"The government should offer us euthanasia": senate inquiry hears stories of DSP failings
Evidence the government is forcing disabled people into extreme poverty, harmful employment programs and denying the DSP to those who are entitled to it has been presented at senate hearing
Download the Antipoverty Centre and People with Disability Australia joint submission to the Disability Support Pension inquiry here.
Today the Antipoverty Centre and People with Disability Australia (PWDA) gave evidence at a parliamentary inquiry into the Disability Support Pension (DSP), presenting evidence that government policy choices are harming disabled people and causing deaths.
DSP recipient Kristin O’Connell and Jay Coonan from the Antipoverty Centre with PWDA’s Giancarlo de Vera provided evidence of extreme poverty, harmful employment programs and pervasive practices that lead Centrelink to deny support to disabled people who are entitled to it.
Hundreds of thousands of disabled people are living in poverty according to data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.1 Almost every person included in statistics that show the extraordinary poverty experienced by disabled people has a harrowing story to tell. One young woman living on JobSeeker told us:
The government should offer us euthanasia, because that would be kinder than denying our existence. I really hope things can get better I'm so tired and I'm so unwell. On my current level of money I can't see a way out. I'm eating once every 2-3 days and I desperately need medication that I have no way of paying for, now or for the foreseeable future. Thank you for asking these questions. I feel invisible most of the time and it's really touching to be acknowledged. – name withheld
Liz is an older woman who applied for the DSP and was rejected. She has been trying to survive on JobSeeker for more than 5 years. She told us:
My experience of going for the DSP has been that of fear, stress and humiliation. I feel the system they have put in place is so exhaustive and dehumanising that people, like me, give up defeated and still ill. I have wanted to reapply, but am scarred by the former experience. I feel l need help to do it and they make it so hard.
Quotes attributable to Kristin O’Connell, a Disability Support Pension recipient and spokesperson for the Antipoverty Centre:
Our evidence to this inquiry is about the daily experiences of disabled people on income support. The ghouls in parliament who make decisions about our lives will never understand the magnitude of barriers we face, nor the horrific choices they force us to make by keeping us on starvation payments. They need to put ideology aside, listen and find some humanity.
Both the Coalition and Labor should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. As we have seen from the Disability Royal Commission, and now through this inquiry, government cruelty towards disabled people knows no bounds.
Those of us on the DSP are struggling to pay for food and bills, let alone our medication, healthcare, suitable accommodation and other supports we need. And the hundreds of thousands of disabled people left to rot on JobSeeker have it far, far worse.
The NDIS just doesn’t cut it. I’m lucky to be on the NDIS, but 88% of disabled people aren’t, and it doesn’t cover things like medication and GP appointments or help with rent. The government’s excuse that the low DSP rate is justified by providing NDIS funding is lazy and callous.
It’s clear we have a long, long way to go until disabled people are fully included in society and the workforce. I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. The DSP must act as a lifelong support to help us live a full life when we are unable to work and recognise the extraordinary long-run costs of poverty for those of us with little hope of ever having steady employment.
Quotes attributable to Giancarlo de Vera, Senior Manager of Policy at People with Disability Australia:
Without economic security, people with disability are blocked from social participation, blocked from employment opportunities and blocked from fully realising our rights. The Disability Support Pension causes us suffering and we are pleading with you to stop it.
Hundreds of people with disability and our advocates have contributed expertise to this inquiry.We have exposed beyond doubt what many already knew: the DSP is not adequate and falls far short of community expectations.
This government can reverse the trend of punitive changes that have pushed more and more people with disability to rely on unemployment payments.
The parliament should never have been comfortable with sentencing people to a life of poverty, creating a lower caste of people with disability because we are not seen to have the same economic value by employers. But it’s never too late to change for the better.
DSP policy must be based on the needs of people with disability and not on the fallacy that the federal budget must be balanced on the backs of the least well-off people in society.
This country’s utterly inadequate income support system is killing and harming people with disability. You can choose to stop it.
Background
Submission #1: failings of the DSP and proposals to create a payment that upholds disabled people’s rights
Submission #2: stories and experiences of disabled people (contact using details below to obtain a copy)
Starting with changes introduced by the Gillard government in 2011, which saw the number of disabled people receiving the DSP drop dramatically from about 90,000 per year in 2010–11 to 31,000 in 2017–18,2 successive changes by both major parties have made the DSP harder to access and less supportive.
Disabled people in this country experience extraordinary rates of poverty:
38% have an income of less than $384 per week, which is less than half the poverty line of $872.3
About 42% of working age people with disability rely on income support as our main source of income, compared to 8% of those without disability.4
At $547 per week including supplements and maximum rent assistance, the DSP is $325 or 37% below the poverty line.5
We estimate there are close to 500,000 disabled people on the JobSeeker payment of $381 per week ($491 below the poverty line for disabled people) in employment services programs.6
Media contacts
Antipoverty Centre: Kristin O’Connell, 0413 261 362, media at antipovertycentre.org
PWDA: Michael Badorrek, 0408 682 867, michaelb at pwd.org.au
270 disabled people shared their stories with us for this inquiry and their voices are included throughout the submissions. People who shared their personal experiences are available for interview by contacting Kristin O’Connell.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, ‘Data tables: Income supplementary data tables’, People with disability in Australia, 2 October 2020, access via https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/data?page=3.
Collie et al, 2019, The Health of Disability Support Pension and Newstart Allowance Recipients: Analysis of National Health Survey Data, Insurance Work and Health Group, School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Monash University, access via: https://apo.org.au/node/257481.
The Henderson poverty line is currently $871.67 per week when accounting for the higher cost of living with disability. The single person poverty line for the general population is $581.11 per week (https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/publications/poverty-lines). The cost of an equivalent standard of living is 50% higher for disabled people (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13561-020-00264-1).
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, ‘Data tables: Income supplementary data tables’, People with disability in Australia, 2 October 2020, access via https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/data?page=3.
Department of Social Services, DES Data 30 June 2021’, DES Monthly Data, 6 July 2021, Labour Market Information Portal, access via: https://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/Downloads/DisabilityEmploymentServicesData/MonthlyData; Department of Education Skills and Employment, ‘jobactive and Transition to Work (TtW) Data – June 2021’, jobactive and Transition to Work (TtW) Provider Caseload by Selected Cohorts, 4 August 2021, Labour Market Information Portal, access via: https://lmip.gov.au/default.aspx?LMIP/Downloads/EmploymentRegion; JobSeeker rate: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/centrelink/jobseeker-payment/how-much-you-can-get.
