Post by Banjo on Feb 1, 2014 9:20:39 GMT 7
Reality beyond the rorts of the disability support pension
The Prime Minister gave an interview to 2GB host Ray Hadley this week. It was a rollicking affair full of logical twists and rhetorical turns. Amid it all, a dystopian picture of Australia emerged.
In the Hadley world view (some call it paranoid; I prefer to think of it as imaginative), Australia is a place where the ABC left-wing-media-industrial-complex tramples the rights of navy personnel by reporting torture claims against them.
And while the ABC is flouncing around the Timor Sea, Hadley is flat out fighting off spurious allegations by broadcasting authorities.
''You know, and they find against me, and I didn't declare this and I didn't declare that,'' Hadley complained, as he guarded the public interest. ''I'm an honest, decent person and yet these blokes and these women get away with this on a daily basis and no one holds them accountable!''
Quite right, and as the Prime Minister said, his frustration is understandable.
That the ABC, along with Fairfax Media, this week broke a story of alleged union corruption - the same story Hadley used to open his interview - was neither here nor there.
Rein this mob in, Hadley urged the PM.
But the ABC's reporting of the torture claims of asylum seekers was not the only example of un-Australian activities Hadley canvassed.
There was more, and it was worse.
Hadley told Tony Abbott he had been ''inundated'' with calls in support of the review of the welfare system - excluding the age pension - announced last week by Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews.
Here, Hadley had hard evidence of rorting: he brought up the case of Brothers 4 Life gang member Mohammed Hamzy, who is charged with murder and other offences.
Hamzy, according to reports, claims the disability support pension, despite appearing very much like an able-bodied 28-year-old man. He is also reported to keep a Mustang and a Range Rover in his driveway.
Something about this just wasn't right.
''A bloke turning up in a high-powered, very expensive motor vehicle valued somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000, being revealed as being on the disability support pension, and it is costing us $15 billion a year!'' Hadley told the Prime Minister.
''I know we've got to be careful, we can't be, you know, taking away from people who need our support,'' he cautioned. ''But, by gee, Prime Minister, it does look for all intents and purposes both [the disability support pension] and Newstart are being rorted up hill and down dale.''
Such masterful extrapolation was convincing enough, but then the Prime Minister weighed in with his own example of DSP malingering.
''I read something in one of the papers today,'' Mr Abbott said. ''Someone who was before the courts for something which would suggest a level of physical capacity, was supposedly on the disability pension, and you really wonder about some of these things.''
Is this the reason for the welfare review? A bad-apple bikie and some bloke the Prime Minister read about recently who looked as if he might be ripping off the taxpayer?
Recently, we have been so repeatedly told the disability support pension is rorted, and it has blown out as a budget line item, that these things have become incontrovertible fact. These factish facts are then bolstered by Hadley-esque anecdotes of rorters and rippers-off. Everyone knows someone who knows one, or has at least seen one on a tabloid TV program: these people who live off us hard-working taxpayers, even though there is nothing wrong with them, or at least nothing a good run around the oval wouldn't fix.
But is it true? The numbers of people claiming the disability support pension have indeed blown out - between 1994 and 2012 the proportion of people of working age on the disability support pension grew from 4.3 per cent to 5.5 per cent. About 825,000 people now claim it.
But they're not all bikies with John Laws' taste in cars. There is a very strong correlation between disability and age, and about half the increase in disability support pension claimants is the result of the population ageing.
As usual, it's the baby boomers' fault. About 57 per cent of disability support pension recipients are aged over 50. As Ben Phillips, the principal research fellow at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, puts it, we are in the middle of the ''sweet spot'' where baby boomers are hitting the 50-ish to 64 age group, and their age makes them increasingly prone to disability.
There are other factors. According to a paper by Professor Peter Whiteford of the Australian National University, reforms to the welfare system during the past two decades, including the increase in women's pension age to 65 and the phasing out of ''dependency payments'' for wives, mean more older women have been pushed over to the disability support pension, even though fewer older women overall are on welfare.
Nonetheless, the number of people from all age groups claiming the disability support pension has increased, and individual behaviour - from unscrupulous bikies downwards - probably does play a part, because the pension is more lucrative than Newstart and indexed at a better rate. It is more financially attractive to go on the disability support pension rather than the dole, so human nature (not to mention financial distress) will lead more people to apply for it over Newstart.
This widening gap in the payments should be addressed; it's unfair and creates a bad incentive. But it does not mean the entire system is broken or unsustainable. In contrast with other countries, our system is reasonably efficient and well targeted.
Even if you do accept the premise that the welfare system needs an overhaul - actually, especially if you accept that premise - there is no sound reason to exclude the age pension from the welfare review.
The age pension has increased in the past decade, and its cost to the budget is expected to increase from about $36 billion to about $48 billion by 2016-17. This dwarfs the burgeoning cost of the disability support pension, which $15 billion now and will be $18.5 billion in 2016-17.
But until age pensioners start joining Brothers 4 Life and driving ostentatious wheels, we probably won't hear much about that.
Read more: www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/reality-beyond-the-rorts-of-the-disability-support-pension-20140131-31rrg.html#ixzz2s26fKShs
The Prime Minister gave an interview to 2GB host Ray Hadley this week. It was a rollicking affair full of logical twists and rhetorical turns. Amid it all, a dystopian picture of Australia emerged.
In the Hadley world view (some call it paranoid; I prefer to think of it as imaginative), Australia is a place where the ABC left-wing-media-industrial-complex tramples the rights of navy personnel by reporting torture claims against them.
And while the ABC is flouncing around the Timor Sea, Hadley is flat out fighting off spurious allegations by broadcasting authorities.
''You know, and they find against me, and I didn't declare this and I didn't declare that,'' Hadley complained, as he guarded the public interest. ''I'm an honest, decent person and yet these blokes and these women get away with this on a daily basis and no one holds them accountable!''
Quite right, and as the Prime Minister said, his frustration is understandable.
That the ABC, along with Fairfax Media, this week broke a story of alleged union corruption - the same story Hadley used to open his interview - was neither here nor there.
Rein this mob in, Hadley urged the PM.
But the ABC's reporting of the torture claims of asylum seekers was not the only example of un-Australian activities Hadley canvassed.
There was more, and it was worse.
Hadley told Tony Abbott he had been ''inundated'' with calls in support of the review of the welfare system - excluding the age pension - announced last week by Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews.
Here, Hadley had hard evidence of rorting: he brought up the case of Brothers 4 Life gang member Mohammed Hamzy, who is charged with murder and other offences.
Hamzy, according to reports, claims the disability support pension, despite appearing very much like an able-bodied 28-year-old man. He is also reported to keep a Mustang and a Range Rover in his driveway.
Something about this just wasn't right.
''A bloke turning up in a high-powered, very expensive motor vehicle valued somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000, being revealed as being on the disability support pension, and it is costing us $15 billion a year!'' Hadley told the Prime Minister.
''I know we've got to be careful, we can't be, you know, taking away from people who need our support,'' he cautioned. ''But, by gee, Prime Minister, it does look for all intents and purposes both [the disability support pension] and Newstart are being rorted up hill and down dale.''
Such masterful extrapolation was convincing enough, but then the Prime Minister weighed in with his own example of DSP malingering.
''I read something in one of the papers today,'' Mr Abbott said. ''Someone who was before the courts for something which would suggest a level of physical capacity, was supposedly on the disability pension, and you really wonder about some of these things.''
Is this the reason for the welfare review? A bad-apple bikie and some bloke the Prime Minister read about recently who looked as if he might be ripping off the taxpayer?
Recently, we have been so repeatedly told the disability support pension is rorted, and it has blown out as a budget line item, that these things have become incontrovertible fact. These factish facts are then bolstered by Hadley-esque anecdotes of rorters and rippers-off. Everyone knows someone who knows one, or has at least seen one on a tabloid TV program: these people who live off us hard-working taxpayers, even though there is nothing wrong with them, or at least nothing a good run around the oval wouldn't fix.
But is it true? The numbers of people claiming the disability support pension have indeed blown out - between 1994 and 2012 the proportion of people of working age on the disability support pension grew from 4.3 per cent to 5.5 per cent. About 825,000 people now claim it.
But they're not all bikies with John Laws' taste in cars. There is a very strong correlation between disability and age, and about half the increase in disability support pension claimants is the result of the population ageing.
As usual, it's the baby boomers' fault. About 57 per cent of disability support pension recipients are aged over 50. As Ben Phillips, the principal research fellow at the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, puts it, we are in the middle of the ''sweet spot'' where baby boomers are hitting the 50-ish to 64 age group, and their age makes them increasingly prone to disability.
There are other factors. According to a paper by Professor Peter Whiteford of the Australian National University, reforms to the welfare system during the past two decades, including the increase in women's pension age to 65 and the phasing out of ''dependency payments'' for wives, mean more older women have been pushed over to the disability support pension, even though fewer older women overall are on welfare.
Nonetheless, the number of people from all age groups claiming the disability support pension has increased, and individual behaviour - from unscrupulous bikies downwards - probably does play a part, because the pension is more lucrative than Newstart and indexed at a better rate. It is more financially attractive to go on the disability support pension rather than the dole, so human nature (not to mention financial distress) will lead more people to apply for it over Newstart.
This widening gap in the payments should be addressed; it's unfair and creates a bad incentive. But it does not mean the entire system is broken or unsustainable. In contrast with other countries, our system is reasonably efficient and well targeted.
Even if you do accept the premise that the welfare system needs an overhaul - actually, especially if you accept that premise - there is no sound reason to exclude the age pension from the welfare review.
The age pension has increased in the past decade, and its cost to the budget is expected to increase from about $36 billion to about $48 billion by 2016-17. This dwarfs the burgeoning cost of the disability support pension, which $15 billion now and will be $18.5 billion in 2016-17.
But until age pensioners start joining Brothers 4 Life and driving ostentatious wheels, we probably won't hear much about that.
Read more: www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/reality-beyond-the-rorts-of-the-disability-support-pension-20140131-31rrg.html#ixzz2s26fKShs
