The Guardian 8 November, 2006
Contempt for
the unemployed, pensioners
Bob Briton
The Howard Government is spending $30 million on a new diary system for the unemployed and planning for a change of "culture" at Centrelink to force counter staff to treat jobless clients with suspicion and hostility. The idea that a small minority of the unemployed are avoiding work and claiming the dole has been rejected by the government in its latest turn of the screw on the welfare of the unemployed. At the same time, the government is moving to grant Centrelink staff the power to raid the homes and seize the property of single parents and age pensioners they suspect of living in unreported marriage-like relationships.
"There is a class of people out there who are job snobs, but there are also people that find every opportunity to avoid a job at all", Human Services Minister Joe Hockey said last week. "Of all the people that are receiving Newstart, you would have to say that a majority, a percentage, of them are refusing to take jobs and are finding ways of not taking an immediately available job."
Hockey is using the myth of a jobs bonanza to introduce a new "participation record" scheme which will oblige Centrelink staff to phone all the employers listed as having been approached for work. The staff will interview Newstart recipients every fortnight and probe them about undeclared income. The diaries will be used to increase the number of breaches of dole payments.
Minister Hockey is about to lead Centrelink CEO Jeff Whalan (by the ear?) on a tour of rural Queensland where, it is claimed, bosses are desperate for workers. The way is clearly being prepared to make recently introduced voluntary relocation schemes compulsory for the jobless.
Hockey and the Howard have decided for themselves that the official five per cent unemployment rate is virtual full employment. That labour market status used to be officially pegged at two per cent. The government plainly believes there are votes to be had by laying the boot into the unemployed. It is ignoring a recent report from Dr Richard Dennis entitled Unemployment is in the Eye of the Beholder which shows just how meaningless the government’s jobless figures are. People working just one hour per week are not considered jobless while, at the same time, some workers putting in a 35 hour week are so poor that they are listed as unemployed in order to be given some income support.
Power to raid homes of unemployed
Meanwhile, the government is proposing to give Centrelink staff the power to raid the homes of benefit recipients and age pensioners suspected of living in unreported marriage-like relationships. At the moment, a sole mother and an unemployed man, for example, lose about $130 per week in meagre benefits and rent assistance when they declare (as they obliged by Centrelink) they are living as a couple. Under the government’s proposed regime, Centrelink staff could apply directly to a magistrate for permission to raid the homes of individuals to obtain proof of fraud and seize their property. The current procedures require officers of the Australian Federal Police to be present.
The Welfare Rights Network is concerned that Centrelink staff members are not trained to carry out these sensitive tasks and that they should be left in the hands of the AFP. Centrelink reported recently that 585 staff members had been sanctioned for privacy violations, 19 had been dismissed and another 92 had resigned as a result of investigations.
Not to be outdone, Labor backbencher Craig Emerson has proposed that the dole should cut out altogether after six months for young people and that they should be encouraged to find work in the military or in a peace corp. This latter body would be established to work on community infrastructure projects in neighbouring Pacific island countries. Dr Emerson set out his vision in a paper delivered to the "Making the Boom Pay" conference co-hosted by The Melbourne Institute and The Australian newspaper.
"When the range of alternatives that I am advocating is put in place, the dole should not be available to unemployed young people beyond six months. They would receive income support payments for studying or training, but not for sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs on PlayStation or Xbox", Dr Emerson said.
Labor workforce participation spokesperson Penny Wong agreed that young people should be "learning or earning" but did not endorse Emerson’s extreme proposal. Australian Council of Social Service director Andrew Johnson pointed to the failure of just such a system in the US:
"Time-limited payments are both unfair and ineffective in helping disadvantaged people into education or work. In the US, one of the few nations that cuts off all payments after a time period, child poverty rates are high and levels of youth employment participation are lower that in Australia."