Leading welfare groups have attacked the Turnbull government and sections of the media for a spate of stories “unfairly misrepresenting” unemployment benefits data to “vilify” and “demonise” the 800,000 Australians who cannot find a job.
The welfare leaders pointed to the Daily Telegraph’s Tuesday story headlined “Booze drugs dole rort ... dole grubs shirking work”, and other recent stories including one titled “A quarter of dole recipients shirking appointments and jobs”, both “exclusives” based on government data.
“We are very concerned that the government and parts of the media have been pushing story after story unfairly misrepresenting data and vilifying the unemployed as undeserving dole bludgers ahead of next week’s budget. It has all the signs of a softening-up campaign, demonising people who can’t get a job to pave the way for further ‘crackdowns’,” said the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie.
“This isn’t the way to achieve good public policy. It does immediate and real harm to the hundreds of thousands of people who are already living the reality of not being able to get a job and who are being demonised. I urge the prime minister and his ministers to think about the human impact of these stories.”
Tuesday’s story was based on figures from the Department of Human Services showing that at the point of time when the study was done 70,000 people it described as “dole bludgers” – about 8% of all Newstart recipients – had received a doctor’s certificate to show they were too sick to undertake the normally required job search activities.
“Tens of thousands of bludgers are using a medical scam – claiming “illnesses” including drug and alcohol abuse – to get the dole without having to find a job,” the story said.
Goldie, and the chief executive of Jobs Australia, David Thompson, said the level of medical exemptions would have risen after major changes to eligibility for the disability pension – forcing many people with a “partial” capacity to work onto the lower unemployment benefit.
“By definition those people will have periods when they are unwell and unable to work,” Goldie said.
A spokesman for the social services minister, Christian Porter, said the minister was not concerned about the overall level of medical exemptions at any one time, around 8% nationally, but the fact that in some regions the numbers were far higher than the average – for example 55.8% in the NSW central coast or 30% in Sydney’s inner west.
“The government is not demonising jobseekers, it is cracking down on people who are doing the wrong thing,” the spokesman said.
“The government fully accepts that people will have medical issues that mean they cannot look for work for a period of time. The government’s concern is not that some people are too sick to look for work, but that there are specific locations where more than half the welfare recipients in that region are not looking for work because they have a doctor’s certificate. Moreover, in one location the rate is more than eight times the national average – raising serious questions about what is happening in that location. This is of significant concern.”
Goldie said she agreed governments should “track down and stop” people doing the wrong thing, and the welfare sector would be happy to help solve such problems, but the data was being presented in a way that vilified all unemployed people and all 70,000 who had received a medical exemption at the time of the survey.
She pointed to the Telegraph’s editorial, based on the 70,000 figure, which was headlined “Bludgers have had a free run for too long” and began: “If only these people put as much work into looking for honest work as they put into finding ways to rort the system.”
Thompson said the second story: “A quarter of dole recipients shirking appointments and jobs” was also “unfair”, saying it was appalling that anyone unemployed was characterised as a “shirker” or a “bludger”.
That story reported data released by the Department of Employment that “revealed that in just three months — between 1 July and 30 September 2015 — an alarming 276,000 job seekers had their welfare payments suspended”.
Gerard Thomas, policy and media officer with the Welfare Rights Centre, said the period in question coincided with major changes to the job seeker rules, during which around 350,000 job seekers were shifted to different employment service providers, causing inevitable confusion about where they had to go for their first appointment with a new provider. Missing an appointment leads to an automatic suspension, but almost all the jobseekers in question had their payments reinstated with full back-pay, suggesting they had a “good reason” for not attending an appointment.
The same figures show 7,192 jobseekers had received a more serious penalty for failing to attend and interview, and only 209 had been penalised for refusing a suitable job.
“The facts are there are far fewer jobs than there are people chasing them. The vast majority of jobseekers just want to find work and these stories humiliate them,” Thompson said.
“Of course governments have to make sure people don’t do the wrong thing, but these stories vilify all jobseekers because of the mistakes of a small minority.”
The welfare leaders are also concerned at reports citing predictions that Australia’s “welfare bill” will rise to $190bn by 2020, with the implication that the total amount, and the increase, is due to unemployment benefits.
In fact unemployment benefits represent around 7% of that “welfare” figure and are falling as a percentage of gross domestic product, whereas pension payments represent 40% and are rising, and family and childcare payments represent 25%.
