Post by aussieinusa on Apr 12, 2013 22:14:55 GMT 7
(I'm not 100% sure this is the right place on the forum to discuss this, so please move it if you need to, Banjo or Banker. 
Anyway... not long ago, there were two kinds of CL payments: the dole and pensions. The dole was for people who could work but were currently between jobs; pensions were for everyone else, from oldies to us PWDs to single parents. They couldn't work for reasons of age, infirmity or other commitments, so they got government support to stop them from starving on the streets, because Australia used to be a place where that would be ethically wrong.
These days, there's still a system of two kinds of CL payments: 'working age payments' and OAP.
Changing that division is a neat rhetorical way of making someone like me sound like an unwilling working person who needs a kick in the pants (I am 'working age', after all). In reality, I would love to work. Seriously, find me a job where they can handle me being in the office two afternoons a week, most weeks, but not being able to tell them in advance which two days each week it'll be, and I'll be there. (Ideally, it'd pay enough to get me off DSP... I'm highly skilled and qualified, so I've seen jobs paying $100/hour that want specifically my skills, so that's not totally unrealistic.) Or better yet, find me a boss who doesn't balk at the idea of someone working from home, lying in bed, and I will happily work for them. I can take a laptop to bed and keep working, even on pretty bad days health-wise. Hell, with those kind of accommodations, I could possibly work as much as 20 hours a week, even!
In this country, those jobs don't exist. I've even applied for jobs with disability organisations, and once I explain the kind of accommodations I'd need, my emails somehow get lost in the ether and never replied to.
'Working age' doesn't mean 'able to work'. Even if I could access the help the government supposedly offers to get PWDs back to work (their bureaucratic bungling has totally stuffed up any chance I had of going back to CRS, thanks to an error one of their staff made that no-one seems to be able to correct), no amount of physio or counselling is going to make employers want someone who lies in bed all day, even if I can take a laptop with me and keep working. Or someone who's maybe 60% reliable in telling you whether they'll be well enough to turn up for work the next day.
And that's without getting into the moral judgment behind the changes to single parent pensions, where they've redefined parenting as 'not-work' and declared that raising a child is a far less valuable thing to do with your time than working a shitty minimum-wage job. (But they have plenty of cash to help people with the valuable task of parenting, if they're eligible for Family Tax Benefit instead.)
Once again, the government propaganda machine is setting the terms of the discussion, and steam-rolling all of us into the ground along the way. 'Working-age' creates an impression that everyone in a particular age group can work, if only they wanted to. It renders invisible stories like mine (and so many other people's here) of people who would love to regain the dignity of financial self-sufficiency, but between health issues and the one-way 'flexibility' of the modern Australian workforce, are truly unable to.
If the government wants me back at work, not collecting DSP the rest of my life, they should start by looking at their own hiring record for PWDs. (I worked for a federal government agency when I first got too sick to work any more, and let's just say, they weren't exactly supportive; I was a contractor they could be rid of at will, and they quickly availed themselves of that.) Then they should work on other major Aussie employers; try to help them see the value left in people who can't work full-time or on-site any more. Or if that proves too difficult, maybe they could offer some help in becoming steadily self-employed instead. (Try telling any DMS that you know there's literally no ready-made job opening anywhere you could actually fill so you need to become self-employed; all they see is 'not gonna get paid' and you're out the door in no time.)
The problem of PWDs being on DSP for our whole life isn't down to individuals lacking motivation. Australia ranks in the bottom third of OECD countries for employment rate of PWDs. Our society throws PWDs on the scrapheap prematurely, refusing to make even minor accommodations for us. Calling us 'working-age' people doesn't make the workforce at all willing to accommodate us. And until that's fixed, kicking PWDs off DSP is simply cruel.
Is a hardass capitalist boss really gonna see a cripple starving on a street corner and think, 'I'm gonna hire that guy!'?? Well that's what our ALP government is betting on.
Anyway... not long ago, there were two kinds of CL payments: the dole and pensions. The dole was for people who could work but were currently between jobs; pensions were for everyone else, from oldies to us PWDs to single parents. They couldn't work for reasons of age, infirmity or other commitments, so they got government support to stop them from starving on the streets, because Australia used to be a place where that would be ethically wrong.
These days, there's still a system of two kinds of CL payments: 'working age payments' and OAP.
Changing that division is a neat rhetorical way of making someone like me sound like an unwilling working person who needs a kick in the pants (I am 'working age', after all). In reality, I would love to work. Seriously, find me a job where they can handle me being in the office two afternoons a week, most weeks, but not being able to tell them in advance which two days each week it'll be, and I'll be there. (Ideally, it'd pay enough to get me off DSP... I'm highly skilled and qualified, so I've seen jobs paying $100/hour that want specifically my skills, so that's not totally unrealistic.) Or better yet, find me a boss who doesn't balk at the idea of someone working from home, lying in bed, and I will happily work for them. I can take a laptop to bed and keep working, even on pretty bad days health-wise. Hell, with those kind of accommodations, I could possibly work as much as 20 hours a week, even!
In this country, those jobs don't exist. I've even applied for jobs with disability organisations, and once I explain the kind of accommodations I'd need, my emails somehow get lost in the ether and never replied to.
'Working age' doesn't mean 'able to work'. Even if I could access the help the government supposedly offers to get PWDs back to work (their bureaucratic bungling has totally stuffed up any chance I had of going back to CRS, thanks to an error one of their staff made that no-one seems to be able to correct), no amount of physio or counselling is going to make employers want someone who lies in bed all day, even if I can take a laptop with me and keep working. Or someone who's maybe 60% reliable in telling you whether they'll be well enough to turn up for work the next day.
And that's without getting into the moral judgment behind the changes to single parent pensions, where they've redefined parenting as 'not-work' and declared that raising a child is a far less valuable thing to do with your time than working a shitty minimum-wage job. (But they have plenty of cash to help people with the valuable task of parenting, if they're eligible for Family Tax Benefit instead.)
Once again, the government propaganda machine is setting the terms of the discussion, and steam-rolling all of us into the ground along the way. 'Working-age' creates an impression that everyone in a particular age group can work, if only they wanted to. It renders invisible stories like mine (and so many other people's here) of people who would love to regain the dignity of financial self-sufficiency, but between health issues and the one-way 'flexibility' of the modern Australian workforce, are truly unable to.
If the government wants me back at work, not collecting DSP the rest of my life, they should start by looking at their own hiring record for PWDs. (I worked for a federal government agency when I first got too sick to work any more, and let's just say, they weren't exactly supportive; I was a contractor they could be rid of at will, and they quickly availed themselves of that.) Then they should work on other major Aussie employers; try to help them see the value left in people who can't work full-time or on-site any more. Or if that proves too difficult, maybe they could offer some help in becoming steadily self-employed instead. (Try telling any DMS that you know there's literally no ready-made job opening anywhere you could actually fill so you need to become self-employed; all they see is 'not gonna get paid' and you're out the door in no time.)
The problem of PWDs being on DSP for our whole life isn't down to individuals lacking motivation. Australia ranks in the bottom third of OECD countries for employment rate of PWDs. Our society throws PWDs on the scrapheap prematurely, refusing to make even minor accommodations for us. Calling us 'working-age' people doesn't make the workforce at all willing to accommodate us. And until that's fixed, kicking PWDs off DSP is simply cruel.
Is a hardass capitalist boss really gonna see a cripple starving on a street corner and think, 'I'm gonna hire that guy!'?? Well that's what our ALP government is betting on.
