What sort of mad bureaucracy is this?
I’ve never understood why both major parties in Australia seem to feel the need to, while maintaining a basically adequate welfare system, use it to demean and disenfranchise its recipients rather than actually helping them get out of whatever situation they may be in. I can’t see what purpose could possibly be served by justify making people who are already struggling dance through utterly pointless bureaucracy so they can retain enough money to survive, with the threat of nasty sanctions if they somehow stuff up.
As a student, I have it a lot better than I would if I were unemployed. Nevertheless, I had my own run-in with this sort of patent idiocy this week, after I discovered to my surprise on Friday that the small payment I rely on to get by had been suspended for no apparent reason. As it turned out, while visiting family in Victoria, I’d been called in for an interview, and since I didn’t know anything about it because I was away and thus missed it, it’d been marked down as some sort of violation, and their first step is to take the nuclear option and cut payments. How on earth is this logical?
These interviews not a bad idea as such. They last about five minutes, they make sure you’re alive and your circumstances haven’t changed, and they send you on your way. What they’re not, however, is important. A more sensible solution would be to call the recipient up and reschedule rather than cut off their payments without warning. Instead, they use the nuclear option. While I’ve been able to fix things this time, the next step, so I’ve been told, were I to miss another one in the future for any reason, would be to cut off my payments entirely for eight weeks. This, for most people, would result (as a consequence of making them unable to pay their rent for eight weeks) in them being tipped out onto the street indefinitely. This is madness.
Making recipients of welfare go through a mountain of bureaucracy, and then backing it up with the nuclear option for any minor slight isn’t just unreasonable, it’s bad policy. Firstly, it’s bad social policy. Disempowering people by drowning them in bureaucracy to get their basic benefits is no way to try and get them into work; it is this sort of disempowerment that in many cases turns the just unemployed into the long-term unemployed. Idiotic sanctions such as making the unemployed homeless isn’t going to get them off the dole queue - it’s going to make sure they stay there for a heck of a lot longer. It’s also bad economic policy - since if you’re keeping people on welfare, you’re going to have to pay that continued cost indefinitely. Alas, it seems that both major parties today are too enamored with the option of just kicking the downtrodden to pursue any actual logical policy of dealing with those on welfare.
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Posted: by Rebecca January 22nd, 2007 under Personal, Centrelink.
Comments: 4
Comments
Comment from Kieran
Time: January 23, 2007, 10:24 am
I’ve had the same thing happen, whilst visiting my parents during the holidays, Centrelink send a letter informing me of an interview I’m required to attend. Obviously they send it to my “term address”. By the time I get it, I’ve already had my payments suspended.
Once I tried to prevent this by reporting that for the next few weeks I would be at my parents place, because it was the holidays, and could they please send the mail there?
I had my payment cut off completely, I was aparantly no longer living away from home for the purposes of study.
Wonderful.
Comment from Verity
Time: January 25, 2007, 3:04 pm
They are incredible, everyone I know who is or has been in some way connected to Centrelink has a bad story. I have a friend who graduated from uni, went on the dole and was then threatened with being cut off if she didn’t take jobs at a fast food outlet, I knoe people living in poverty unable to get Youth Allowance because her parents both make the “lifestyle choice” to work parttime jobs, that this is the only work they can get is not regarded. I’ve had my payment suspended three times in two weeks due to admin errors, been listed as suspicious and in need of regular checks on my rent assistance because I oved house and had that rent assistance reduced whilst my rent increased.
The current system is not only unfairly difficult and punitive, it does not make sense. All of my current political affiliations aside, any government who promised to reform Centrelink in a positive and realistic way would have my vote. In fact with almost a quarter of Australians using Centrelink in some way and the ripple effect from that I think any party who made such promises would be elected.
Comment from Robyn Taylor
Time: April 11, 2007, 5:29 pm
I have a friend who is on a pension and is currently going through the centrelink hoops because he has earned $100.00 in one month. they have already cut his pension once and now threaten to do it again! The paperwork that he received from centrelink states that he can earn $132.38 per fortnight without affecting his pension, now the idiots behind the counter at a centrelink office are saying he is earning too much..$25.00 per week???. There is no question that the stupidity and ambiguity of the policies that are embodied within centrelink are open to interpretation by who you deal with rather than the intended meaning of the policy. My friend has now contacted four people and has been given four different interpretations. How do you deal with this seeming lack of intellect provided by those who play God with peoples ability to survive in this world. Perhaps the government should do what it has done with everything else and sell off centrelink to some foriegn entity that may be able to provide a more consistent approach, it honestly could not get any worse than this!
Comment from David Bath
Time: April 11, 2007, 7:50 pm
The (dis)service by Centrelink is a consequence of poor policies and management practices that either are unaware of policies or incapable of implementing them. See my earlier post on the Audit Office’s opinion of how Centrelink mismanages.
The disservice to citizens from “administrative error” is really caused by “senior management error” and ministers who do their best to me misinformed. It is only compounded by policies that are aimed at destroying the welfare system we used to have, and serves economically viable countries (such as the Nordics) so well.
Businesses are so often treated better than people - consider the mere slap on the wrists many listed companies get from ASIC for being late with reports to the market.
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