Federal Government disability support pension overhaul on 891ABC
09/01/2014
Kelly Vincent, MLC, Dignity For Disability (891ABC 9.07-9.16) Federal Government disability support pension overhaul
(Thomson: Kelly Vincent … MLC for South Australian Dignity for Disability … when you look around South Australia and needs for those with disabilities and the fact that this pension reform is on the table, what are your concerns?)
Well, Dignity for Disability’s primary concern is that before we begin discussion about overhauling the disability support pension we need to ensure that currently [unclear] the pension have an alternative source of income … only around 8% of people on the pension currently have access to some other form of income … we can’t accept a government that will sit around axing their primary income because then … they’re going to have less ability to go out and job search, less access to transport, food and so on … what actually needs to happen before the discussion is that the government builds a society that is ready to embrace people with a disability entering the workforce … by doing that … is both the physical and [unclear] infrastructure necessary to do that … things like more extras for workplaces but it’s [unclear] with disabilities and also cyber change … campaigns similar to what we see in Indigenous and youth … closing the gap to actually encourage and … embrace people with disabilities …
(Thomson: Kelly, given the fact that we’ve got the ear of the State today which includes all our regional areas, do you think those within regional South Australia are … encountering bigger barriers than those in the city?)
Oh absolutely … my office is regularly contacted by people who do have greater issues accessing services in regional areas … many people choose to move to capital cities in order to get a better deal but what they perhaps don’t realise when they move is what people mean when they say there are better deals in capital cities … often there are some and unfortunately … families of individuals often have to make the decision between having no services and some … that itself is ridiculous, particularly when people are trying to access the support mainly to enter work … there are often geographical barriers of accessing employment in regional areas as well … for people with disabilities who are already facing those other barriers … it’s very difficult.
(Thomson: Is this the problem, Kelly Vincent, that really does have a solution other than a political one?)
Well look … absolutely … very simple things that can be done. We as a society need to move forward to embrace … people with disability … my office is quite regularly contacted by people with … Masters Degrees who cannot find employment because they walk into a job interview and need to be asked questions, not about their skills and attributes, but about how do they go to the toilet and can they sit under a desk … if it is the right desk, ‘yes’ so we need to stop this [unclear] fascination that we have about people with disabilities and actually get ready to embrace the positive attributes and skills that many of us already …
(Thomson: are you eluding to the fact that … a potential employer might see that … this worker could be okay, but it’s gonna cost me an arm and a leg to employ them because of modifications I have to make?)
Absolutely and again I think there’s a lot of ignorance around government supports that already exist to support … employers to get the supports for employees with disability they need … research shows that people with disabilities are more loyal employees and also take less sick days than … their counterparts … that’s probably because it takes us so much longer to find a job that we hang onto it once we find it.
(Thomson: Kelly Vincent, thank you so much.)
Cassandra Goldie, CEO, ACOSS (891ABC 9.09-9.19) Federal Government disability support pension overhaul
(Thomson: Cassandra, earlier this morning … Kelly was talking about figures and saying … something like 8% … there’s only 8% of people receiving disability pensions at the moment that don’t have another form of income.)
Look, that’s right … there is this misconception that people with disability … celebrate the fact that they can come to government and get a handout … it’s just an absolute furphy, Stan. The truth is that having a disability can happen to absolutely anybody … tragically we’ve seen a number of incidents just over the young period of young people because of a terrible incident who will have a lifelong disability … this is a reality of … being a human society and one of the reasons why we have … seen a rise in the rates of disability … they’re actually in terms of being on the pension, for essentially good reasons, on the one hand that we’ve seen more people surviving … traumatic incidents because of medical advances and we should celebrate that … also with the rise in the number of people who are prepared to come out and say that they have a mental illness … we’ve worked hard to have that … seen as an absolutely legitimate, ordinary [unclear] of the human experience …
(Thomson: just received an SMS … saying, “This disability review will put many mental health people homeless.”)
Well, this is the real concern for us … I certainly hope that the Minister is coming from a place of … rattling the cage about why is it that people with disability are not getting the jobs that they are perfectly capable of doing, I think that’s the big reform that we all need to come together behind … we’ve certainly said that there is a place for us to put … targets in … why wouldn’t we have a Federal Government being a leader in this area in terms of employment when … in the last decade we’ve seen a reduction by almost half … in terms of the rate of employment … there are supports in place for employers, if you need just … refitting desks, et cetera but a lot of people don’t know about that and we understand that … how do we make that easier in terms of information … hubs of information for people? So that’s the work we would love to get behind … we would love to see a few of the big corporations come out in the New Year and say ‘we’ll be the first, we’ll set some targets ourselves, we are determined to be a part of the future here,’ because … the reality is … as we live longer and as we have the medical advances that we do, we will continuously see more and more people who are able to participate in paid work who have a range of abilities in terms of physical or other capabilities that can be easily accommodated if we’re committed to doing so.
(Thomson: … thanks very much for your time.)
