disabilities;
- those with shattered nerves and debilitating psychological problems such as chronic depression or schizophrenia;
- the chronically fatigued whose lives are decimated at every level;
- the chemically sensitive (for whom even new carpets at work or a co-worker who wears perfume can spell disaster);
- people with quadriplegia, who also are subject to a range of other health problems such as increased infections; and so on.

We are the ones with bewilderingly high-maintenance bodies and lives, often living on a knife edge between balance and collapse: of the next illness or infection, the next bout of unbearable pain, the next frightening episode or psychological disturbance; the next recurrence of a problem that can never be cured, can only ever be managed. Indeed we are the ones the medical system generally doesn't know what to do with, geared as it is towards high-tech, cure-oriented, acute care.

The very resistance of our problems is an affront to our culture's cherished beliefs in progress and science. We are the canaries in the coalmine -- warning of the accumulated effects of millions of tons of chemicals, most of them untested, and few tested in combination or for long periods; the shell-shocked and the casualties of a fast-paced, speeded up, quick fix, high-pressure culture. And we are the unwanted side effects of medical technology that can prolong life, but not necessarily assure that it will be good quality.

For contrary to what the government suggests, the main areas of increase in the figures over the past ten years are not the 'bad backs/early retirement' guys. Apart from the increase in women over 55 due to changes to alternative pension schemes, the strongest growth has been in the areas of severe and profound disability, and in new chronic and untreatable illnesses. There has also been an increase in the number of young men, possibly due to higher rates of survival from motor vehicle and other accidents.

The other reason suggested for the growth has been higher productivity demands from employers. In the past someone with a disability may have been able to mask their difficulties or be accommodated.

These days that's a lot less likely. This is a culture that likes things black and white, whereas increasing numbers of us now inhabit that grey area between collapse and full ability; often swinging back and forth between these on a daily, weekly, or annual basis. As such, one of the truly life-saving benefits of the pension -- which has a strict income test but a fairly loose cut-off in terms of hours -- is that it supports long-term rehabilitation back into paid work via a job, through the development of a suitable home business, or at least into some kind of community involvement.

Ironically, while the government claims that its aim is to encourage greater workforce participation and mutual obligation, it is those who do work, or want to work (but who cannot work full-time) who will be most penalised by the changes. For it is precisely those who have persevered and managed their disabilities to the point where they can work between 15 to 30 hours per week, and who have struggled to find and keep jobs flexible enough to accommodate their fluctuating or special needs, who will suddenly find their gross income cut by as much as a half when they are shifted onto Newstart. In fact many may need to give up their jobs, because they are unlikely to be able to afford the travel and auxiliary expenses of keeping them.

As an unemployment benefit designed for people capable of full employment (and to encourage full-time employment) Newstart is calculated only as a subsistence allowance for temporary circumstances. It does not take into account long-term life expenses, nor the extra and unavoidable costs of living with a disability, and it certainly doesn't allow for any of the costs of trying to improve one's health. Not that the pension allows for this either (the maximum single rate is $235 per week). Indeed financial survival for people with long-term disabilities can be a constant, stressful and often frightening battle.

But with the current pension arrangements there is at least a sense of entitlement: for the chronically ill, a feeling of respite or sanctuary; for all of us, a small precious measure of independence. Under Newstart, however, not only will this income be shaved back by about ten percent, but people with disabilities will be kept busy with job diaries, interviews, forms to fill in, medical assessments - constant reminders that you live (and only barely) on the good graces of the employed.

A slow but sure tightening of bureaucratic controls on people unable to free themselves from this control. Indeed with this new system it is likely that rather than doctors and specialists -- who understand the complex diversity of conditions, and know our individual histories - it will be a Centrelink officer, with a few days extra training about the most obvious aspects of the most common disabilities, who will be making the judgements not just about our abilities, but also about what is best for us.

* The Government's rhetoric holds out a seductive promise - fulfillment and economic security through having a job; an acknowledged social role via a pay packet instead of a welfare cheque; and freedom from the shame and guilt so many of us feel, even if we don't talk about it much these days. But this is a promise that is unlikely to be kept for the vast majority. And despite the talk about focussing on capabilities, within the new system it is the capacity to earn money, the very thing that most people with disabilities find most difficult for a range of reasons, that is being reinforced as the only one that matters.

This is not about reducing disability, or the impact of disabilities (the life costs), but about reducing the financial costs of this to taxpayers and governments. And it's not about increasing the social contribution (mutual obligations) of people with disabilities, but about conscripting them into the reserve workforce to keep competition for jobs strong. They may never get jobs, but as a layer of desperate people they help keep it a buyers market as far as employment conditions go. At present there is such a low investment in rehabilitation support and training for people with disabilities that it's often a well-kept secret just to keep demand manageable.

It's also interesting to note that despite their recent rhetoric, the number of people with a disability employed in the public sector has actually decreased by about thirty percent over the period of the Howard government (from 5.6 to 3.8 per cent). There also seems no interest in exploring ways of assisting those committed to healing or improving their conditions by making a range of well-documented therapies and self-help techniques more affordable and accessible. And the government has not, to my knowledge, once raised the issue of prevention.

Belinda Probert

... Within a very short period, we were being asked to choose between economic growth and sustained prosperity on the right hand, and redistributive policies based on egalitarian values on the left. ... The welfare state, which had embodied a particular kind of class compromise, became a 'burden' on the economy. A new moral economy found expression in phrases like 'winner takes all', while 'battlers' became 'losers' and the unemployed were to 'price themselves into a job'.

The fact that other small open economies like Denmark and Holland managed both growth and equity was not allowed to get in the way of the new story. America was to be the constant point of comparison. ... In a recent study of the degree of income inequality across 21 wealthy countries, the United States came out on top (or worst), Britain was not far behind and Australia was sixth. Belinda Probert

- There is a disturbing common theme in the diagnoses of what ails the 'underclass' - the notion that it is attitudinal problems that prevent welfare recipients from getting off welfare.

At its most charitable, it is argued that long periods of welfare dependency, resulting from long term unemployment or lengthy periods of full time parenting, for example, erode people's ability to see and take advantage of the opportunities for economic independence that do exist. Indeed, it erodes their capacity to participate economically and socially more generally. The fact that there is no evidence to suggest that the underclass are any different to anyone else in their patterns of social participation seems to be irrelevant to this ideological debate.

This framing of the problem encourages us to believe that this part of the underclass needs firmness, even compulsion, in its own best interests. It needs to be 'obliged' to stop being a drain on all of us.

In the charitable version, there is an acknowledgment that the vision of converting the welfare-dependent into self-employed or employees could cost a lot of money, but there is no discussion of where this money might come from - which is hardly surprising since anyone of any influence has been convincing us for too long that higher taxes and other forms of income redistribution are bad for the economy.

The uncharitable versions, which have always emanated from what used to be called the petty bourgeoisie - the owners of fish and chip shops, for example - see the culture of welfare dependency as a culture of laziness and special pleading, and welfare recipients as people who simply need to be made to realize that the handouts are finished.

... Despite the challenge posed by the dramatic economic changes of the last twenty years, we are a richer country than ever before. The problem is that for too many people have been excluded from the benefits. As long as the 'overclass' insist on arguing that we cannot have economic growth and social welfare there will be a space for One Nation and the politics of grievance. In the politics of grievance, those who work very hard, but have increasingly little to show for it, start to blame anyone who doesn't work (whether it's their fault or not) and anyone who might be seen to be taking Australian jobs - which puts Aboriginal people, single mothers, the unemployed and Asian migrants in the frame.

… (W)e must engage in a mutually reinforcing process of mobilising our egalitarian traditions and building new institutions that regulate the market and redistribute the wealth it creates. The possibility of political solidarity between the middle class, the working class and the underclass - I don't think I'd count on the 'overclass' - depends, in part, on our ability to remember and revivify an emotional solidarity that is there in our history.

Yvonne Smith

- I had started work a few months earlier, as we were really hard up, at the Footscray hospital first as clerical assistant and then stenographer to the radiologist. When Don died I had that job, so kept on working. I couldn't see how I could live on the pension, which was about nine pounds per fortnight. I was earning, I think, twelve pounds ten shillings a week.

I had applied for a war widow's pension but had been rejected. I appealed the decision. Someone from the RSL/Legacy came to see me and asked me what I could say to support my appeal.

I told him about Don having been in the occupation forces in Japan. He had been stationed at Bofu, right outside Hiroshima, and he had suffered from a mystery illness while he was there. I wondered whether that had affected him as he later died of a brain tumour.

In the end they must have accepted this because I received the war widow's pension. It was a lot better than the ordinary Department of Social Security pension, and not means tested.

That was a big thing for me, getting that pension. I have often though it is amazing what you have to go through to get any recognition of your rights. Although it worked out well for me, I will never forget the feeling of being completely dependent on your own resources to look after your kids and have them rely on you alone, and not know whether you will be able to keep it up.

Geraldine Robertson

UAW SUBMISSION TO THE WELFARE REFORM REVIEW

At the recent national conference of the UAW we passed the resolution:

That the government accept its obligation to enact and effect tax redistribution to ensure provision of an adequate acceptable standard of income, health, education, housing, paid work etc for all citizens whatever the work status of the individual.

... We submit the only effective way to really improve the situation is for government to ensure or provide sufficient paid work at a livable wage ... We strongly dispute that sufficient suitable paid work is available ...

... We argue that, as so many jobs have disappeared ... any attempt to change the behaviour of the affected individuals is ridiculous, stupid and cruel. ... we question the usefulness and justice of applying 'Mutual Obligation", which assumes a shared base, when all the power is in the Government's hands. ... We question the way Government seems to think it is no longer obliged to provide social security.

... We question the suggested extension of 'Mutual Obligation' when the paid jobs aren't there (9 people are looking for every available job). We note the cynicism shown in suggestions for extending 'Mutual Obligation' to older unemployed women and mothers. We would like to know: "Whom should they rely on"?

... We submit that without acknowledgment of all past and unpaid work done by women in this group, talk of reducing or removing their 'welfare dependency' is little short of criminal.

... We strongly oppose anything which takes away the power to make normal decisions for the benefit of children and society from mothers, simply because they are financially dependent on Government.

... We submit that a safe, adequate, reliable, trustworthy social security system is not an option for Government but Government's responsibility.

... We further submit that Government is obliged and expected to sustain such a system - redistributing income as necessary to provide the wherewithal.

... We propose Governments, not the unfortunate affected individuals, are culpable for any problems with sustainability of the present system.

Pamela Curr

There is a public face here of a democratic country with a good economy, where people are doing fine. And then there is an underside.

I see the role of the Left to find the underside - because it is often well hidden - bringing into public awareness and fighting for the people who are chained to the underside.

Whether it is workers, whether it is asylum seekers or refugees who now have 2nd class rights in this country, whether it is women who are denied equality and equity, whoever it is - there are goups of people who miss out. Our society is predicated on winners. They don't want to worry about the losers.

The refugee issue has taken all of us into dark places. We have seen a side of our country that I think many of us couldn't believe existed. We have witnessed conditions for people that cause us shame. I think that is why people are fighting so hard. The politicians and the neo-liberal economic rationalists would like to forget about refugees, but it won't go away.

If we look at the media in this country we are ill served. We have a Packer/Murdoch press who are actively merchandising a neo-liberal economic rationalist agenda. Because it is a democracy, there are bits and pieces here and there which will reflect an anti-war position or will question privatisation or will question the refugee policy, but on the whole the press it solidly merchandising this agenda.

We have the public broadcasting corporation - the ABC - who is being attacked. We have seen the way in which those attacks are underming their confidence to be independent. 17.000 hours have been spent examining tapes of broadcast material over the war to justify Senator Alston's position that the ABC is predjudiced. It seems that when the neo-liberal economic rationalists are losing, they can't even acknowledge that.

Most of the people in Australia were opposed to going to war in Iraq. Even when war commenced, still more than half were opposed to it and nothing that has happened since then has made them change their minds.

That war has not made the world safer. There has been a lot of spin-doctoring about the reasons why we went to war. But there are enough intelligent people in this country - even though they are informed by this biased media - who have come to their own conclusions.

That again is the role of the left, the dissidents, the activists in our society. To stimulate people to look outside the arguments put before them and to come to intelligent conclusions.

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