Beneficiary Advisory Service (BAS)

Contradictions and Crassness

Did anyone else notice the insane contradictions in the WWG’s suggestions for single parents?

First I notice that parents whose youngest child is 3 may be required to look for 20 hours work/week. They only get 20 hours/week free child care (if they are REALLY LUCKY) and that is per child. I.e. if you have a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old, they may be at childcare on different days (some of us like to spend quality time with each child if we can manage it).

Most people have to travel to work and (momentarily ignoring the lack of jobs magically available during the hours one is free) there simply isn’t time to work 20 hours/week in this situation. Even 15 would be a struggle. I work from home a few minutes from my daughter’s kindy and I struggle to find time to work 10 hours/week. There is often housework that has to be caught up on, appointments that need to be attended or errands that need to be run. These things are reality for everyone.

Does anyone remember that parents not working can still get 9 hours/week subsidised child care? This is because parenting is VERY HARD WORK and parents need a break every now and then to retain their last scrap of sanity. Has the Government / WWG forgotten that single parents probably work an average of at least 14 hours/day every single day?! Have they forgotten that when people are on benefits / low incomes they often live in sub-standard housing resulting in children who get too sick for pre/school regularly? Who can hold down a job in those circumstances?

As MANY other community groups and genuinely concerned citizens have mentioned, cutting the benefit of someone on the DPB will only harm children. There is no up-side to this. None at all.

The second thing I noticed is that (1) people with youngest child of 6 or more are expected to look for full-time work of 30 hours/week and (2) tying the benefit to a requirement that solo parents ensure their children go to school and get regular health checks. This strikes me as a little ridiculous. How can a single parent ensure their children actually make it to school and to their health checks if they are trying to hold down a low-paid, badly-unionised full-time job? If employers actually did employ marginalised people on the stupidly lawful 90-day trial period, who would be the first to get the sack? The single parent who has to take days off when any one of their kids is sick, when they have to go to the doctor with a child, when they have to see the principal due to the child’s bad behaviour (acting up when they don’t get the attention they need from their only parent), when they have to arrive late / leave early when babysitting has fallen through again ……

Many of the other suggestions just leave the bad-fascist-state taste in my mouth. Is it really necessary to try and control every aspect of people’s lives just because they are on a benefit? It is also continuing to ignore the uniqueness of individuals’ situations.

Some of the suggestions seem to make the assumption that people get pregnant to make more money / stay on the benefit. Punishment is not the solution to this problem, education is. This is not something most people on a benefit would do (for a start). The teeny tiny percentage of women on the DPB who might do this simply need to know some simple facts about life. There are genuinely people out there who do not know the “facts of life”. There are some people who may not realise that you will not get more money in the hand by having another baby. Children can get quite expensive!

Most people do not want to be on benefits. There simply isn’t enough money for the basic needs of life on an ongoing basis. If people are not complying with a work-test of drug and alcohol test, there is probably a good reason for this and that needs to be looked into.

The suggestion “Providing beneficiaries with long-term reversible contraception” really leaves me feeling uneasy. I am all for free (or affordable and readily available) options of long-term reversible contraception being available for everyone. Saying they are provided for beneficiaries implies some really nasty stuff. It also reminds me of countries we protest against (for violation of human rights) sterilising people.

What people need when they are on a benefit is the same thing we all need: enough money to provide our family with the necessities of life, dignity and respect as human beings, the same rights as other human beings in our society, the prospect of work and sometimes help to find / achieve this (including training opportunities). What they don’t need is to be marginalised and sanctioned based on unfair and untrue prejudices.

Do we want to live in a society that kicks people when they are down or one where we take care of each other? I know what I would prefer.

Rebecca Occleston, Speaker for Beneficiary Advisory Service.

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