Carers and Australia's Financial Dependence on their Unpaid Labour.

Australia's entrenched culture of dependence on carers comes with an almost incalculable saving to the national coffers. Before beginning to crunch numbers, I'd like to honour and validate the recipients of unpaid care in Australia, those who suffer illness or have a disability and apologise for the complete erasure of those very people when we talk of carer contribution and carer cost and dependence. It would be remiss and reprehensible to detail how expensive it is to provide unpaid care for you and never once affirm that you are the equal of anyone in Australia, no matter your care requirements.

Here is an oversimplified report on the financial savings represented by carers. Carers cost $6 billion in payments. Their replacement value is $60.8 billion, thus making replacing them more than nine times more expensive than paying them. Our  focus group consists of 11,000 young carers identified by actuarial evidence of being at risk of having the nation benefit from their unpaid and unrecognised labour. Those 11,000 young carers,  estimated to receive $500,000 each in payments therefore represent  $4.5 million dollars in saving each. As a group those 11,000 young carers will save taxpayers $49.5 billion dollars over their lifetimes. 

Let's look at Lisa, as seen in the oversimplified cartoon on this website http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-20/government-new-welfare-investment-approach-risk-groups-targeted/7859432 

Lisa enters the welfare system at 16, on student payments, while she finishes her education. Her education finishes and she is eligible for Youth Allowance  while looking for a job. At 20, she becomes carer to her younger brother and cares for him for twelve years, when he goes into formal support services. Wow, Lisa is now 32 and was replaced  by formal support services. Let's be clear about this. Lisa has been providing care that can only be replaced by formal support services, she's been doing a job single handled that requires formal support services without her. How good is she?

 She gets a part time job and still receives some carer allowances. That means she's still participating in his care, even with all the formal support services. Lisa seems to be a pretty excellent Australian, and she works until she's 65, which is 33 years, when she becomes carer for another family member until retirement age of 67, when she gets the aged pension until she dies. Lisa, that most excellent of Australians, spent 14 years of her life, providing full time care for a person who needed her. She was paid approximately $322,000 in benefits during that period for a saving to the taxpayer of $2.898 million.

Lisa, we can't thank you enough. You're an excellent example of a sterling Australian and a pretty lousy example of entrenched welfare dependence, considering you worked for 33 years. In fact, I don't even know why anyone would worry about 14 years of welfare dependency for a saving $2.898 million. We could have paid Lisa $898000 in benefits and still saved $2 million (and Lisa and her brother would have had better food and accommodation and she might've been able to care for him longer, and that would've saved more money). 

We should pay carers like Lisa a wage and recognise and validate what they do as work, thus beginning to break the cycle of dependence on unpaid care. If we are to beak the cycle of our nation being dependent on unpaid and unrecognised work, done predominantly by women, we should consider this group as a trial for a basic income. We cannot continue to expect so much while contributing so little. 

This report was compiled at absolutely no cost to anyone. 

40 years of Welfare Bashing

      

         It would've been the end of 1976, the weather was warm enough for me to be wearing a summer nightie, and my mum hadn't cut my hair off yet. That came in the great nit plague of 1977. I was chewing on the bobbles attached to the elastic holding my plaits, and sitting next to speaker, attached by thin wires to the turntable playing Abba. I loved watching that record go round and round, and near the speaker, the arguing from the kitchen lost some of its power to seep into every crack of the house like a poisonous fog. That argument was the first time I heard the term "dole bludger". My dad and Brother 2 were going at it again. They were too alike to coexist peaceably.

 

           "Lazy, good for nothing! You'll never be anything but a dole bludger", roared Dad contemptuously. He had a debilitating stutter, but when he roared there were was no tripping over pesky consonants, no laborious delay in getting his words out. Then he could spit them like darts with a marksmans accuracy. It was 1976. I was 6 that year, brother 2 turned 16 in the December and would've still been recovering from breaking his leg when he was hit by a car getting off the school bus one afternoon about eighteen months earlier. Months in traction. They put him in the adult ward because he was a strapping young man, with guys just back from Vietnam, who'd seen things and suffered things. He was just starting out in the world, and his own family had already written him off. He was going to be a lazy, good-for-nothing dole bludger his whole life, they'd tell anyone who asked after him, and they had raised him better than that. My dad had that Protestant work ethic down pat. They were good, church going, middle class white folk. They never swore, smoked or drank alcohol. Dad paid his taxes and took the family to a nice motel with a swimming pool every summer holidays.

 

          I remember it so well, because the tension had me staring at that record, going round and round, while dad roared and Brother 2 lacked the preservation skills to say and do what was necessary to end it, until bedtime, and when I got up the following morning, Brother 2 was gone. He never lived at home for any period of length again.  Dad had left, presumably for work, where else would he be with his good Protestant work ethic? And mum was sitting at the table, very still and strange to even my child's eyes.  If you're easily triggered by tales of violence, you may want to skip the next paragraph.

         I got myself ready for school, putting on my sneakers. Red, with white smiley faces on the toes. I'd been wearing them for weeks. I loved them. The smiley faces. My mum saw them, and she saw red. With no smiley faces. She waved a note at me, screeching about uniform, and where were my shoes? I didn't know where my school shoes were. I was six. My school shoes were hard leather that hurt my feet and they were black and dull. Not like my red, smiley sneakers. Long and horrible story short, her anger devolved my kind mother into someone I only ever glimpsed on one other occasion. She yelled the same things at me that dad had yelled at Brother 2, without the term bludger. And then she put her hands around my throat and choked and shook me. I'm a fast learner. You don't want to be a lazy good for nothing with the wrong shoes. I didn't wear sneakers again til last year. I get what happened now. Adult me can recognise the pressure she was under. Husband vs son- she was the loser either way. Child me went to school and didn't tell anyone. Who would help a lazy child with the wrong shoes?

         Brother 2, forever known as a dole bludger, held many jobs, had many adventures and travelled the world. Trotted over more of the globe than any of his siblings. His status as dole bludger never changed. Not matter what job he had, he was too lazy to work. They'd see what he was really like soon, we'd tell ourselves, and then he'd be unemployed again, and then we could say we were right all along. He was always a lazy, good for nothing dole bludger who would never amount to anything due to basic flaws in his character that he must've chosen, because they can't have been genetic or environmental, because we were good, church going, middle class white people, and he was raised better than that. He is on Disability Support Pension now. Injured his back carrying a fridge down a flight of stairs. Lives with constant pain, though it improved after surgery. Brother 1 snorted that it was terribly convenient, Brother 3 declared it to be typical Brother 2 behaviour and older Sister sighed and told us wisely that we all knew the ways of Brother 2. He was a bludger. Always was. Always will be. Only took us forty years of telling him that, forty years of prejudice, of belittling, demeaning abuse, and we made it come true.

          By the time I was a teen, you could see an episode of A Country Practise, guest starring a very young Nicole Kidman as a young unemployed girl suffering malnutrition while living with a group of similarly unemployed young people. They're all shown the error of their ways by Dr Terrence Eliot. The episode was called Repairing The Damage. It was 1984, and unemployed youngster who just had to try harder and they'd be wildly successful (just like Nicole Kidman) was an established trope on Australian television screens. 

            While this was unfolding on our televisions, in our newspapers, and in our homes, sociologists were busy collecting data on the negative outcomes of the unemployed, and their predominantly female counterpart seen to be worthy of even more wrath, the single parent. Mike Willesee, and later his brother Terry Willesee, Derryn Hinch, Ray Martin, Tracey Grimshaw and their radio counterparts, John Laws, Mike Carlton etc etc all made a healthy living, and a percentage of that has been made sledging the dole bludger. It's the shock jocks and talking heads equivalent of a house speciality. 

  

            They put on their most serious and concerned faces and plead with the viewers to think of the children. Think of the children, or they'll grow up to be good for nothing, dole bludgers. Just like their parents. The reports all focused on and celebrated the negative. 

            The children they were asking us to think of weren't kept in hermetically sealed bubbles. They were right there in the lounge rooms, with the television screens and radios, and nowadays computer screens.  With the newspaper headlines. They were in the schools, staffed by middle class professional people, who taught them about how poverty was the big evil in the world.  The children learned they were disadvantaged, possibly by their parents poor decision making, by luck of the draw, by a change in circumstances, a hundred different reasons. They learned they were "at risk" in a way the children of the middle class were not. 

             They studied a million ways to improve the outcomes of those in poverty. The poor should study. They should get jobs. They should settle for less and work their way up. They should keep their legs shut and not keep popping out sprogs for the tax payer to support. Won't someone think of the children? The children who have been told since they learned to read that unemployment and poverty are bad. While they live with parents that struggle to find work in a floundering economy? Dole bludgers. Can't even keep those kids under control. The same kids who are being taught by those screens, those headlines, and subtly  in school that their parents are lazy, good for nothing dole bludgers. If we want those on welfare to take responsibility for themselves, we have to take responsibility for our substantial part in their disadvantage.

             Welfare recipients live below the poverty line. That is the most substantial contributor to their disadvantage. This is indisputable. Any flaws found in individuals dependent on welfare can also be found in waged, employed individuals, at every level of income. It's the lack of resources necessary to function at optimum levels that drives every aspect of their disadvantage. And yet studies point to everything from childhood abuse to education levels as being more relevant to outcomes than 40 years of welfare bashing in conjunction with living on less than half the average wage. 40 years. The term dole bludger entered our vernacular in 1976. The payment we call the dole hasn't increased in real terms since the 90s, but just lately, the propaganda has.

              There's a reason for that. Welfare dependency data is released next week, along with the $96mill Try, Test, Learn fund. DSP recipients, carers and single parents are the most likely to experience extended periods of welfare dependency,  and ftherefore most likely to experience entrenched disadvantage. If you are not on welfare, you do not feel their disadvantage.  Their disadvantage is not causing you pain, suffering or financial hardship. It's causing them those things. You are not poor because they are welfare dependent. They are poor because they have no recourse other than below poverty line welfare payments. Any money troubles you have are not caused by the poor needing welfare. 

              I'm sorry, Australia, but we really have gotten this equation backwards. We affect the disadvantaged a lot more than they affect us. When the headline reads "dole bludger", or anything to do with welfare, the public violently vomits anger and threats all over social media. Those dependent on welfare see the same headline and they feel fear. Fear of further deprivation, fear of being cut off, fear of homelessness. Cold, stark fear, they're right to be fearful. There are more people depending on welfare payments to survive than there are jobs available, and that is no fault of the welfare dependent. They aren't making policy. They aren't even influencing policy. They are powerless.

             The relationship between Australia and the welfare dependent is an abusive relationship, and the poor are the victims. We restrict their income, institute ever more punitive systems that don't get them off welfare and all the time, they're being told that they're useless, that no one wants them, that they lack education and skills,  they're sluts, they're violent, they're on drugs, they're breeding like animals, that they're parasites who don't contribute and owe us, and we will decide when their slate is wiped clean. They shouldn't be drinking, smoking or having sex that could lead to more kids. They should get up at dawn and waste the time of business owners by knocking on their doors and asking if they have any work, experience or not, and they should do that until dark, when they should watch the news on a big, old fat screen tv and then fall into an exhausted, but miserable sleep on a mattress on the floor and then arise at dawn to repeat the useless process again. We don't even really care if they get a job or not, we just want them to do this to show they WANT a job, which is more important than actually having one in this relationship.

              We've been doing this now for forty years. It's accepted that abuse, mistreatment and poor self esteem can greatly contribute to whether or not an individual lives a prosperous and happy life, or one flooded with disadvantage, but we won't take any responsibility for participating in forty years of abusive treatment of the most disadvantaged. We don't even recognise that it could be a factor. Australia doesn't care about the welfare of those who receive Centrelink benefits because we are so convinced that someone doesn't deserve it. For forty years we've aired messages dripping in prejudice, we've kept millions of Australians at below poverty line rates and called them every name under the sun while blaming them for the country's woes. And for forty years, its been achieving nothing but further disadvantage.

             Australia, it's time for us to shut up about those relying on welfare, because we have all played our part. There needs to be an instant shut down of negative reporting of welfare statistics, mostly because it's the right thing to do, but also because we are never going to have reliable data about welfare dependency and outcomes unless we study the matter without the influence of prejudice and a media machine to drive it. If you want to do something about welfare dependence in Australia, shut up. We haven't actually  tried that yet.

When did we start calling the unemployed NEETS?

  

The latest round of welfare bashing focuses on a group they're calling the NEETS. NEETs are the new breed of dole bludger. They're aged 15-29 and according to the very somber and serious voice over and some vicious articles, they're  Not in Employment, Education or Training and there's nearly 600,000 of them. Weird, cos the August 2016 figures as cited on tradingeconomics.com from the ABS say " The number of unemployed persons looking for full-time work increased 14,900 to 496,900 and the number of unemployed persons only looking for part-time work decreased by 25,400 to 216,400". 600,000 NEETS, 496,900 full time unemployed. Hmmmmm. I decided this phenomenon needed further investigation, so I braced myself and watched the A Current Affair segment, the one with the very somber and serious voice over, and I'll take you through it. 

       Leila McKinnon introduces the story with animated glee and a heavy emphasis on the keywords "dole bludger", "welfare" and "hardworking taxpayers".

       Our roving reporter repeats the explanation of NEET, because repetition helps us learn. Of course, there is no such welfare group. Not really.  Not in Education, Employment or Training is unemployed. Do I really have to explain this? If you're in education, you're a student, if you're in employment, you're employed or a worker and if you're in training, you're an apprentice or trainee or something. If you're not any of those things, you're unemployed or retired or rich or on holiday. (Or on DSP or Carers Payment).  Aged 15-29? 15 year olds aren't generally included in unemployment  figures, due to all but a small number being in school, but I suppose that's how they manage to have so many  NEETS.

      On with the show- first up we have Ashleigh and Amy, I don't know who's who. The first girl says "I tell them I don't want to work to die. I'd rather be a bum and spend time with my family ". They subtitle that, to make sure you got it. We don't have a clue what question she's answering or who she's telling this to, but it can't be Centrelink because they don't have a form or section where they ask you what you want. They just give you forms to fill out and see if you've filled them in, there is no "Do you want to work? If not, why not?".  She doesn't actually say she doesn't want to work, she says "I tell them....".

       Next we have a  guy at a bus stop.  He says there's work out there but a lot of people don't really fit the criteria. He doesn't say if he's unemployed or not. Then we have a blond guy. He says he's unemployed. That's it. That's all he says. The voice over reminds us this is funded by centrelink, because repetition helps us learn. They cut to an older gentleman, he says he sees a lot of people around and wonders why they aren't in work. He doesn't offer an opinion to why they aren't in work, for all we know he thinks it's because the government controls the unemployment rate. We don't know because we only get the statement that he wonders why they aren't in work.

      The somber voiceover utters an intonation about "can't be bothered to get a job" and then they cut to a blonde woman, who's repeating the old classic about employers wanting experience and being unable to get that experience without work history.

      Again with the 600,000 NEETS, because repetition helps us learn, but now some statistics- 41% want a job and are looking. Good for them. 19% want a job but aren't actively looking. No definition of what actively looking means. Do they mean, are you job hunting now or doing your groceries? We don't know. But that won't stop them flashing up 220,000 as the figure who aren't looking for work. 

          Social services assistant minister  Alan Tudge (he's also the guy championing the cashless welfare card, because oppressing poor people is his portfolio) says the best form of welfare is a job. That's an adorable soundbite. It's wrong, but adorable. A job isn't a form of welfare at all. It's a job. They're totally different things. 

         Back to Amy and Ashleigh, who are described as happily unemployed. They don't actually say that. The younger girl gives the general advice of "live life to the fullest, if you get a job, good on you. If you don't, don't be upset". The girl is 17. That's actually a pretty optimistic attitude and outlook.

           This upbeat attitude in the face of cameras when discussing your disadvantage continues with Tim, who says he lives on $250 a fortnight but that won't stop him being happy, even if after bills and food he has no funds to look for work.  

          All that positivity must've been too much, because now we're back with the blond guy on Newstart, who says "gambling, I love gambling".  We don't know what question he's responding to at all. Could be anything from "what's your biggest vice?" to "what do you miss most about working?". Both are as likely as "what did you spend all your benefits on?".

          Next up is Toula, who's too old to be a NEET.  She pockets $369 a fortnight in taxpayers money. Yes, they said that. She says something about buying petrol and cigarettes but says the kids are her first priority. She then says it's hard to find work, so the reporter goes to the ,coal shopping centre where he says he found 7 job vacancies. We don't know if any of them were actually suitable for Toula, and I was left with the feeling she was expected to do all 7. 

         Alan Tudge, again, saying to take a job of its available and you're capable and that the government have had enough of entitled NEETS, which they only just made up, abusing welfare. (By being eligible for payment). He goes on to say that welfare dependence can be a poison that sucks motivation out of an individual. So can news stories designed to negatively portray the unemployed. Just saying.  Tudge goes on to say that it's a moral challenge that some are on welfare for a long time. No, it's not! For those who cannot work, it's a blessing that they're on welfare for however long is necessary. Some of those people have life long and/or incurable conditions. They can be on welfare as long as necessary.

        More stats. 40% of kids raised in jobless families will receive a benefit by the age of 20. Yeah? The family is jobless, right? So it follows that they're poor? And that when the ftb ends when the kid turns 16, the kid gets youth allowance and the family needs that money because they just lost what ere ftb payment they were getting but that child still needs to eat and stuff? And some of those benefits will be student allowances for people going to uni? And that even with those figures 60% of kids raised in jobless families DONT get benefits by age 20? That's great, by the way. 60%. No benefits. Go them! Just watch those kids raised in poverty soar.

        Cut to a lady in a green hijab. She says kids get addicted to drugs and it's a problem and it's not benefitting anyone. Don't know what that has to do with NEETS. Unless they're just adding drug references to make NEETS look bad even thought they failed to actually associate NEETS with drugs.

        "NEETS are just one part of Australia's welfare crisis". Really? Didn't we already establish it was a term for the already existing unemployed and the young thrown in?.

       A woman tells the camera she didn't finish school, another woman says she wants out of here. A rich man in a suit bemoans, the lady in hijab wisely tells us it's a cycle and nothing  changes and then we're in Broadmeadows, or the Broadie Bronx . They compare Broadie to New Yorks Bronx by showing some graffiti, then state there's crime, drugs and rubbish everywhere. It's bin night. The reporter is literally standing in front of bins, and there's not a lot of rubbish in shot, because it's in the bins.

         A guy piggybacking a toddler says "Welcome to the Bronx". One of the women shown earlier talks about shootings and feeling unsafe. We're informed now that Broadmeadow has an unemployment rate 3 times higher than national average and there's definite pockets of disadvantage. I wonder how any of this NEET story is going to help with that.

        We talk to Lisa, 43 and her daughter Nikita. Nikita is the one we saw earlier who didn't finish school. She seems much less sure of herself than many of the others featured. Lisa is asked if she feels trapped and she agrees that she does. Steve is next. He needs the dole to survive but is desperate for his 15  years old daughter to escape housing commission to escape the "things she's seen". When asked what she's seen, he replies "everything". No one has said a word about not wanting to work.

        The guy in the suit is back. He's David Chalk and he talks about the consequences poor people face by being poor.

         Next up they interview the kids. Articulate girl says she's lived there 4 or 5 years. The voice over intones about kids having spent their entire lives in public housing. She's at least 8-10. She said 4-5 years. And do you know, poor people raising kids their entire lives in public housing is a good thing? Those kids families have affordable accomodation. That's great. That's what it's for. Do these kids feel unsafe? Yes, there's racists who call the Muslims terrorists. Shame on anyone who said such a thing to a child. 

         Back to David Chalk, who says we have to start early to stop people becoming NEETS. We need to start at preschool. And then we finish with the success story of Alan, the man who welcomed us to the Bronx. He WAS relying on welfare, past tense. He's not now. He started his own lawn mowing/handyman business and earns enough to self sufficient. Congratulations, Alan, you receive no welfare, and everything is funky. They made a point of asking he drank or smoked when he received benefits. We're at the end, and the last half was more about the Broadie Bronx and public  housing than NEETS and despite all that, there wasn't even a single definitive statement from anyone saying they didn't want to work. We go back to Leila McKinnon to wrap up the propaganda. In short, nothing but misleading demonisation.