Category Archives: NEWSPAPER ARTICLES

Tougher era ahead for welfare recipients

The Australian

January 01, 2015 12:00AM

National Affairs Editor
Canberra

Reporter
Canberra
New rules.

New rules.  Source: TheAustralian

A WIDENING of the deeming regime for retirees and tougher reporting restrictions for dole and disability support benefits recipients begins today with the start of 2015.

Some of the biggest budget savings will not start as scheduled today, with the GP co-payment bogged in the Senate and the ­Coalition’s earn-or-learn crackdown for the young unemployed also blocked by the upper house.

On January 15, cars and a range of electrical goods could become cheaper as tariffs are cut on imports of Japanese products as the Australia-Japan FTA comes into effect. The entry into force of the FTA should also provide a boon to exporters.

From today, retirees who buy allocated pensions and account-based pensions will find themselves facing the same deeming treatment as those on the Age Pension. However, arrangements that are already in place will not be affected under grandfathering provisions.

Under the new rules, the money held in the allocated pension will be subject to deeming and the amount deemed to have been earned will be used to assess income when calculating the ­pension.

Untaxed superannuation will also be included in the assessment of income for the federal seniors health card. From today, a means test will be applied to the Schoolkids Bonus, with only families on $100,000 or less receiving it.

The passage of the government’s social services bill in November also means that from today DSP recipients will generally be paid for up to only four weeks in a year if they are absent from ­Australia.

There will be limited reasons why students on welfare can ­travel overseas without losing payments.

DSP applicants will be required to be assessed by a government-approved doctor.

From today, the government will end indexation of the clean energy supplement for welfare recipients because of the abolition of the carbon tax.

Under tougher provisions, applicants for Newstart, sickness, widow or youth allowances, or parenting payments will have to wait a week before receiving payments.

Newstart recipients who have their payments suspended because they missed an appointment with an employment service provider will be required to attend a rescheduled appointment before the benefits are paid again.

The fee for Partner Visas in the permanent family migration scheme jumps 50 per cent from about $3000 to more than $4600.

New initiatives that start from today include free flu vaccin­ations for indigenous children aged between six months and five years.

From today, a $476 million industry skills fund will begin to support training needs of small and medium-sized businesses

The government has also ­announced 150 bursaries for young carers to help them ­continue studies by relieving pressure to take up part-time work.

The opposition’s acting families spokeswoman Jan McLucas said Labor had stopped the government punishing young jobseekers by kicking them off Newstart for six months.

Labor would continue to fight Tony Abbott, who wanted to shift young people under 24 from Newstart on to the lower Youth Allowance, which would leave them $48 a week worse off.

Welfare to work drive has zero gain

The Australian January 02, 2015 12:00AM
 

WELFARE-to-work programs promoted by federal governments over the past decade have failed to have any substantial effect on the pool of about one million Australians not in work.

Research by the country’s leading demographer reveals the extent of the economy’s shift from an unskilled to a skilled workforce — and the political challenge of finding jobs for the long-term unemployed.

Peter McDonald, professor of demography at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University, said analysis showed the net ­effect of welfare-to-work programs was “zero”.

Tougher era for welfare recipients

The proportion of men aged between 25 and 54 who were not in the workforce had not changed from about 9-10 per cent from 2000 to the present day, he said.

Welfare to work drive’s zero gain

Peter McDonald

“Even though successive ­governments have had major welfare-to-work programs, the net effect is zero,’’ Professor McDonald said. “The problem with Australians out of work is a problem of lack of skills in an increasingly skilled labour market.’’

Work-for-the-dole initiatives were first introduced by the Howard government in 1998. They were toughened in 2006 and have been used in various forms by both Labor and Coalition governments. The Abbott government has cracked down on eligibility for the disability support pension, to ensure people capable of working do so, and is seeking Senate backing to toughen access to unemployment benefits.

Tony Abbott announced an earn-or-learn initiative under which people aged under 25 would no longer be entitled to receive Newstart and those under 30 would have to wait six months to receive the benefit. The measures have failed to win support from Labor or the crossbench in the Senate.

The Rudd government ­maintained so-called mutual-­obligation policies, although work-for-the-dole numbers fell under Julia Gillard premiership.

Professor McDonald said unskilled male workers were the first hit by a downturn and welfare-to-work programs did ­little to prepare them for economic shifts. “They haven’t developed the skills to allow them to adjust to the changing nature of employment,” he said.

Research by Mark Wooden from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research has found that unskilled workers make up a shrinking proportion of the workforce. Labouring jobs dropped from 12.9 per cent in 1993 to 10.8 per cent in 2008 and 9.8 per cent in 2013. Over the same period, professionals’ share of the workforce increased from 16.9 per cent in 1993 to 20.9 per cent in 2008 and 22.1 per cent in 2013.

Overall, the workforce share of the lowest skill levels dropped by 3.4 points to 22.5 per cent between 1993 and 2013, while the share of jobs requiring top skill levels increased 5.5 points to 24.6 per cent.

Professor McDonald’s work found growth in jobs had been narrowly focused, with only seven of 19 industries accounting for 80 per cent of additional jobs between 2009 and last year. Nearly 40 per cent of jobs growth was in health, social services and education.

Healthcare and social services recorded the biggest increase of 193,000 jobs for an annual growth rate of 3 per cent. It was followed by education and training (113,000, and annual growth of 2.6 per cent) and mining (110,000 and annual growth of 10.8 per cent).

Jobs in “other services’’ rose by 65,000 during the period for an annual growth rate of 1.4 per cent while accommodation and food rose 59,000, or 1.6 per cent, a year.

Calculations performed by Professor McDonald, using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, show migrants have been playing a crucial role in filling job vacancies as the workforce increased by 800,000 between June 2009 and June last year. Migrants in that five-year period accounted for 600,000 of the increased employment while 330,000 jobs went to workers older than 55.

About half the increase in jobs for workers older than 55 was attributable to people in that age group staying in work longer, the other half was attributable to the growing number of people in that age group, Professor McDonald said.

This meant that for workers who were not migrants and were not aged over 55, there were 130,000 fewer people employed at the end of the same period. Much of this could be attributed to people aged under 25 staying longer in tertiary education.

In the same period, unemployment rose by 11,000. All of this net increase could be attributed to middle-aged women taken off the sole parents pension and placed on unemployment benefits.

With no expected future growth at the younger ages of the workforce, Australia would have to rely on migration for any increase in employment, but migrants were not taking jobs from unskilled Australian workers, Professor McDonald said: “The types of jobs skilled migrants are getting are not jobs these Australians would get.’’

Welfare-to-work programs have failed to reduce unemployment, says report

ANU research shows proportion of Australian unemployed men aged between 25 and 54 has not changed in almost 15 years

Centrelink
In this year’s budget the work-for-the-dole program was expanded to include jobseekers up to 50 and Restart was introduced, giving employers an inducement to hire older workers. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

The Gaurdian

Welfare-to-work programs promoted by successive governments have had no impact on unemployment as they fail to take into account the changing labour market, researchers have found.

The Australian National University (ANU) research, reported in the Australian on Friday, shows that the proportion of unemployed men aged between 25 and 54 has not changed in almost 15 years, staying at 9-10%.

Professor Peter McDonald from the ANU’s Crawford school of public policy told ABC radio blue-collar jobs were disappearing.

“Full-time jobs for men under age 20 are almost all blue collar, but they’re getting very, very scarce. If you don’t have the skills in this new economy, you’re in trouble,” McDonald said.

He said there was a “fundamental structural problem” for low-skilled workers in the labour market.

“I’m not suggesting that welfare-to-work programs are not a good idea … but we need to be looking at the longer-term issue of intergenerational transfer of disadvantage … kids who leave school, often their parents aren’t working,” McDonald said.

Employment minister Eric Abetz said the program was just one strand of the government’s jobs strategy, and that it was working to create more employment opportunities.

“I’d encourage anyone who wants to see the benefits of work for the dole to speak to the long-term unemployed who have turned their lives around courtesy of the skills provided by this program.

“We know that one of the main reasons employers don’t employ the long-term unemployed people is often because of a lack of work history and work-readiness. The government’s program both provides a reference for the jobseeker and helps to build work-like skills.”

The chief executive of Jobs Australia, David Thompson, said the government needed to shift the focus from welfare-to-work programs to reskilling the jobless.

“We need to invest not just in training, but also in work experience for these people,” Thompson said.

He said service providers were now unable to use government money to put people in training unless it was for a specific job.

“The government’s got to get the economy firing so that there are jobs being created,” Thompson said. “We need to be looking at where opportunities will be for training and future employment opportunities.”

He said the idea that unemployed people were “bludgers” was “far, far from the truth” and that most jobless people were desperate to find work.

Maree O’Halloran, from the National Welfare Rights Network said the welfare-to-work program was “morally wrong [and] doesn’t solve the unemployment problem”.

“[The program] is intended to have a shaming effect,” O’Halloran said. “It’s designed to have stigma attached to being unemployed.”

She said there were five people looking for every job advertised, and the government should focus on job creation rather than welfare measures.

The Greens want welfare-to-work ditched.

“The new [social services] minister [Scott Morrison] should study the evidence and abandon this government’s cruel approach and instead focus on investments in better employment services, skills development, case management, education, training and other programs … [That] would deliver far better results than an ideological commitment to work for the dole,” the Greens senator Rachel Siewert said.

The work-for-the-dole scheme was introduced in 1998 when Tony Abbott was minister for employment services. Labor scaled back the scheme when it took power in 2007, but never abandoned it.

In this year’s budget, Abbott’s first as prime minister, the program was expanded to include jobseekers up to the age of 50.

The government also introduced the Restart program, which gives employers a $10,000 inducement for hiring jobseekers over the age of 50. Senate documents revealed by Fairfax Media show that since July only 510 employers have taken up the scheme, which was projected to help about 32,000 a year.

Abetz told Fairfax the government “expects that take-up will increase as employers become aware of the program”.

A spokeswoman for the minister said the government never expected 32,000 to sign up straight away, but rather that the budget had allotted enough money to facilitate that number of participants.

She said hundreds of people had found jobs as a result of the scheme.

A similar inducement program offered under the Labor government, which gave employers $1,000 a year for hiring senior jobseekers, attracted only 230 applicants in its two years of operation.

“The Restart program has delivered triple the number of jobs in a quarter of the time compared to [opposition leader Bill] Shorten’s failed attempts with his Jobs Bonus Scheme”, employment minister Eric Abetz said.

Labor said its programs focus on training and support for jobseekers. “Tony Abbott has no plans when it comes to creating jobs and getting people off welfare and into work,” shadow employment minister Julie Collins said.

WA plan to hit fine defaulter welfare ‘unfair’

SONIA KOHLBACHER

The Australian

January 14, 2015 12:00AM

A WEST Australian government plan to raid welfare payments and increase jail time for fine defaulters will unfairly affect people on low incomes, according to a lobby group.

Corrective Services Minister Joe Francis said he would examine the option of compulsorily deducting payments for unpaid fines from welfare recipients and extending jail time to make imprisonment a less appealing option.

WA Council of Social Service chief executive Irina Cattalini said the approach was unfair and would target the poor.

“There are some real inequities and systemic failings that make it difficult for people who are on low incomes to pay that in the first place.”

Ms Cattalini said it was inequitable for the government to use levers in the welfare system to force people to pay off fines.

She questioned whether fines were an appropriate method to curb offending and whether the government offered flexible payment options.

A woman known for cultural reasons as Miss Dhu was never given a custodial sentence by any magistrate, her full court record shows.

The 22-year-old was ultimately incarcerated for not paying a fine that a Geraldton magistrate imposed on her as an alternative to prison.

When she died in a Pilbara lockup on August 4, Miss Dhu was serving out a $1000 fine for a clash with a police officer 4½ years earlier, when she was 18.

Police took her to the Hedland Health Campus three times over the three days she was in the watch-house. The first two times she was deemed by medical staff as fit to return to her cell. On the third occasion they took her, a day before she was due to be released, she arrived with no pulse and was declared dead within an hour.

Labor’s corrective services spokesman Paul Papalia said fines were “cut out” at a rate of $250 for every day spent in prison although it costs taxpayers $345 a day to keep a person in jail.

Mr Papalia said one-third of all women jailed in WA were there for unpaid fines and, of those, two-thirds were Aboriginal.

“It does not get people to pay fines and it does not change their behaviour,” he said.

Deaths in Custody Watch Committee secretary Marc Newhouse said the state government was monetising the issue of unpaid fines and had failed to address the circumstances that led to fines.

“It would be far more to the point to be able to address the ­offending behaviour,” he said.

Complaints about employment service system increase by a third

The Australian

December 27, 2014 12:00AM

COMPLAINTS about job providers within the government’s $5.1 billion employment services system are increasing, with data revealing an upswing in the number of complaints by a third from July to October this year.

Over this period, there were 1041 complaints a month compared with 712 each month of the previous year.

One in five of the unemployed people who complained raised inappropriate service and one in eight were troubled by unprofessional behaviour of the employment consultant.

Assistant Employment Minister Luke Hartsuyker said the government was changing the system to address quality concerns. “The government expects employment providers to deliver high-quality services to jobseekers and that jobseekers will also work cooperatively with their providers to meet their mutual obligation requirements, such as attending ­appointments and job interviews,” he told The Weekend Australian.

“Where a jobseeker has a complaint … there are processes to ­resolve the matter. This includes the Department of Employment speaking to both parties to clarify issues and, in a small number of cases, transferring a jobseeker to another provider if the relationship has totally broken down.

“The government’s employment services model requires all providers to commit to new quality standards to ensure jobseekers receive the right sort of help they need to find and keep a job.”

Maree O’Halloran, president of the National Welfare Rights Network, said new Senate estimates data showed that in the 12 months to June, 8550 jobseekers registered a complaint about their interaction with the employment services system.

“This is certainly a very low number when you take into account that point in time data suggests at June 2014 there were over 652,000 active jobseekers in the Job Services Australia caseload,” she said. “However, complaints about employment services are increasing. The data shows an ­upswing in the number of complaints about employment services by a third from July to October 2014. Over this period there were 1041 complaints per month compared to 712 each month of the previous year.”

The key areas of complaint, such as adequacy of services and inappropriate provider behaviour, mirror the concerns some jobseekers raise with Welfare Rights legal services across the country.