Showing posts with label government policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government policy. Show all posts
Tuesday 16 July 2019
Australian Prime Minister Morrison's relentless hammering of the poor and vulnerable set to continue?
The
Guardian,
7 July 2019:
The
Morrison government says it remains committed to a plan criticised as
“brutal” to dock the welfare of those who repeatedly fail to pay
state fines, and may still proceed with cuts to student payments
claimed by the unemployed, the disabled and sole parents.
The
Coalition introduced a number of welfare measures in 2017 which drew
the ire of social service groups but ultimately never came into
effect because the government failed to win the support of the Senate
or the states and territories.
Guardian
Australia reported this month that internal documents suggested the
contentious plan to drug test welfare recipients was not a priority,
but the government has insisted it remains on its agenda.
Other
welfare proposals from the last parliament included about $90m in
cuts to student payments, legislation to automatically deduct rent
from welfare recipients living in social housing, which critics said
could put family violence survivors at risk, and a plan to impose the
“demerit point” compliance scheme on those doing the remote
work-for-the-dole program, which has seen payment suspensions
surge…...
But
the spokesman did confirm the government still intended to create the
scheme to automatically dock 15% of payments for those who have
unpaid fines…...
“The
Encouraging Lawful Behaviour of Income Support Recipients proposal
remains government policy and requires legislative approval,”
Ruston’s spokesman said…..
Labor
had opposed the cuts to the $208-a-year pensioner education
supplement and the $32.20-a week education entry payment, which are
intended to help low-income people with the cost of study.
The
changes would save the budget $95m over five years, but the
opposition said the policy would hurt people with disability, carers,
sole parents and the unemployed.
The
Australian Council of Social Service has previously lashed the plan
to dock welfare payments from people with court-ordered state fines
as “particularly brutal”.
The
proposal would automatically dock 15% of an income support payment,
but critics say it will push vulnerable people into homelessness.
Welfare
groups including the Australian Unemployed Workers Union have also
expressed grave concerns about a plan announced last year to link
Newstart recipients to farm work using the national database.
The
unemployed would face losing their welfare payments for four weeks if
they turned down what the government described as a “suitable job
without reasonable excuse”.
The
department of employment confirmed the policy would begin in July
next year.
Thursday 20 June 2019
Tears before bedtime under The National Strategic Action Plan for Pain Management?
Painaustralia says of itself that it is “Australia’s
leading pain advocacy body working to improve the quality of life of people
living with pain, their families and carers, and to minimise the social and
economic burden of pain on individuals and the community”.
On 11 June
2019 it released a copy of The
National Strategic Action Plan for Pain Management having
convinced the Morrison Coalition Government that this plan is the bee knees
when it comes to pain management.
If the
following article is anything to go by it will be tears before bedtime for many
chronic pain suffers as the plan does not contain any mention of actually increasing
the number pain specialists practicing in Australia or of attempting to lower
wait times to see such specialists.
Currently NSW
Health only lists 35
pain management services in the state and most of these are attached to
metropolitan public hospitals.
Instead
people experiencing acute and chronic pain are to be offered 10 Medicare-funded group
services and 10 individual services each calendar year, with access to
telehealth pain management advice for regional areas where pain management services
are not available.
As for pain
management using prescribed medications – that is apparently going to be more
difficult to access as Painaustralia
and the Morrison Government are alarmed that opiate prescriptions in rural
& regional Australia have risen in the last ten years.
Seemingly conveniently
blind to any relationship between increased prescribing and low GP numbers, smaller often poorly
resourced public hospitals, a reliance on what might be termed 'flyin-flyout' medical specialists who prefer not to live in those rural or regional areas their patients
inhabit and the economic tyranny of distance for the patient.
The Daily Examiner, 18 June 2019, p.8:
Doctors will be sent
back to school to be re-educated about treating chronic pain and patients given
a Medicare boost under a new national strategy.
The first national pain
strategy launching today also calls for a national one-stop website to be set
up to educate people about how to manage pain without drugs and where to find
help.
“There is a screaming
need here because pain is a significant burden on the economy, on society and
the health system,” Pain Australia chief executive Carol Bennett said.
More than 3.24 million
Australians are living with chronic pain and many are becoming addicted to
opioid medications while they wait up to four years to see a pain specialist
for help.
Last year Australians
paid $2.7 billion in out-of-pocket expenses to manage their pain and missed 9.9
million days of work because of the condition.
The new strategy funded
by the Federal Government and developed by Pain Australia wants pain to be
treated in the same way as mental health, with Medicare funding up to 20
medical and group sessions to help people get it under control. It also calls
for a new certificate in pain medicine for GPs and other health professionals
that would require six months of study.
The consultation work
that took place around the development of the new plan found doctors’ knowledge
about the latest pain management techniques was out of date.
“For lower back pain
people are popping pills and having surgery but for the last 15 years we’ve
known you’ve got to get moving and rehabilitate yourself with physical
management,” Ms Bennett said.
Anti-inflammatory
medications should not be used for more than a few days and long-term
strengthening of the muscles, good nutrition and sleep were the key to treating
the problem rather than drugs, she said.
Instead of helping
patients manage pain in this way, doctors were prescribing increasing amounts
of dangerous and addictive opioid medicines.
Labels:
government policy,
Health Services,
Morrison Government,
pain
Thursday 30 May 2019
How the Prime Minister is reorganising our lives in 2019
On the day Scott Morrison arranged to be sworn-in as Australian prime minister for the second time he also made a few administrative changes.
From now on the Dept. of Human Services, which delivers social and health payments through such services such as Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support, will have the word "Human" erased from its title.
It will now be called Services Australia. A neutral name which will probably make privatisation of its more human service components that much easier down the track.
Services Australia has also been expanded to include responsibility for whole of government service delivery.
The new Minister for Government Services and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme is noneother than the Qld Liberal MP for Fadden Stuart Robert, who in 2016 resigned as the Minister for Human Services after questions were raised over his fitness for office. Thus proving that when it comes to political probity it's not what you did in the past but who you pray with now that matters.
The new Minister for Families and Social Services was listed on 26 May 2019 as Liberal Senator for South Australia Anne Rushton. However, there is no mention of that title in her official parliamentary profile to date.
From now on the Dept. of Human Services, which delivers social and health payments through such services such as Medicare, Centrelink and Child Support, will have the word "Human" erased from its title.
It will now be called Services Australia. A neutral name which will probably make privatisation of its more human service components that much easier down the track.
Services Australia has also been expanded to include responsibility for whole of government service delivery.
The new Minister for Government Services and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme is noneother than the Qld Liberal MP for Fadden Stuart Robert, who in 2016 resigned as the Minister for Human Services after questions were raised over his fitness for office. Thus proving that when it comes to political probity it's not what you did in the past but who you pray with now that matters.
The new Minister for Families and Social Services was listed on 26 May 2019 as Liberal Senator for South Australia Anne Rushton. However, there is no mention of that title in her official parliamentary profile to date.
Morrison has also decided that settlement
services for refugees and humanitarian migrants are being transferred from the
Social Services portfolio to the Home Affairs portfolio, giving the Minister
for Home Affairs and Liberal MP for Dickson Peter Dutton control of every aspect of the
lives of those seeking asylum or resettlement in Australia.
These and other changes are set out below........
Tuesday 14 May 2019
Quality of Australian television & radio will take a dive under a re-elected Morrison Government
The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 May 2019:
The ABC is facing
"inevitable" job cuts and programming disruption if the Morrison government
is returned to power, the national broadcaster's new managing director has
warned.
In his first interview
in the new job, David Anderson told Radio National's Patricia Karvelas that
planning for two possible budget scenarios was at the top of his to-do list,
after establishing a new leadership team.
One of those options is
a budget in which the ABC's indexation funding is frozen for the next three
years.
"If the Coalition
is returned, then we have an $84 million budget reduction over the next three
years," Mr Anderson said.
"Having been
through a number of budget reductions to this point, I don’t see how we can
avoid staff cuts and, I think, disruption to our content. I think it’s
inevitable."
None of the options
available for finding $84 million in savings were great, he said.
Labels:
ABC radio,
ABC television,
entertainment,
funding,
government policy
Friday 10 May 2019
“Welfare-to-work” is now a billion-dollar industry which consistently fails vulnerable jobseekers
The
Guardian, 4
May 2019:
“Welfare-to-work” is now
a billion-dollar industry. Providers compete for the lucrative contracts, worth
$7.6bn to the taxpayer over five years when the last round was signed in 2015.
Proponents for the
privatised system argue the model is much cheaper and boasts a better
cost-to-outcome ratio.
But myriad reports –
including recent findings from
a Senate committee and a government-appointed
panel – have found the most disadvantaged jobseekers are being left
behind.
In 2002, a
Productivity Commission report that was largely supportive of the
then-new privatised model still warned “many disadvantaged job seekers receive
little assistance … so-called ‘parking’”. That practice still occurs under this
name today, according to employment consultants who spoke to Guardian Australia
for this story.
When a person applies
for Newstart, they are assigned a Jobactive provider and placed into one of
three categories ordered by the level of assistance they might need: streams A,
B and C.
The outlook for the
most-disadvantaged jobseekers is bleak: only a quarter will find work each
year. Overall, 40% of those receiving payments will still be on welfare in two
years. While Jobactive has recorded 1.1 million “placements” since 2015, one in
five people have been in the system for more than five years.
New data provided to
Guardian Australia by the Department of Jobs and Small Business shows about 1.9
million people have participated in Jobactive between July 2015 and 31 January
2019. In that time, 350,000 – or 18% – have been recorded gaining employment
and getting off income support for longer than 26 weeks.
And of those 350,000,
only 35,852 – or 10% – had been classified as disadvantaged in Stream C.
Since Lanyon was placed
on Jobactive, he’s had eight job interviews and sent in about 150 applications.
Eighteen months ago he says he slept in his car and showered at a homeless
shelter after finding work close enough to take but too far away for a daily commute.
He knows his chances of
getting back into work diminish each day he’s out of the workforce.
Thursday 4 April 2019
NSW Office of Environment and Heritage is being dissolved. More truthful version – the regions are being scr$wed over to allow Berejiklian Government’s mates a freer hand to develop coastal NSW to death
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
2 April2019:
A government spokeswoman
said the restructuring would enable the administration "to better serve
the people of NSW".
"For the first
time, we have a combined Energy and Environment portfolio and this new
structure will ensure the government can take a holistic approach to this
issue," she told the Herald. "The functions currently performed
by OEH will continue.”
Among staff, though, the
worry was that the oversight separately developed and funded for years would
now be subsumed in the expanded Planning cluster, with job losses one
consequence.
Rob Stokes, a former
environment minister, returns as Planning Minister as part of the government's
post-election reshuffle. Matt Kean will be the new Energy and Environment
minister….
One senior staffer told
the Herald OEH had often provided a dissenting view to Planning, such
as when new housing projects in the Sydney Basin threatened the dwindling
natural reserves. Remaining koala corridors, for instance, were among the
habitats at risk.
Work that had previously
been conducted by inhouse OEH experts was already being diverted to external
consultants - a process staff worry will accelerate with the bureaucratic
overhaul now under way.
"There has already
been a strong shift away from the environment having its own voice
already," the staffer said.
Penny Sharpe, acting
Labor leader and environment spokeswoman, said NSW had now become the only
state in Australia without an environment department.
"One of the first
acts of the Premer - after talking a lot about the environment during the
election - is to abolish the Office of Environment," Ms Sharpe said.
"This is a terrible
outcome for the environment of NSW and it's a betrayal for [voters]," she
said. "We know it was a very important, top-order issue for many,
many people."
The environmental
problems facing the state include more than 1000 plant and animal
species threatened with extinction, an 800 per cent increase in
land-clearing during the past three years, and waterways "that are in
crisis", Ms Sharpe said.
Wednesday 3 April 2019
It is likely to be tears before bedtime for many regional communities as Berejiklian Government restructures government departments
Government
News, 2 April
2019:
The NSW government will abolish key
agencies including the Office of Local Government, the RMS and Jobs NSW under
sweeping changes to the structure of the NSW public service.
A memo from the Department of
Premier and Cabinet obtained by Government News says the Office of
Local Government, along with the Office of Environment and Heritage, will cease
to be independent entities and their functions will be absorbed by a Planning and
Industry Cluster.
The cluster will cover areas such as
long term planning, precincts, infrastructure, open space, the environment and
natural resources.
The RMS, coming under the Transport
Cluster, will also be scrapped as a separate agency and as will Jobs NSW, which
will be merged into the Treasury Cluster…..
Local Government NSW President Linda
Scott said the peak would be seeking assurances from the new local government
minister, Shelley Hancock, and the Premier, that local governments would be
appropriately resourced within the new cluster.
“We’d hope, for example, that the
inclusion into a larger cluster will facilitate real analysis of the massive
amounts of data collected by Government, which should be shared with the sector
to help them deliver great outcomes for the public good,” she told Government
News.
“Local governments welcome a new
opportunity to work with the State Government to set housing targets with
local governments, not for them – to rebalance planning powers by working in
partnership with councils and their neighbourhoods on planning decisions that
affect them.”
However she said the appointment of Ms
Hancock was a stand-alone Local Government Minister was welcomed and had long
been advocated for by LGNSW.....
The memo says the structure of the
public service will also incorporate the following clusters: Stronger
Communities, Customer Service, Health; Premier and Cabinet, Transport,
Treasury and Education.
The following clusters will cease to
exist by July 1: Finance, Services & Innovation; Industry; Planning
& Environment; Family and Communities; and Justice.
The Secretaries Board will be expanded
in members to accommodate more senior public servants to “effectively drive
implementation of the Government’s priorities”.
New appointments under the
restructure:
Michael Coutts-Trotter – Secretary,
Families & Community Services & Justice
Jim Betts – Secretary, Planning and
Industry
Glenn King – Secretary, Customer
Service
Simon Draper – Chief Executive, Infrastructure
Australia
NOTE:
The Grafton Loop of the Knitting Nannas Against Gas
and Greed will be holding a knit-in on Thursday 4 April 2019 at 1pm to peacefully
protest the abolition of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. It will be
held outside the electoral office of Nationals MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis
at 11 Prince Street, Grafton and interested people are welcome to attend.
Tuesday 2 April 2019
Morrison Government still refusing to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions
The
Guardian, 31 March 2019:
Cuts to carbon emissions
from vehicle efficiency standards have been left out of government projections
for meeting Australia’s Paris climate commitments, indicating the policy has
been shelved.
The office of the
transport minister, Michael McCormack, said the government had not made a
decision on “how or when” standards to cut carbon pollution from vehicles might
be implemented.
After almost five years
of submissions a spokesman said the government “is not going to rush into a
regulatory solution” with regards to vehicle emissions.
New data shows
Australia’s emissions from transport are soaring and projected to be 82% higher
in 2030 than they were in 1990.
Australia lags behind
the rest of the world in setting vehicle efficiency standards, with most
countries in the OECD adopting policies to reduce emissions and improve the
efficiency of cars.
The ministerial forum on
vehicle emissions was set up under the Turnbull government in 2015, and
stakeholders are frustrated at the lack of progress.
Fact sheets produced by
the government that set out how it intends to reach Australia’s emissions
reduction targets under the Paris agreement suggest any policy on vehicle
emissions standards has been abandoned.
In 2015, the government
produced a
graph indicating it expected to achieve cuts of about 100m tonnes
between 2020 and 2030 through vehicle emissions standards.
The government’s latest
climate package contains no mention of this, and projects only about
10m tonnes of abatement through an electric vehicle strategy, with no reference
to vehicle emissions standards....
Thursday 14 March 2019
Did Morrison & Co send your chance of getting a decent pay rise up in smoke?
“Brace yourselves Australia — everyday things are
about to cost more, and your chance of a pay rise has gone up in smoke” [News
Corp Journalist David Ross writing
in news,com,au, 8 March 2019]
Well it had
to happen. After five and a half years of an
Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Coalition Government the nation has reached what
is known as a per capita recession.
This hasn’t
occurred since the Howard Government’s last full year in power.
Almost sixty per
cent of Australia’s Gross Domestic Product comes from consumer spending and
five and a half years of deliberate wage suppression by both the federal
government and the business sector means the majority of consumers have little
to spend.
The economy
has been markedly slowing under Scott Morrison’s economic policies, first as
federal treasurer then as prime minister.
Annual growth
has now fallen to just 2.3 per cent according to the Reserve Bank.
This slowing
has a cascade effect.
Labels:
economy,
government policy,
Morrison Government,
wages
Friday 8 March 2019
Twenty-eight climate scientists, academics & former heads of energy companies tell the world that Morrison and Co are lying to the Australian people
“Proud to be a signatory to this statement from @climatecouncil. Between us, we have devoted 600 years to this issue. Last week's announcements are not enough to get us to meet our lousy Paris Target. That target, by the way, isn't even nearly enough to ensure a safe climate.” [Tim Baxter, Twitter, 4 March 2019]
Climate Council, 4 March 2019:
Dozens of the country’s
leading climate and energy experts – including climate scientists, academics
and former heads of energy companies – have signed a joint statement stressing
that without further action Australia
will not meet its 2030 pollution reduction target.
Wednesday 6 March 2019
What one woman from Australia intends to tell the United Nations about the Morrison Government's war on low income women with young children
“We know that
poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy
harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness, but don't expect us
to do anything about it. We are sorry
for you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, but we
will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that
you are much safer as you are.” [George Orwell, 1933, “Down and Out inParis and London”]
If ever Australia’s
captains of industry and, those elected members of the two conservative political
parties they support. ever knew a period of poverty it is now so long ago that an
abundance of personal income has driven all thought of it from their memories.
Thus it takes
a lone woman to bring to the notice of the United Nations some of the economic and human rights injustices
perpetrated by Prime Minister Scott Morrison & Co on single mothers with young children.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 2019:
Imagine having to get
someone else to provide proof you aren’t shagging anyone on a regular basis and
that even if you are, you aren't getting financial support. Your own word isn't
good enough any more.
That’s what happens to
single mothers in Australia if they want to be eligible for welfare.
There’s a lot that goes
wrong for single mums in Australia. They already have difficult lives, managing
kids, jobs and life on their own. And on top of all that, there are a whole
range of compliance tasks in order to get benefits, from signing endless forms
to applying for a ridiculous number of jobs, a huge task all on its own.
It's a miserable life
for a single mother on welfare in Australia, so hard that one woman, Juanita
McLaren, has decided to take her complaint all the way to the United Nations.
She says the way Australia treats single mums breaches human rights and now,
the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, will
be hearing from her directly at a UN Women’s conference in New York next week.
In fact, he will be
presenting by her side. Huge honour and some of us might have put that on our
credit cards. She had to crowdfund to get there.
McLaren, who has also
had to get proof she’s not in a financially-bound relationship in order to be
eligible for Newstart, worked full-time when her kids were little. Then her
husband, who was the primary carer, left the family and now lives overseas.
“I just hit a wall and
headed into casual work because there was always something happening with the
kids.”
She had to ditch her
part-time studies because she couldn’t manage financially on Newstart even
though her studies were a pathway to getting better work.
Benefits were erratic
and in one case, took eight weeks to arrive – finally some money arrived on
Christmas Eve. She entered the wrong year on a form (who else has mixed up
their birth year with the current year?) and was told it couldn’t be corrected
over the phone.
It was all the little
things on top of the poverty that motivated her to make a complaint.
In some respects,
McLaren is fortunate. She’s had steady part-time work for a couple of years
now, which is slightly seasonal. She remains registered for Newstart because of
the off-season.
But it’s the constant
battle with Centrelink, with managing her family and money, with being forced
to apply for hopeless work she doesn’t want, that forced McLaren to turn to the
UN. So far, it’s the Australian government and the UN in a deadlock about
what’s harmful to single mothers.
For years now, Terese
Edwards, the CEO of the National Council for Single Mothers, has campaigned for
better financial support for her members. Edwards helped McLaren write her
complaint, which was the first individual complaint using the optional protocol
of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; and will
be at her side when she speaks at the conference…..
Cassandra Goldie, the
CEO of the Australian Council of Social Services, says single mothers are easy
to target and easy to vilify.
She says it’s not just
impoverishment that has been relentless, it is the way in which both autonomy
and agency have been removed from single mothers in direct contrast to what’s
happening in the aged care sector. And she’s not just talking about the
ridiculous requirement to get someone else to guarantee your relationship
status.
Here’s some shocking
news: One in three sole parents and their children are living in poverty
according to the latest ACOSS-UNSW Poverty report. In just two years, the rate
of poverty amongst unemployed single parents rose from 35 per cent to 59 per
cent.
“I don’t know how you do
it!” we say to them, and in the next breath: “Here, let me make it harder for
you.”
This attitude is
stitched into the heart of a welfare program called ParentsNext, which can
require some single parents on the parenting payment to report to the state
that they have taken their children to improving activities, such as swimming
lessons or story time at the local library.
If they don’t comply,
they can have their payments cut off, often with no notice, and no clear line
of appeal. The arbiter of complaints is also the provider, the company
privately contracted by the government to administer the program.
Some mothers have
reported being asked to provide photographs as proof they have attended the
child-focused activities. Others report the provider phoning the library, or
the local pool, to verify their attendance.
Librarians as monitors,
swimming instructors as social police: it’s a level of surveillance and control
that would make Orwell twitch.
The program has faced a
barrage of criticism from welfare groups, and was the subject of a Senate
inquiry last week.
Peter Davidson, senior
adviser to the Australian Council of Social Service, says the program
was previously "less heavy handed”.
I spoke to one single
mother-of-three this week, 32-year-old Sarah, who had a positive experience of
the program in its previous incarnation. She had a good case worker who helped
her into a small business course, assisting her to set up her own
florist’s business. Now she is earning some income and intends to get off the
parenting payment as soon as possible.
But in July 2018, the
Coalition government (then led by Malcolm Turnbull) extended the program from a
smaller pilot to about 70,000 single parents, 95 per cent of them women. In its
expanded form, the “targeted compliance framework”, which applies to other
payments such as Newstart, was imposed on ParentsNext. It is language that
would make Orwell’s fingers itch.
Davidson says about a
fifth of single parents on the program have had their payments suspended.
Parents are put on
participation plans, ranging from vocational training to taking their children
to a playgroup or "story time". This muddies the waters between the
practical objective of helping women back into work after the child-rearing and
the insidious policing of their parenting.
The result is
bureaucrats invigilating parents from a moral, child-welfare stance, making
payments dependent on proof that parenting is being done correctly.
This is a qualitative
difference from other “mutual obligation” welfare requirements, because it is
not about getting people off taxpayer money. It is predicated on the assumption
that parents (read: mothers) on welfare must not be as “good” as other parents.
These measures assume
that the poor have different social standards than the middle class, who know
the correct way to nurture children, with story time and swimming classes.
They are also cruelly
detached from the chaotic reality of raising small children, where leaving the
house with everyone fed and clothed is itself an achievement, but one that
almost never runs to time. Some days, the bad days, it doesn’t happen at all.
This kind of
compliance-and-penalty system stems from the belief that the poor are not just
unlucky, but they are fundamentally different from other people; that they lack
the correct values, and the rectitude to pull themselves up. This is not
so far from the Victorian-era belief that Orwell upturned with his memoir: that
poverty is a moral failing.
This attitude can exist
only when you wilfully ignore the fact that the majority of Australians will
rely on government support at some stage in their lives, with millions of us
slipping in and out of the safety net as our circumstances change.....
Australian Parliament, Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Inquiry into ParentsNext, including its trial and subsequent broader rollout, public hearing, Melbourne, 27 February 2019, excerpts:
Australian Parliament, Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Inquiry into ParentsNext, including its trial and subsequent broader rollout, public hearing, Melbourne, 27 February 2019, excerpts:
Ms
Edwards [Chief
Executive Officer, National Council of Single Mothers and their Children]: It
is unfettered power. It is shown up in a lot of ways, even as to participants'
knowledge about signing a participation plan. The participation plan is like
the blueprint for the engagement. You have your goals on your participation
plan and then, from that, you have the flow of your activities that are meant
to support those participation goals. In theory, you're allowed 10 thinking
days after meeting and developing your participation plan. What we discovered
in our survey which supported what women were telling us was that they would
sign it in that meeting, and they would sign it because they were so compliant
because the person they were sitting in front of had the power to affect their
life, in terms of their payment but also in terms of their commitments. What is
not well known by participants is: there is no minimum weekly activity
requirement, like mutual obligations. But, because women are so aware of those
mutual obligations, they start thinking that they have a similar sort of level
that they must do, and they won't upset the provider because the provider can
determine the activities; they can breach them—and, as Jenny said, in the blink
of an eye they can breach. If the participant disagrees with the breach, the
person who umpires that is the provider—they decide whether they have operated
appropriately or not. There is not one independent body that manages or
oversees that process. So that is why women are compliant—they're in this, and
it's like they've gone down this slippery slope into hell and the only way they
can come out is if they sign and do what's required. They won't upset a
provider.
Ms
Davidson: They don't even know about that 10-day period. With the lack of
information that people are provided, they don't know about the 10-day thinking
period.
Senator
WATT: The way the system is supposed to work is that people are supposed to
have 10 days to have a think about the proposed plan before they commit to it.
Ms
Edwards: Which implies that it's two people having a mutually equal
conversation about: 'What would actually help you get to where you need to go?'
Senator
WATT: Yes, but, in fact, many people feel pressured to sign there and then?
Ms Edwards: Yes, and then what else is
happening, which is where the providers are working outside of their
guidelines, is that they will unilaterally change activities and times.
Senator
WATT: The providers will?
Ms
Edwards: Yes. And they will do that in writing, they will do that in phone
calls and they will do that in texts......
Ms
Buckland [Private
capacity]: I'll give you an example, and it's a complicated one, because there
are many issues with it, but I was contacted by a woman who had a newborn
baby—she'd had it the day before. She should be exempt from ParentsNext—
CHAIR:
It's supposed to apply at the very most when the baby's six months.
Ms
Buckland: Yes. So it's from 34 weeks pregnant to the child being six months
that there's an exemption. She wasn't able to speak to anyone about her
exemption. She was still expected to mark her attendance at an activity; she
was expected to attend an appointment one-week post birth. I think that there
are obviously inherent issues with that kind of system. Her payments were
suspended.
CHAIR:
With a newborn?
Ms
Buckland: With a newborn baby......
Prof. Croucher [President, Australian Human Rights
Commission]:….
The
commission's submission identifies five key problems with the compliance
framework of ParentsNext. I will briefly remark on two of these problems. First,
the detrimental effect of punitive compliance can be unjustifiably harsh. Many
of Australia's most valuable parents and children rely on the parenting payment
to afford basic day-to-day essentials. This includes single mothers living on
or below the poverty line. Yet, under ParentsNext, these struggling families
face automatic payment suspensions. This can happen for a single instance of
noncompliance with a program requirement, despite having a reasonable excuse
like a sick child. In the worst cases, their parenting payment can be reduced
or cancelled.
Without
money to provide adequate food, clothing and shelter for your family, how can
human rights be realised? How can there be human dignity? Poverty erodes the
enjoyment of many human rights, such as access to education, health care and
participation in public life. The current operation of ParentsNext risks
further entrenching poverty and inequality in Australia. It already risks
reducing a parent's resilience to the complex challenges they already face,
including homelessness, domestic violence and mental illness.
The
commission is also concerned that there are insufficient safeguards to prevent
inappropriate compliance action. For example, some punitive financial measures
are automatic. Others can be made by private commercial service providers
rather than by public officials.
Secondly,
the claimed success of ParentsNext is not appropriately evidence based. On the
basis of the evaluation of the program to date, it is not possible to conclude
that the program is achieving its aims or that it has had a positive effect
which outweighs the detriment of undermining the right to social security. For
example, the department's evaluation of the trial program relied heavily on a
survey of participants, but it didn't disclose how many people participated in
the relevant survey, and it's unclear whether the sample size was statistically
significant. The design and methodology of the survey were not disclosed. The
department's evaluation also draws many positive conclusions about the efficacy
of the program—for example, that it increases chances of employment. However,
many of these conclusions are based on the opinions of survey participants
rather than on objective data.
Lastly,
the commission is seriously concerned about the discriminatory impacts of the
program. ParentsNext is only applied to a small and targeted proportion of
people receiving the parenting payment. Women and Indigenous Australians are
disproportionately affected, with women comprising approximately 96 per cent of
the 68,000 participants and Aboriginal and Torres Islander people approximately
19 per cent.
The
human right to social security should be enjoyed equally by all, regardless of
sex, race or age. Australia's domestic legislation, such as the Racial
Discrimination Act 1975 at the Commonwealth level, also protects the right to
equality and nondiscrimination. It is unfair that the parents who are required
to participate in ParentsNext are at risk of losing essential support, while
the majority of parenting payment recipients can access their social security
without meeting the additional onerous obligations of ParentsNext.....
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