more news today 30 april

[ronald55]

This morning on Sky News there was a story about dsp. It was about eligibility and the 13 week rule. More to come after I read the papers.

[Banjo]

Found this at their site.


Govt urged to tighten disability pension
Updated: 06:40, Friday April 30, 2010

The federal government has been challenged to go further in its bid to get people off the disability support pension (DSP) and into the workforce.

In response to the growing number of DSP recipients, currently around 780,000, the government plans to tighten the medical test that determines a person's ability to work.

The government expects the new test, which will come into effect from 2012, will result in 6500 fewer recipients.

It will fast-track the claims of people who are clearly eligible for the pension, meaning that those who are not will be streamed out of the system earlier.

The loophole for recipients who live permanently overseas, but return to Australia every 13 weeks to retain their pension, will also be closed.

The changes are designed to cut the growing number of DSP recipients, which has tripled since the 1980s and currently costs taxpayers about $8.5 billion a year.

New research from conservative think-tank The Centre for Independent Studies suggests the measures will only have a limited effect and alternative strategies are needed.

Policy analyst Jessica Brown says the best option is to apply the 15-hour work rule, introduced under the former Howard government's Welfare to Work scheme, to all DSP recipients.

From 2006, all new DSP recipients had to prove they could not work for 15 hours a week to be eligible for the pension, down from 30 hours a week.

The changes slowed the rate of new DSP recipients, but did not encourage existing recipients back into work because the changes did not apply to them.

In the paper, Defeating Dependency: Moving Disability Support Pensioners into Jobs, Ms Brown says the 15-hour rule should apply retrospectively.

Waiting for the natural rate of attrition to bring down the number of DSP pensioners will take decades, she says.

'While moves to tighten entry requirements to DSP are a step in the right direction, alone they are not enough,' Ms Brown writes in her paper.

'If new applicants are subject to the stricter work tests, it seems only fair and equitable that existing recipients are subject to the same rules.

'And making those changes retrospective could help reduce the number of people on DSP without unfairly targeting those who cannot rejoin the workforce.'

Ms Brown says it's a politically sensitive area but she challenged the government to act, suggesting the upcoming Henry tax review was a good opportunity.

'There is broad bi-partisan agreement that with the ageing population having more people relying on welfare is just not sustainable,' she told AAP.

'The government is going to have to overcome the political considerations and make these measures retrospective.'

Treasury secretary Ken Henry has signalled that addressing high rates of welfare dependency will be a focus of his report, which the government will unveil on Sunday.

[Banjo]

Get back to us if you find it in the print media Ron and we'll get some letters off.

'And making those changes retrospective could help reduce the number of people on DSP without unfairly targeting those who cannot rejoin the workforce.'

A breath of hope?
I don't have time to think about it now, big day with visa, fares, family etc....

[Banjo]

I suspect that the main attack will be on younger pensioners who are capable of working. The previous government pushed thousands of unemployed onto the DSP to make their "jobless" figures look good.
Personally I think a lot of people will be looking at part time work, or being made to hang around in case it becomes available.
You never know, if us older blokes make a big enough nuisance of ourselves we may weasel out of it, it's ridiculous to think about putting us back in the work force when there's people half our age on the pension who would love a job.

[Banjo]

I'm not suggesting that all younger pensioners are employable any more than all older ones are unemployable.
It was said to me this week that if I could sit on a plane for ten hours I could be sitting at a desk. All need is someone who will pay me for spending a day sitting at a desk watching crap movies, eating garbage food and having to spend most of the next week lying down with back pain.

[rodcourt49]

...I have this gut feeling that Fed Govt will introduce Government Medical Officers who are appointed/approved by Social Welfare, no longer accepting our GPs who evaluated us and completed the application medical form...I also reckon once the Impairment Tables have been revised/amended we will all face a full Review and re-evaluation..if the Govt cops enough flack in the meantime..which doesn't seem to be the case cause they've said that they will take on 1,500 new cases who were otherwise not eligible in return for cutting 6,500 who are getting the DSP and appear to be no longer worthy/valid claimants. A case of 'the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away'. But saying all that, historically with each amendments ie in 2001 and 2004, the system is 'grandfathered' and with this Henry guy and others 'challenging' the Fed Govt to make everyone retrospective seems like 'gloom and doom' imminent. A nervous 8 months to come I feel..what about you others?

[Banjo]

I think that that the majority of us will be in the "too hard basket".
When I had the DSP cut off last year for overstaying I was treated as a job seeker while waiting to be reinstated. I was sent for several assessments by private firms and another government department, I disrecall the name, and was very quickly deemed unemployable. One lady rang C'link in front of me and berated them for wasting her time.

My personal feelings about the changes is that they will be about the time we can spend outside the country. A figure of 3 months every 2 years was bandied about by the Welfare Rights people last year, but that was what they thought the current guidelines were. Obviously they are not right, we all spend more than that without too much harassment at the moment. Provided we return every three months.

I think all of us should set up a realistic postal residential address in Australia. C'link being a government department and a lover of paperwork will almost certainly come up with a list of criteria which has to be met to prove our Australian residency, and you can bet this will be one of them.
Be careful what you tell them about your living arrangements in Thailand or any other country outside of Australia.

[Banjo]

Apr 30, 2010 3:33:09 GMT 7 @ronald55 said:

This morning on Sky News there was a story about dsp. It was about eligibility and the 13 week rule. More to come after I read the papers.

Here's the original report, doesn't say much about overseas.

Defeating Dependency:
Moving Disability Support Pensioners Into Jobs
Jessica Brown
Jessica Brown is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.

People with disabilities are often among the most disadvantaged in our society. There is widespread
support for the idea that as a community, we should provide financial assistance to those who cannot
adequately support themselves because of their disability.
However, the huge growth in the number of people relying on Disability Support Pension (DSP) has
sparked concern among policymakers from both sides of the political divide. In the mid-1980s, about
one in every 40 working-age people relied on DSP; by the mid-2000s, this had doubled to one in 20.
There are now more than 750,000 disability support pensioners in Australia. For most people,
a move onto DSP means a lifetime on welfare. The majority of recipients stay on DSP until they die
or go onto the Age Pension. Just over 1% leave welfare each year to get a job. And taxpayers spend
more than $8.5 billion on DSP each year.
More than half of all disability pensioners come from other welfare payments, and most of these
come from unemployment benefits. Many existing disability pensioners are not compelled to ever
look for work again, so few do.
There is a growing consensus that simply consigning people with a disability to a life of dependency
is damaging for both the individual and the community. It’s a lose-lose situation: individuals are
isolated from social and community life, while taxpayers pick up the tab.
The reforms introduced by the Howard government in 2006 tightened eligibility for new recipients
and have had some success in slowing the rate of growth in DSP numbers. The Rudd government has
also announced changes designed to further restrict eligibility for new applicants that will take effect
in July 2010. But as both these reforms target new applicants rather than existing recipients, they will
not lower the overall number of disability pensioners or increase the incentive for existing recipients
to look for work.
If the government wishes to reduce the number of disability support pensioners, it must embrace
strategies to encourage existing recipients back into the workforce.
Two-thirds of DSP recipients have ‘moderate,’ ‘mild’ or ‘less than mild’ limitations, yet less than
10% work. One reason for this is that the definition of ‘able to work’ is inconsistent. DSP recipients
who applied after the 2006 reforms are assessed ‘able to work’ if they can manage a job for 15 hours
a week, in which case they are moved onto Newstart Allowance and given job search requirements.
But recipients who were on DSP prior to the reforms are not considered ‘able to work’ and do not
have to move onto Newstart until they can work for 30 hours.
Subjecting those recipients who were on DSP prior to 2006 to the 15-hour rule would correct
this inconsistency and would undoubtedly result in a large number of disability pensioners being
reassessed as ‘able to work.’