HERALD SUN
DISABILITY support pensioners will be banned from travelling overseas for more than four weeks as part of a Budget crackdown on welfare cheats.
The Telegraph can reveal the government will tighten “portability” rules for the Disability Support Pension (DSP) to crack down on recipients taking holidays at taxpayer expense or camping out in places like Bali while claiming they are living in Australia.
The government will also introduce tougher work tests and regular assessments from government-appointed doctors in a bid to get more people on disability benefits into part time work, according to senior government sources.
Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews is pushing through a long-term shake-up of welfare payments. Source:News Limited
The crackdown on disability pensions will be one of the largest hits in a major welfare overhaul that will form the centrepiece of the Budget.
Payments to families, the unemployed and students will also be slashed through tougher means tests, longer waiting periods and later age restrictions.
But carers payments will escape the Budget axe because the government fears cuts would end up costing them more in taxpayer-funded care, the Daily Telegraph can reveal.
The Budget overhaul will just be the start of a longer-term shake-up of welfare, with Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews aiming to replace more than 40 separate payments with just four or five basic payments.
Taxpayers spend about $100 million a year on payments to 7313 Disability Support Pensioners who live overseas.
“I don’t think anyone is saying you shouldn’t go overseas because you are on any particular benefit,” Mr Andrews said. “The question here is what’s fair from the community point of view given that people are in receipt of benefits and that’s the balance we’ve got to try and achieve.”
I wonder if the underprivileged,the disabled, and other welfare recipients will be sucked
in to vote for this
evil con rabble again..
i often wonder how any of those highly payed people would survive two to three days on our pension payments not every pensioner has had life easy or been able to work and live pain free but when these comments are made nobody thinks about these issues some people would love to be just pain free for a day and it would make them so so good and to be able to work and get ahead is only a dream and another thing is a lot of people look great and that nothing is wrong with them as some times you can not SEE pain on the out side of the body so please give a thought to these people as i am one of these people
I wonder how many voted for these creeps? They got the boats stopped, but heck – at what price to themselves?!!
It`s cheaper overseas
My choice not anyone elses.
My resources.
I’m 54 single male , I’ve worked all my life never been on the unemployment benefits
I’ve suffered from lupus since I was 24
Now my life in the work force is getting to be impossible
I travel to Indonesia to live in high altertude for two months every six months to build my red cells up in my body
So I can come back to work in Australia
Doctors say I should be living in high altertude full time for me to have a normal life
So I am forced to work like this to stay alive
What happens when I can’t work anymore
I can go on the disability pension now but I wouldn’t be able to live in high altitude
I’ve paid taxes all my life and the pension gets further and further away
I can’t afford to live in high altertude in Australia that’s why I go to Indonesia because it’s cheaper
What do I do