Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the number of people receiving Newstart who have a partial capacity to work. When people have been assessed as having a partial capacity to work, it means that they have a disability or impairment that stops them from working more than 30 hours a week. If you have a partial capacity to work, that also means that you are not considered to be sick or disabled enough to get the disability support pension.

Senate estimates the week before last revealed that the government has been underestimating—and, therefore, underreporting—the number of people with a partial capacity to work. We have seen the number of sick or disabled people on Newstart skyrocket over the past few years. This number has jumped from 180,000 people in 2014 to nearly 300,000 people in 2019. It had been underreported by nearly 100,000, until we got those figures just a couple of weeks ago. So nearly half of the people on Newstart have been classified as having a partial capacity to work. The government cannot ignore the fact that this is what's happening right now.

We also recently asked the minister for social services about the types of impairments and disabilities that people with a partial capacity to work have. In response, we discovered that people with a partial capacity to work have a range of medical conditions, including acquired brain impairment, cancer, chronic pain, intellectual or learning disabilities, nervous system issues, psychological or psychiatric issues and respiratory system issues. Many people are not able to work or to meet the mutual obligations because they have such chronic illness or disability that they should really be receiving the disability support pension, or, as we call it, the DSP.

This is the product of years of tightening the eligibility criteria for the DSP, and the impairment tables, which are focused on keeping people off the DSP and focused more on a person's ability to work rather than whether they have been diagnosed with a disabling condition. We understand that there are some people who might now have been assessed as having close to zero or zero hours capacity a week to work. Surely, if you can't work or you have very low capacity to work, you should be on the DSP. There is something seriously wrong with our system.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, disabled people have the right to an adequate standard of living and social protection. But we are failing disabled people by letting them basically languish and sit on Newstart when they should be on the disability support pension. Newstart, as we know, is paid at a much lower rate than the DSP.

Apart from being woefully low and paid at a rate under the poverty line, Newstart is simply not designed to help people who are sick or disabled, and it's not designed to help them manage their conditions. People can't afford to go to the doctor, buy medication or see specialists on Newstart. We've had ample evidence of that. Being sick or disabled on Newstart further entrenches poverty, exacerbates poor health and contributes to social isolation. What will it take for this government to finally listen to people across the board, from disabled people to advocates to academics, who say that the Welfare to Work approach is not working and that the DSP needs to urgently change? No-one in Australia should have to choose between feeding themselves and buying essential medications. When you have a partial capacity to work, Newstart exacerbates your poor health conditions, and it's much more difficult to manage your health.

Raising Newstart by $75 a week would immediately relieve some of the stresses being faced by sick and disabled people surviving on Newstart, so we need to do that. But we also need to make sure that we are reassessing the process we use for the DSP. By raising the rate, we will help people, but it's not enough; we need to change the DSP. We need to ensure that the eligibility process is fair, reasonable, accessible and equitable and that the process does not generate further financial hardship or economic insecurity. The 10-year review of the impairment tables is coming up soon and represents a really valuable and essential opportunity to listen to disabled people and their advocates about the significant changes that are needed to the DSP.