FACT CHECK: IPA attack on welfare recipients shows prejudice not evidence
The Institute of Public Affairs welfare “research” released yesterday either wilfully misrepresents or completely misunderstands data related to income support payments and the National Disability Insurance Scheme to invoke “dole bludger” myths.
There is no evidence to support the IPA’s disgusting attack on poor and disabled people or the claim “there is a rapidly growing cohort who could work, but do not.”
It is designed to confect outrage in the lead-up to the 14 May federal budget and manufacture consent for the government’s plans to undermine the NDIS and its continued refusal to meaningfully relieve the extreme distress being felt by welfare recipients due to skyrocketing living costs.
The Antipoverty Centre is issuing this fact check using readily available public information given that media outlets who repeated the claims have failed to do so.
The IPA’s shameful twisting of facts comes as welfare recipients suffer under increasingly brutal conditions, including unliveable payment rates, housing insecurity and punishment meted out by the (un)employment services providers who administer compulsory “mutual” obligations. It ignores that poverty itself is a barrier to work, and that payments today leave people in far worse poverty than they did before COVID.
What income support data really shows is that the large drop in people receiving the Disability Support Pension coincides with a rapid rise in the number of disabled people on unemployment payments.
Welfare is not a dirty word. It should be every government’s highest priority to make sure that anyone who needs support can get it – something that neither major party has done.
The IPA calls for urgent action and we agree.
Labor must urgently increase all Centrelink payments to at least the Henderson poverty line, work with unemployed advocates to develop a sophisticated poverty measure, abolish “mutual” obligations and ensure every person who needs income support can get it.
There is no such thing as a responsible budget that leaves people in poverty.
Media contact: 0413 261 362 / media at antipovertycentre.org
Background information and key statistics
The time periods below correspond to those used by the IPA.
The IPA’s misleading claim states that there are 2.1 million people “receiving welfare”.
This language conflates social security payments such as JobSeeker and the Disability Support Pension with the NDIS, which does not provide money to participants and cannot be used for living expenses.
The IPA appears to have double counted some individuals, as many NDIS participants rely on an income support payment for living expenses.
The information published by the IPA wrongly implies that people on income support and NDIS participants do not do paid work.
Income support data
Note: 2013 and 2018 figures include Newstart and related payments that were replaced by JobSeeker in 2020.
There are 1.75 million people receiving the social security payments the IPA included in its figures (Disability Support Pension, JobSeeker and Youth Allowance). Of these, 194,000 are over 65 and would previously have qualified for the age pension (a welfare payment the IPA did not include in its figures) before changes introduced in 2017.
The proportion of people under 65 receiving these payments has fallen by 26% (from 7.89% of the population in 2013 to 5.81% today).
20% of people on an unemployment payment are employed but still receive a partial payment because their wages are so low (excluding student payment).
The increase of 32,735 in the number of people on an unemployment payment today compared to 2018 is exceeded by the increase in the number of people over 65 on an unemployment payment, which was 36,686 over the same period.
Following major changes introduced by the Gillard government, the number of people under 65 on the DSP fell by 121,852 between 2013 and 2018. Between 2018 and today it has fallen by another 32,347.
41.1% of people on an unemployment payment are unable to work more than 30 hours per week for health reasons, up from 25.1% in 2018. (2013 data not available.)
Since 2018, the average duration on income support for people receiving an unemployment payment has fallen slightly from 5.6 years to 5.5 years. (2013 data not available.)
Sources: DSS demographics (see: https://data.gov.au/dataset/ds-dga-cff2ae8a-55e4-47db-a66d-e177fe0ac6a0/details); ABS population (see: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population).
NDIS data
The total number of adults under 65 on the NDIS is 279,199.
As of 2021, more than half the people on the NDIS had not previously received disability support, but hundreds of thousands of people had accessed programs it replaced. These people do not represent an increase in the number of individuals receiving support.
NDIA data shows that NDIS support increases the number of participants in paid work.
Sources: NDIS participant data (see: https://data.ndis.gov.au/explore-data); NDIA media release (see: https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/7105-more-484000-australians-now-supported-ndis); NDIA media release (see: https://www.ndis.gov.au/news/9826-more-ndis-participants-and-families-and-carers-work-new-data-reveals).