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Post by carer1 on Sept 22, 2012 15:51:17 GMT 7
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Post by Banjo on Sept 22, 2012 16:32:53 GMT 7
Government policy driving dole growth Andrew Baker | ON LINE Opinion | 12 September 2012
The number of people who have been on the $245 per week Newstart Allowance for more than a year has increased by 80,000 people over three years – from about 270,000 in July 2009 to 350,000 in July 2012.
At the same time the number of Newstart recipients who have been on the payment for less than a year fell by 56,000 - from 288,000 in July 2009 to 232,000 in July 2012.
But behind these figures lies an even bigger problem - a growing number of long-term Newstart recipients enjoy some kind of exemption from job-search requirements.
It would be natural to blame the global financial crisis or the European debt crisis for the increased number of long-term Newstart recipients, but the reality is that government policy has been driving this growth.
The number of long-term jobseekers - or people on Newstart who are required to look for work - has remained relatively flat - increasing from about 155,000 to 164,000 over the three years to July 2012.
By comparison, over the same period, the number of people on Newstart who have some kind of exemption from job-search requirements has sky-rocketed by about 70%, from 104,000 to 176,000.
This growth has been partly matched by an increase of 50,000 in the number of people engaged in training or education, which has more than doubled in three years.
More troubling is the 250% increase (from 13,841 to 35,114) in the number of long-term Newstart recipients who are classified as "incapacitated" and are effectively in the 'too hard basket'.
Growth in these figures should not come as a surprise to the government because increasing the number of people on Newstart has been a deliberate consequence of some of their welfare-to-work policies.
For example, the growth in the number of people in training can be explained by the temporary operation, from July 2009 to July 2011, of a $41.60 per fortnight training supplement for Newstart and Parenting Payment (PP) recipients who hadn't finished high school.
The minister responsible at the time, Julia Gillard, described the supplement as "a modest, practical measure to ensure those most at risk of becoming long term unemployed in the days of the global recession are properly skilled when the economy begins to recover."
Well intentioned though it was, it seems all that the supplement did was exempt from job-search requirements a group of people who had been on Newstart for a very long time.
While the introduction of the training supplement would be best described as an unintended consequence of a well-intentioned policy, it has been the specific purpose of other government policies, particularly budget savings measures, to push people onto Newstart and keep them on that payment for longer.
For example, the increased number of Newstart recipients who are "incapacitated" can be partly explained by a $400 million savings policy measure requiring Disability Support Pension (DSP) applicants to have their ability to work tested before they can receive the $370 per week pension.
The introduction of tougher DSP impairment tables has also had a significant impact on the overall number of people on DSP. The number of rejected DSP claims has increased (from 4,973 in July 2011 to 6,320 in June 2012) with a corresponding decrease in acceptances (from 6,223 to 4,640 over the same period).
The combined effect of these two reforms has been a decline in the overall number of people on DSP by about 4,000 since the beginning of this year, but it also means that more people will be on Newstart for longer.
This trend is likely to continue given the Gillard Government's 2012 announcement of nearly $700 million in savings over four years from increased participation requirements for PP recipients. The savings are largely the result of PP recipients moving on to the less generous Newstart payment.
This has seen government projections for the average amount of time people are on the PP (Single) decline from 361 weeks in 2011-12 to 340 weeks in 2015-16. However, over the same period, the equivalent projections for Newstart increased from 178 weeks to 213 weeks.
The government has already ruled out an 'immediate' increase in the dole. This is not surprising - a significant part of the government's welfare-to-work strategy and more than $1 billion in savings are dependent on more people being on Newstart for longer.
The increasing number of people who are on the dole but are exempted from job-search requirements is a serious concern. If people on the dole are not required to look for work, they will stay on the dole for longer. Addressing this issue should be the government's priority instead of increasing the base rate of Newstart Allowance.
Andrew Baker is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.
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Post by Banjo on Sept 22, 2012 16:34:26 GMT 7
Welcome to the board carer1, I copied and pasted the document for you.
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Post by peter on Sept 24, 2012 10:42:06 GMT 7
Very interesting. So the NewStarters are not all job seekers. It would be interesting to know how many are not job seekers. They seem to like one classification to cover many different categories.
People in training seem to have a job search exemption but is NewStart the place for job trainees? There is Aus Study.
Another large group is the home schoolers. If one home schools a child, one gets NewStart.
Another group is foster carers. If one is a foster carer one gets NewStart.
Both home schoolers and foster carers were placed on NewStart by the Howard government.
So they have got a lot of people on NewStart who are not really NewStarters.
And because the list is growing too long, rather than analyse the list to see who is there and why they are there, the government has decided on a broad brush solution to keep the payment low enough to starve some of them off the list.
But there is a big difference between someone actively looking for work as a genuine NewStarter, and someone being on the list for years.............twenty years in the case of some.
Its not a system, just something that has been allowed to grow unsystematically, according to the convenience of the day. When that happens one ends up with a mess like this.
Then they complain about the cost. They need to learn that they cannot give everything to everyone, try as they might, so what happens is that they give a bit to everyone, so that need gets submerged under convenience and popularity and it then costs a lot for a job half done.
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Post by peter on Sept 24, 2012 11:05:34 GMT 7
Government Bribes People To Stay Single.
The Parenting Payment Single is paid to unpartnered people up to the age of when the child is eight.
The average expected duration of people on PPS is predicted to be 340 weeks in 2015-2016 which is seven years.
So very few marriages take place amongst People on PPS for the simple reason that they would lost their payment.
The government brays about how they support working families, and then ends up with policies like this that make sure that one large group will never know what a complete family is.
When Centrelink is the husband, there is no need for most for another.
Society seems to have turned into cuckoo land and its accepted as normal.
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alaus
Junior Member
Posts: 4
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Post by alaus on Sept 25, 2012 12:31:50 GMT 7
Government Bribes People To Stay Single. Exactly. The gov't's hidden agenda is a society of single, landless, renting slaves. Why single? Because families empower themselves. Families stick together, build and keep wealth, and inherit assets to their kids. It's impossible to enslave a society which is full of strong families. It's very easy to enslave a society full of singles. That's why the global oligarchs sponsored the feminism movement. Not because the had any respect for women whatsoever, but because it was going to destroy many families...
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