Disabled?  Well come this way, you're only a Means Test away from Mana!

Disability Pensions.  Its one of those issues that tends to crop up every few years as a bit of a political football, and guess what... its footy season in Canberra.

The Government, without too much media fanfare, is planning to cut $500M from the Disability Pension budget.  To do this, they are spending up on equipping disabled people with the skills to gain employment, at a fairly large cost.

In addition, they are spending $534M over four years on "stepped up compliance measures".  This, in layman's terms, means they are spending $534M on extra staffing and associated costs to make sure that an additional 61,000 people are called in to have their level of disability reviewed.

So what's my point?  Well I, like most, do not want to see bludgers rort the system.  I want to make sure there are measures in place to ensure that the system cannot be fooled into handing out free money to the greedy.

But what will this new government initiative do?  It will create a huge amount of angst amongst those who are truly needy.  It will cause those with disabilities to go through a government medical examination which is not pleasant.  It will, as the article below suggests, send margin cases out into the workforce when they are ill-prepared and essentially cut them off from a reasonable standard of living.

And what of the "bludgers"?  Are they going to escape?  Probably... I can see them a) avoiding medicals and other forms of assessment b) faking it once they do get caught c) appealing the decisions and spending extra time and expense taking their pathetic cases through the courts.

Instead, leave the people of disability welfare alone.  99% of them are legitimate cases and hence they should be left alone.  Instead, the government could simply spend a fraction of its intended outlay on competent and well supported staff to ensure that bludgers no longer can rort the system - be it disability or any other pension.

RELATED READING

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/13/1052591797868.html