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Budget gets it right for people with a disability

Author: Graeme Innes AM, Disability Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission

Published in The Australian, Thursday 19 May 2011.

Welfare and pension reforms are on the right track

PERSONAL disclosure No 1: My family income is more than $150,000. I come from a politically conservative family background, and I have a school-age daughter.

So I should be opposing the budget announcements to reduce middle-class welfare by freezing the threshold for family tax benefit at the $150,000 level, right?

Wrong. I'm all for it.

Disclosure No 2: I have a significant disability; I've always been blind. I'm part of the "rights industry''. I'm a lawyer and, in fact, I'm a member of the Human Rights Commission. And I have particular responsibilities for promoting disability rights. So I should be against the changes announced for disability support, right?

Wrong. I'm strongly supportive in principle and keen to be involved in making them work well.

Here's my take on combining a respect for people's rights with a responsible and conservative approach to spending public money: governments should focus on spending taxpayers' money in ways that assist people who need that assistance to have a decent life and to participate in and contribute to the community.

They should not spend it in ways that don't do this. Hence, my support for middle-class welfare cuts and disability welfare reform.

Last weekend, one newspaper proclaimed breathlessly that various budget announcements meant it would no longer be worthwhile for someone on $150k to get a pay rise to $160k because of the loss of various entitlements.

I have to confess to thinking, at the time, ``That's the kind of poverty trap that most people with disability, or families with a member with a disability, can but dream of.''

If we are thinking life on $150k is tough, we really need to take a moment to consider life on the Disability Support Pension.

These people and families are trapped in real poverty in ways that don't make tabloid full-page cartoon headlines. In fact, they don't make the serious pages very often either. They are trapped by formidable issues of effective marginal tax rates that are very real, by issues of participation costs and barriers of entrenched attitudes and assumptions.

I know a bit about some of those barriers from experience. When I started my working life, employers just couldn't process the idea of a blind lawyer. Eventually I got a job answering the phones, but at least it was a start. And I managed to start contributing as a skilled worker and paying my fair share as a taxpayer.

But there is plenty of evidence that lots of people with disability are still shut out on both counts.

The budget addresses some of the big poverty traps.

People will be able to work for up to 30 hours a week instead of 15 and not automatically lose all their DSP entitlements. Contrary to what the shock jocks may tell you, this isn't a rort, it's a sensible recognition of the costs that many people with disability face in engaging or re-engaging as productive employees and the fear of ending up with nothing if it doesn't work out.

The case management to be provided to DSP recipients who are trying to explore options for employment or skills development also has potential if done properly.

Beyond that, we have a welcome degree of bipartisanship and actual grown-up discussion of the need for a national disability insurance scheme, to take disability issues out of the welfare world and into a world that combines individual entitlements and maximisation of individual contributions to society. This doesn't make for easy tabloid cartoons, either, but it is far, far more important.

I am very pleased to see growing recognition on all sides of politics that the exclusion of people with a disability from much of the life of our community is a huge economic and social issue.

The details differ, but government and opposition alike have put forward big plans to address employment and disability, particularly for people affected by mental illness. But we still have big issues, such as the attitudinal barriers facing people with disability.

I surprised some friends in the disability community recently by backing business leaders in saying we needed fewer people on disability pensions. I will probably surprise more people by backing the government (and the opposition) in saying the same thing.

But I made it clear to business leaders this was not unconditional support, and I look to them for better results in achieving opportunity for people with disability.

That goes double for government. Within the federal public service itself, the proportion of people with disability is even lower now than it was 20 years ago. ``Massive fail'' is, I think, the way the present generation would describe that one.

So, I say there are some very good initiatives in the budget. But I also believe we require much more leadership by example.