New South Wales,
Australia — Maya Verma's phone started running
hot on Monday from anxious disability pensioners who were
threatening to throw in their part-time jobs.
"I told them the counting of votes
isn't finished yet. Let's wait and see who controls the
Senate before we get hysterical," she said.
Ms Verma manages an employment
agency that helps people with disabilities into work. But
by yesterday three of her clients had resigned from their
jobs, she said, and others were considering doing
so.
Now that the Coalition is likely to
control the Senate from next July, it will be able to
pass disability pension legislation that has twice been
blocked.
Under the bills, disabled people
assessed as able to work for award wages for 15 hours a
week would not be eligible for a Disability Support
Pension (DSP). The current benchmark is 30
hours.
This means people like Anthony
Leggett, 30, a quadriplegic who works 22 hours a week as
a peer support officer for Spinal Cord Injuries
Australia, and gets a part disability pension, feel under
threat. Because he had shown himself capable of working
more than 15 hours, he fears he may be cut off the
disability pension in the future.
"I feel like I've had the rug
pulled out from under me," he said. "The uncertainty is
gut-wrenching. For me, this amount of work is what I can
cope with. But I'm going to have to consider whether I
should cut my hours. Just getting up, showering and
dressing can take me three hours."
He worries he will be shifted to
the Newstart Allowance, which pays $60 a fortnight less,
and would lose transport and other benefits.
Ms Verma, who manages SCI
Workforce, said: "My clients think Centrelink will look
at their work history; I'm trying to encourage them to
stay on. Usually people ring me annoyed because I haven't
got them a job. Since Monday, it's been 'why on earth did
you get me a job when you knew this could
happen?"'
The Government's first bill in 2002
applied the revised work hours test to current and new
DSP applicants. After that was rejected, it introduced a
bill with a grandfather clause that applied only to new
applicants.
The Opposition spokeswoman on
disabilities, Annette Ellis, said yesterday: "When they
introduce a new bill, will it apply retrospectively or
not?"
The current minister, Senator Kay
Patterson, said yesterday that if she continued in the
portfolio she would consult the disability sector again
before she brought in a new bill.
She hoped people would stay in
their part-time jobs because "that is exactly what we
want them to do. Our focus, in the first instance, are
people who might otherwise go on DSP," she
said.
About $250 million in extra
assistance for disabled people has been held up because
it was tied to passage of the pensions legislation. The
Australian Council of Social Service president, Andrew
McCallum, urged the Government "not to make people on
disability support pensions the losers of this
election".
