www.australianreview.net/journal/v7/n1/morris.pdfPain and mythology:
Disability support pension recipients and work
Alan Morris, University of New South Wales
ABSTRACT
The Australian Government recently reformed policy on disability and work to make
people who are assessed as capable of working at least fifteen hours a week ineligible
for the Disability Support Pension (DSP). This article reports on a study based on six
focus groups with DSP recipients, illustrating that the new policy could have dire
implications for the people subject to it. Focus group participants were sceptical
about the possibility of finding employment and some expressed the belief that
discrimination by potential employers against people with a disability was common.
The perceptions and experiences of the participants suggest that to increase the
employment of current recipients of the DSP would require a major shift towards
policy informed by the social model of disability, and that the idea that current
policies can increase workforce participation is in the realm of mythology.
Introduction
The number of Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipients has dramatically
increased in many advanced economies over the last two decades (Sigg 2005).
Australia has been in the forefront of this trend. In 1985, 259,162 people were
receiving a DSP (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1994); by June 2004 the number had
more than doubled to 696,492 (Park 2005). The expansion of DSP recipients has
prompted the Australian Government to introduce a new policy on disability and
work, as part of its ‘mutual obligation’ approach to income support for the working
age population. Whereas the old policy assessed whether an individual was capable of
working at least 30 hours per week within two years, under the new, more stringent
policy which began on 1 July 2006, individuals are assessed to establish whether they
are able to work at least fifteen hours per week within two years (National Welfare
Rights Network 2006a). If the ‘Job Capacity Assessor’ concludes that an individual is
able to work at least fifteen hours a week, they are placed on the unemployment
benefit, Newstart Allowance, and have to sign an ‘Activity Agreement’. Individuals
have to fulfil the requirements of the Activity Agreement—and follow directives to
attend interviews, undertake particular training, and take jobs offered—to receive the
full rate of Newstart, to avoid penalties for ‘breaches’, and to maintain their income
support (National Welfare Rights Network 2006b). For those individuals who apply
for the DSP but are deemed ineligible, adhering to the Newstart Activity Agreement
could be very onerous.
Yet evidence suggests that attempts to place people with a disability in the workforce
have been disappointing. The recent report of a national inquiry into employment
and disability by the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
‘makes it abundantly clear that people with disability face higher barriers to participation
and employment than many other groups in Australian society’ (2005, p. 1). And
despite the extent and seriousness of the issue, Australian research on ‘the relationship
between disability and labour market outcomes … has … been very limited’ (Wilkins
2004, p. 359). The few existing studies have mainly been quantitative analyses of the
impact of disability on labour market participation or have focused on the link
between the state of the labour market and the number of DSP recipients.
Wilkins, drawing on the 1998 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, found that
‘disability is associated with much lower labour force participation … [and] the
presence of a disability decreases the probability of participation by 0.24 for males
and 0.2 for females’ (2004, p. 360). Not surprisingly, he also found that the more
severe the disability the more likely it is that the person concerned will not be able to
find employment and that the impact of disability was more adverse for older people
(aged 44 and over) (Wilkins 2004, p. 360). A study by Department of Family and
Community Services on people with a mental illness showed that only 1.5 per cent of
people with a primary psychiatric condition worked more than 40 hours per week,
compared to 29.7 per cent of the general population (cited in Bill et al. 2006, p. 211).
