Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Solomon: yasu and well done. This evening I want to bring to the attention of this House some of the concerns local constituents in my electorate of Calwell have raised with me over the government’s Welfare to Work reforms and the impact these reforms have had on individuals receiving the disability support pension.

In 2005, we will remember, the Howard government introduced a number of changes to disability welfare in Australia. These changes were announced under the Employment and Workplace Relations Legislation Amendment (Welfare to Work and Other Measures) Bill 2005 and were ostensibly meant to encourage people with a disability to look for work. When it introduced the bill, the Howard government promised that these changes would not be retrospective and would not affect people already on a disability support pension. However, I am aware of a number of cases in my electorate where exactly the opposite has happened. These cases involve individuals who have lost their disability support pension as a result of changes to the rules surrounding job capacity assessments, or JCAs, which are now mandatory for individuals on a disability support pension who voluntarily visit a Job Network provider seeking help to find work.

Under the government’s Welfare to Work reforms, a recipient of the disability support pension who voluntarily decides to visit a Job Network provider to get help looking for work must first undergo a JCA before being able to access any of the services a Job Network provider offers. Very few of these individuals are told that, by agreeing to undergo a job capacity assessment, they automatically run the risk of losing their pension if their job capacity assessor decides that they can work 15 hours or more a week. In such cases, an individual’s disability support pension is automatically suspended and they are moved directly onto Newstart allowance with its stricter regime of mutual obligation requirements and penalty breaches.

Not only are people not told about the risks they run when agreeing to a JCA; there is also a growing amount of evidence to suggest that, in cases involving individuals with a severe mental disability, the people who are hired to assess whether they can work 15 hours or more a week rarely have any prior experience or expertise in the area of mental health. Instead of seeing a psychologist or a psychiatrist, someone undergoing a JCA who has a mental disability is far more likely to be assessed by a nurse or an exercise physiologist, for example, both of whom lack the formal training to be able to realistically carry out a proper mental health assessment.

Under the Howard government’s Welfare to Work reforms, it is left to a job capacity assessor, who has no formal qualifications or any professional experience in the mental health field, to decide whether an individual with severe mental disabilities can work 15 hours or more a week, and thus decide whether that person still qualifies for the disability support pension. And their decision holds even if the findings of a JCA contradict the advice of an individual’s doctor.

For someone who has lost their disability support pension as a result of a JCA, the stricter regime under Newstart allowance and the heavier penalties for noncompliance often cause enormous stress. The end result can be devastating. Whether intended or not, this situation is unacceptable. It comes at an enormous cost to those who have lost their pensions and it demands that we change the legislation accordingly. As it stands this is a system that trades in decency and compassion for the sake of saving welfare dollars, and as such it is a system that I imagine few of us in this place could ethically support.

The other issue I want to briefly bring to the House’s attention concerns minimum wage arrangements for people with a disability under the supported wage system. Under the government’s JobAccess initiative, an employer can hire a new employee with a disability for a trial period of 12 weeks, with the option of extending that period to 16 weeks, paying a minimum wage of only $64 a week. Again, examples have been brought to my attention of people with a disability being hired for a trial period of 13 weeks under the government’s supported wage system. Working an average of 16 hours a week, they received the minimum wage of $64 a week—that is, they were paid only $4 an hour. At the end of their trial period, their employer did not necessarily take them on.

Australians with a disability have as much a right as anyone else to be treated fairly and with dignity. Whilst I support initiatives aimed at encouraging employers to hire people with a disability, instances like these necessarily force you to question just where the boundary lies— (Time expired)