Australia —
ROBERT Farley's life is full of planned sacrifices, or
life shortages as he likes to call them. His $127.59
electricity bill is due so new pots for his overgrown
plants will have to wait. A ticket to a play means no new
clothes. And the $100 needed to fix the broken clothes
dryer in his Department of Housing home has been put off
until winter.
Farley, confined to a wheelchair
after contracting polio when he was 16, says anyone who
thinks life is easy on a disability pension is kidding
themselves.
"The idea of someone bludging on
the pension is crazy, we are not hoarding away money so
we can do wonderful things in the future," says Farley,
59. "We would rather be working because the reasons for
working [such as self-esteem, fulfilment and
development] are the reasons for living."
Farley is an anomaly among the
growing army of people signing up for the disability
support pension. This articulate man with an associate
diploma in human resource management and a passion for
the theatre has survived almost all his adult life on the
pension.
But most of those now applying for
this pension are middle-aged single men and women who
have held down jobs in the past. With few skills, they
find themselves squeezed out of an increasingly
competitive and modern workplace and on to welfare.
Official figures reveal most will remain there -
abandoned by workplaces and families who have
traditionally cared for them.
It's a growing and increasingly
expensive problem, costing taxpayers $8 billion annually.
The number of disabled pensioners is ballooning towards
750,000, hiding Australia's true unemployment rate. With
more than 74,000 joining the ranks each year, the federal
Government wants to stem the tide, limit the pension to
the genuinely disabled and get people with suspected bad
backs and muscle injuries back to work.
The attraction of the DSP over the
dole is obvious - it pays more and the benefits are
better. Disabled pensioners get about $40 a week more
than those on the dole. There is no obligation for
pensioners to find a job and they don't suffer financial
penalties if theydon't. And they receive the valuable
Pensioner Concession Card. All up, it creates an
incentive to seek the pension rather than the
dole.
Cabinet yesterday considered a
submission from a special interdepartmental committee to
overhaul the DSP -- including forcing pensioners to face
a panel of experts to assess whether they still deserve
the payment or should be looking for work. And tougher
changes are looming once the Government gains control of
the Senate in July. At present applicants must prove to
doctors their medical condition precludes them from
working 30 hours a week for two years to qualify for the
DSP. Under proposed changes, this could be cut to 15
hours.
"We have 300 people a day going on
to the DSP and we need to make sure the disability
support pension is preserved for those who most deserve
it, and not for people who are going to try and park
themselves on to it until they are 65 and [can]
claim the age pension," Workforce Participation Minister
Peter Dutton says.
Australian National University
Professor of Economics Bob Gregory says the changes
proposed so far are just "nibbling at the edges".
Gregory, who has studied the official figures, explains
74,000 people are pouring on to the DSP every year but
only 48,000 are leaving. Half of those shift to the old
age pension and another quarter die, leaving about one
quarter who leave after finding work, improving their
financial situation, or for other reasons.
"So we are talking about a group of
people who are very solidly dependent on welfare; in
fact, one of the main reasons for leaving is death,"
Gregory says. "If we are going to make big inroads into
solving this problem, we have to do something very
dramatic or else all we're going to do is move them on to
unemployment benefits or the streets."
That's a scary scenario for
disability groups, who instead are trying to convince the
Government that a big injection of funds is needed to
retrain disabled people -- many of whom have long-term
and special needs -- and provide them with extensive
support services to find and keep jobs.
"Visually impaired people need
special computer software, deaf people need other things,
and people in wheelchairs need special transport and
workplaces with ramps," says Heidi Forrest, president of
People With Disabilities Australia. Many disabled people
"want to contribute to the economy, want to pay taxes",
she says. "But it's about reforming the system so people
with disabilities have opportunities."
A recent government pilot project
with 671 pensioners who signed up with the privatised Job
Network has been hailed as a success. Half of them found
jobs or education after nine months. But whether that can
be expanded to help hundreds of thousands is
unclear.
Figures show about 40 per cent of
disabled pensioners have musculo-skeletal problems.
Another 25 per cent have psychological and psychiatric
conditions. These figures fuel speculation that some
recipients are simply unskilled jobless with bad backs or
depression. Another 7per cent have cancers and 8 per cent
of men and 4 per cent of women have heart problems. Less
than 1 per cent have a disability they were born
with.
"It's really a very interesting
problem," Gregory says. "Thirty years ago there were lots
of jobs out there and people with cancer, heart disease
and psychological problems could get a job and cope.
There were two reasons for this. You had a lot of
unskilled factory jobs and, secondly, we looked after
people in the workplace, people with disabilities were
given a job and then looked after by their
workmates.
"The effect of economic reform has
been to essentially clean all of these people out. So we
have moved a lot of our welfare out of the workplaces and
on to the state because the Government has created an
environment where workplaces have to be
competitive."
The situation is unjust, says Peter
Saunders, director of social research at the Centre for
Independent Studies. Long-term unemployed people struggle
on the dole while others in similar situations are
getting a better deal on the DSP, he says. And it's
unfair for pensioners with severe disabilities who may
now have to continually prove their need is
genuine.
"It's completely unfair and I don't
understand why disability groups are not more supportive
of reforms because it would mean more money could be
poured into helping those legitimately there," Saunders
says.
Farley was employed for five years
-- a time he describes as "lovely". Working up to 15
hours a week, he earned between $250 and $375 checking
standards of group homes and hostels for the NSW
Ombudsman. "It was lovely. It was great [for my]
self-esteem, you felt as though you played a successful
role," he says, adding that he had to leave because of
health problems associated with being confined to a
wheelchair.
"Basically wear and tear on the
body from sitting down for 40 years does that to you," he
says. He is unsure whether other bosses would be as
flexible and understanding as the Ombudsman's office,
which gave him a taxi allowance to travel around to the
centres.
"That was a pretty unique
situation."
After paying the rent, Farley is
left with$360 a fortnight, which doesn't leave much for
luxuries. He says disabled people would rather be working
but believes the Government must remove financial
barriers and provide support services.
Just turning up to an office each
day would be expensive, he says. He lives in Raymond
Terrace, a small town outside Newcastle in NSW where
buses with wheelchair access are rare and taxis are the
only reliable option. Even with a $66 fortnightly
government transport allowance, the number of trips he
can afford is limited.
"If someone rang up and asked me
over for a cup of coffee, I would have to work out how
many taxi rides I could afford that fortnight and how
many bills were coming in."
Leaving Newcastle would mean
finding another specially modified home and a new support
network.
Also Raymond Terrace locals
consider his volunteer work valuable. He has written and
performed in a play about how personality is more
important than disability, volunteers at the Community
Care Centre, and runs theatre and writing workshops.
"I come pretty cheap, I work for the cost of transport,
morning tea and some finger buns."
He remains cautiously optimistic
about what the Government's proposed changes might mean
for him. "I think life's OK, withstanding major
depression," he says with a laugh.
