Over successive budgets, the federal government has committed to slashing the number of successful claimants for the disability support pension (DSP), as part of strict “welfare-to-work” reforms. These policies aim to reduce spending and welfare dependence by forcing thousands of disadvantaged Australians into work via Newstart’s punitive system of mutual obligations and minimal income.
One of these people is Quang Huynh, a 30-year-old man from Dandenong, who relies solely on Newstart payments and family support to manage his health. Huynh is a type 2 diabetic with serious heart, liver and kidney conditions. He also experiences difficulty walking, due to visual impairment from diabetic retinopathy, which has left him virtually blind in his left eye. Routinely in and out of hospital, he also attends a heart failure clinic on a tri-monthly basis, as well as regular renal and diabetic outpatient clinics.
In spite of all this, Huynh’s application for a DSP was rejected this September, because his health problems didn’t score enough “points” on Centrelink’s increasingly stringent “impairment tables.”
In order to reduce the number of people on the benefit, the government is making it deliberately harder for people like Huynh to make successful claims. Statistics from the Department of Social Services indicated last year that only 15% (approximately a sixth) of all applicants were granted the pension. Compared to previous years, this high ratio of failure is staggering: in 2014-15 it was reported that more than a third of applicants were successfully making claims. This effectively means that, since 2014, there’s been more than a 50% drop-off in successful claimants.
Huynh’s rejected claim has left him baffled, frustrated and incredibly stressed. “In my application I included a letter from my heart doctor as evidence,” he told me. This letter, written by Huynh’s cardiologist at Monash Health Dandenong, states that “ … his severe dilated cardiomyopathy is a life-threatening problem,” and even concludes that, “at present, he is not physically capable of participating in paid employment.”
“The doctor is mortified that I got rejected,” Huynh said. “She’s asking what can she do.”
Understandably, both Huynh and his doctors are unsure what they have to do to prove the severity of his ailments to Centrelink. Disadvantaged people on welfare are finding themselves under increasingly intense pressures to justify their receipt of payments, and establish the “worthiness” of their adverse conditions and disabilities.
For the last two years, Huynh has subsisted on Newstart, using medical certificates from his eye specialist to exempt himself from attending job agency meetings, training courses, and complying with other mutual job seeker obligations he physically can’t perform due to his health conditions.
Due in no small part to the sheer number of applicants now being disqualified from the DSP, it’s estimated that a quarter of the people currently on Newstart experience some type of disability. This effectively means tens of thousands of vulnerably ill Australians must participate in mandated job searches and other activities to receive the significantly reduced dole payment.
Huynh’s medical exemption from these obligations expired last month. “I’m in no condition to look for work and go to all the job meetings — I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
As a final resort, he has contacted the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union — an advocacy organisation for unemployed workers’ rights — for help. AUWU’s DSP officer is now helping Huynh launch an appeal.
Kim*, a middle-aged Indigenous woman from Ipswich, who suffers from angina, diabetes and anxiety, also had her DSP applications knocked back for similarly not meeting the strict eligibility requirements.
“I didn’t have it in me to fight the ruling or appeal because I was too sick,” she told me. “If they don’t let me onto it this time, I don’t know what it will take — I’m already on 30 tablets a day.”
Kim is right to feel anxious about her prospects. Over the past few years, there’s been some remarkable cases where even terminally ill patients have been deemed ineligible for the DSP. Yet, there still appears to be very little public pressure on the government to loosen these strict welfare eligibility requirements that clearly cause much duress.
Pushing people like Huynh and Kim off the DSP and onto the unemployment benefit yields a small saving for government and the taxpayer, but results in a significant loss of income for people who already struggle to get by. Considering that a quarter of disabled Australians already live below the poverty line (the highest rates in the OECD), this seems an astonishingly cruel way for us to cut costs. After all, Australia already ranks near the bottom of OECD nations when it comes to total welfare spending as a proportion of GDP — a stat kept conveniently quiet by pollies and pundits looking to further gut social security.
Rather than investing in policy that actually tackles the conditions that entrenches so many Australians in poverty, we’re more preoccupied with delegitimising vulnerable people’s claims for welfare. No matter how we try to justify or spin such “cost-saving” approaches, we are in effect choosing to punish people for being disabled.
*Name changed for privacy
Jeremy Poxon is freelance writer and a media officer for the Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union.
The elephant in the room: Will rejection of the DSP also make them ineligible fort NDIS support?
No, a person does not need to receive a DSP to be eligible for an NDIS Plan. The two programs are completely separate. The DSP provides income to an individual. The NDIS provides funding to an individual so that they can purchase disability-related supports from registered NDIS providers.
for gods sake the few dimwits and redneck still supporting this gaggle of lying corrupt thieving bastards that keep crawling out of the coalition party rooms every week must see what damage these heartless grubs are doing to australian society, how can 46% of the population still support them and choose turdball as preferred P.M, jack the ripper would be a better P.M.the gestapo a better police force than the AFP and heinrich himmler a better choice than dutton to look after refugees, duttons final solution for them only lacks the gas ovens but maybe thats still in the planning stages, nothing is beyond these hard right rednecks, but then, there`s pauline is`nt there, god help us.
Most vocational rehabilitation researchers and practitioners consider impairment tables to be neither a valid nor reliable measurement of capacity to work in open employment, especially in the modern workplace where productivity standards are high. Impairment tables measure impairment, which is not conceptually the same as overall capacity to work consistently and productively. But this reality is beyond the comprehension of the bureaucratic simpletons who design and manage our ‘welfare’ system. This particularly disadvantages applicants with fluctuating conditions, such as pain or mental illness.
Another little trick of the tables, which is used to good effect to deny DSP, is that the condition must be ‘fully treated and stabilised and won’t improve significantly within the next two years’. I have seen this used against applicants six months after suffering a severe stroke, because they ‘might’ improve, even when the treating rehab team says they won’t. Imagine the extra distress caused to someone unable to return home and facing permanent residential care due to the severity of their stroke impairments, when they get a letter from Centrelink saying they are ineligible for DSP because they have been rated at 0% impairment.
But still, as the eloquent Brian Crooks reminds us above, this mob of healthy and wealthy bastards seem to find a perverse pleasure in attacking the sick, the poor, the vulnerable and the refugees. This is a far greater trashing of our Judeo-Christian heritage than same-sex marriage. Where is the Australian Christian lobby when you need them? – wasting their time on issues that harm no-one and casting the needy ‘neighbour’ to the wolves.
You’re spot on with your comments. Thanks, Peter.
Basically applications and reviews need to be treated like a court case from the beginning, with doctors reports that address all the necessary criteria in detail, of which doctors and many patients are unaware of in the first place. They will find any reason to reject a claim, and their weighting of the evidence is heavily biased.
It is time for a UBI (Universal Basic Income). I would suggest $40,000 a year. The money would flow back into the economy. Has any political party got the guts to do this…No. Time for a new party.
Working in aged care and disability for the past 25 years, I am almost at the point where I just want to lie down and cry. The commodification of care will result in such a ‘market’ failure the consequences are unimaginable. People are already confused. Now they are being dislocated from their familiar supports, with only those with alert and energetic advisers able to negotiate the bureaucratic inquisition. The only light at the end of the reforms (read cost cutting) is the quietly gathering view that the end of neo-liberalism is near. Older people and people with disability are not ‘customers’ or ‘consumers’ of care and support. Surely we’re more than economic units. Surely we are citizens.
Like. Thank you, Helen, and thank you so much for the work you do. I can understand how disheartening it must be when such cruel systems are in place. Please hang in there, if you can!