The proposed cashless welfare reforms, the brain child of Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, hereafter referred to as Twiggy, was passed by the house of reps, in what the uncharitable side of me suspects was a deal with former social services minister Scott Morrison, to throw former PM Abbott under the bus in favour of current PM Malcolm Turnbull, get the job of treasurer and sneak the legislation through before anyone had really considered any alternative plan. The ensuing media frenzy over the leadership spill let it go past with hardly a murmur from the same mainstream media that had participated so enthusiastically in entrenching a propaganda of lifters and leaners.
It's officially known as Healthy Welfare. It's not. It's a cashless debit card, with certain merchant code categories blocked, those relating to alcohol and gambling merchants. (Here are the likely initial codes-5813, 5921,7801, 7802, 7995) 20% will be accessible in cash, via the persons nominated bank account. 20%. For a person on newstart, that's $25.90 a week in cash. Or the equivalent of an average teenagers pocket money. It starts in Ceduna, in Febuary 2016. It affects all working aged welfare recipients except aged and veterans.
This is the plan to stop alcohol, drug and gambling addiction, domestic violence, child abuse and entrenched disadvantage, particularly in remote communities with a predominately indigenous population and high unemployment. It's a breathtakingly, brutally simple plan. Infantilise welfare recipients and restrict their access to things only responsible grown ups can be trusted to manage. Take away their access to cash. Problem solved?
I don't see how that solves the underlying issues that cause alcoholism, or family violence, or anything in particular, but that's exactly how both sides of our political spectrum are planning to deal with social problems that happen to real people, in real communities.
I am not a billionaire with mines near remote communities. I do live in a community with many indigenous residents (shout out Mounty County, 2770!), some of whom may be welfare dependent, and if that's all it takes to design a welfare reform that affects the rights of every Australian, not just the ones CURRENTLY needing centrelink assistance, then I'm willing to have a go. Unlike Twiggy, I've coped with the reality of living on welfare.
People do not walk into Centrelink offices as broken units of employment that are fixed with a job. They're individual human beings, their needs and stories are varied. Simply getting a job cannot be the only goal as it only addresses the financial needs of a person, and that's only part of a persons welfare. Their welfare depends on them also having food, accommodation, education, social supports, travel, being able to maintain health and set individual goals. What we have is a payment system, we could do with a real welfare system. One that actually looks to the entirety of a persons welfare.
If Healthy Welfare is the goal, and that's a goal that isn't without merit, why such a punitive method to achieve so little in terms of supporting the health and welfare of vulnerable Australians? Welfare is a care model, we are all the carers of those who are unemployed, disabled, sick, elderly and young families. Person centred approaches have been proven to be best practise across a variety of care models, in terms of outcomes, efficiency and user satisfaction. We already have examples of rollouts of person centred models such as the ndis, and we know they work.
A simple, regular self appraisal of a persons health and welfare, probably in the form of a fortnightly questionnaire designed to determine if a person is needing extra supports and capable of directing them to relevant community services in a timely manner. It's both more compassionate and efficient to provide services before untreated issues become problems, and also helps a person to achieve their goals, be they employment related or otherwise.
When a self appraisal form is submitted it either does or doesn't (through self appraised measures) trigger an immediate response from caseworkers, who are provided with resources to recommend and refer clients to relevant services to provide the supports they are requiring. A refuge network operating through Centrelink could provide temporary, secure and anonymous accommodations for those who indicate that their immediate safety is at risk, and support them in planning their long term future, transitioning to new accommodations, etc.
It'll be easier if I just use an example. Let's look at Eddie, 48, partnered, three children, lives in Ceduna, long term unemployed. He's got a couple of convictions, from his younger and wilder years, but that's all behind him now. His has his family, and his extended family all live in town. It's a simple life, they can't afford luxuries and they do the best they can with what they have, he will take any work he can find but nothing's going. These days, Eddies idea of a wild time is the family get together for a BBQ in the backyard and a few drinks. Under Twiggys cashless welfare, Eddie can't have a drink, or gamble, and can only access 20% of his income in cash. With a person centred, lashless approach, Eddies regular self appraisal leads him to see that he has symptoms of depression, and he's directed to help. As he gets his treatment for depression going, his case manager meets with him and they discuss how they can make this work with his goals. He explains that exercise has made him feel a lot better and reminded him of how much he enjoyed sports when he was young and he starts to think about personal training as something he could maybe do, and even help people to feel healthier. Eddie is supported into exploring this option and eventually opens a successful business providing sports activities and training programs as after school activities for the kids in his community. Eddie and his family transition out of welfare dependence.
Eddies sister, Sarah, had a drug problem. She thought she had it under control, but she began finding it harder and harder to cope with her habit and her day to day life. Her partner, Chris, was concerned that she may need help, and indicated extreme concern for a partner/immediate family member. Chris was counselled with a drug and alcohol worker and felt empowered to discuss the issue with Sarah in a compassionate and non judgmental manner that lead to Sarah self appraising as needing support and getting that support to be healthy in the form of rehab, relationship counselling to help them overcome this problem while keeping their relationship on track, and a plan for finishing her education to achieve her goal of becoming a veterinary nurse . Sarah was given all the tools she needed to succeed again. Cashless welfare stops her buying drugs, but she may never get the support she needs overcome her addiction and find a plan for her future.
All the relevant community services already exist, and these people are already entitled to use them. Its just a matter of making it accessible and letting them be in charge of their lives. Person centred welfare doesn't have to be more expensive than either the current model, or Twiggy's reforms. It's just efficiently using services for the purpose they're designed to be used for. Every Australian is entitled to have their health care needs met, and access to drug and alcohol services, mental health services, community supports are as essential to health as food and exercise. There should be no stigma in having health needs that have to be met. It's simply a furtherment and fulfilment of the original plan for Centrelink, to manage services to people in need of social security as part of the Commonwealth Services Delivery Act, 1997. That didn't change after Centrelink became part of the Department of Human Services after the Human Services Act 2011.
If an area is self appraising as needing, for example, more drug and alcohol resources due to an influx of drug use in the area, then more services must be provided to fill that need. A community flooded with ice needs help, they don't need their cash cut off. I can hear a voice in the back suggesting to do both, but why take a punitive measure when a compassionate one will be more effective, more efficient, and long term cheaper? We need strong communities, we have to provide the tools for communities to be strong. We can't beat communities down and expect them to be strong enough to be self reliant.
A person centred approach to welfare is simply a better choice. It's better for business, as it's creating a healthy workforce, its better for the economy as it's creating healthy taxpayers that both contribute to the nation and cost less in untreated health issues that spiral into expensive, life/work limiting treatments and/or conditions, i'ts better for the equality of the nation and it's better for the individuals involved.
In the interest of full disclosure because yes, I know how the Internet works, I am permanently dependent on centrelink. I shouldn't have to explain my situation, to state which category of recipient I belong to, to justify my deservingness. That I am permanently dependent should be enough.
It's not, is it? What if that means I'm a bludger with no intent of ever working? It doesn't. The mythical bludger is a fiction, a handy scapegoat. Those are unemployed people. They are not unemployable. They can't find jobs that aren't there or that they aren't suitable for. I'm not really unemployed, I'm providing a service. I'm a carer for a young man with autism, an accompanying intellectual disability, sensory processing disorder, non 24 hour sleep/wake disorder, behavioural issues, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, and he's totally non verbal. Are we deserving enough yet? Point being, I have both some experience of life on Centrelink, and a lot of skin in this fight. Furthermore, as a carer, part of my duties involve advocacy. I would be negligent if I were to not to look to his best interests and defend his right to full participation and equality in the community.
From an entirely practical viewpoint, I cannot manage his community participation program, an essential part of which is travel training and learning about money and its value, with $21.35 cash a week (DSP, 18-20, living at home $402.70). I can't teach him different note and coin values with conceptual money on a debit card. His mind doesn't work like that. He needs real, tangible things he can see and touch. ($10 note for a $9 DVD, wait for the change, check, does nine plus one equal ten? Lets check with the other money, yep, that's right) Learning to manage money is essential to any independence he may be able to achieve, for him be able to fulfil his own needs, for him to be able to self advocate. "I want to buy this" is an act of self advocacy.
None of us are alone on this island. We all depend on each other, no matter what the anti-welfare propaganda tries to say. I don't drive at the moment, but I still depend on the roads being there to get the goods and people to where they have to be. I'm not in uni, but I depend on higher education to give me the doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers. I've never called the Fire Brigade but I depend on them being there if there's a fire. Not using a service doesn't mean a persons welfare isn't dependent on it's existence. Without a fire brigade existing, we would all be on our own in a fire. We aren't. We know to dial 000. We depend on them answering and providing the service they have been tasked with providing. Our welfare depends on that service being there when we need it.
Centrelink is no different. Whether you use it or not, you depend on it. To be there when YOU need it, and to pick up the slack and support the people that we, as a nation of carers for our vulnerable, have failed to help get back on their feet. None of us can say with any guarantee if we will or won't need it in our lifetime. It's our right to seek the services we need. If the government wants to decrease unemployment, they have to create jobs, because the alternative methods of making unemployment disappear may buy votes in a tempestuous political climate, but such methods tend to be both unpalatable, and human rights violations. Job seeker networks aren't providing the answer to unemployment, they're just another in a long line of socialised welfare replaced with voluntary charity funded by corporate religions, and indeed Labor, who have also shown more and more punitive measures. And yet business after business, network after network pops up to take jobseeker funding. And where's that leave the unemployed? With no more work skills than they had before.Cashless welfare endangers people, people who need support. Person centred welfare provides that support. Its just like the fire brigade, we presume people are competent to call if there's a fire. We have to presume they're competent enough to self appraise and advocate in their own best interests. Its simply best practise.
I had planned on pointing out the human rights aspect of this, but I've covered it previously http://crackpotmanor.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/its-not-about-tax-payers-its-about.html,
if anyone is interested.
I've tried hard to not add to the political divide with this. I don't want to keep defending my community from outrageous and unfounded slurs and thus be part of the ideological propaganda of lifters and leaners. Instead, I've proposed a simple, workable alternative that will achieve the desired results while rejecting the mythology of leaners. I don't have an entire ministry of social services at my disposal, or a billionaires resources, and I'd never presume to postulate that this is actually an extension of ongoing neoliberal policies, but I'll leave you with this question, if I can think of a better model for welfare reform, why couldn't the relevant parties?
