Crisis at Services Australia is no accident – to fix it politicians must abandon prejudice
It’s Anti-Poverty Week, and this week the Antipoverty Centre (@antipovertycent) will be publishing accounts of experiences of living in poverty in Australia. In this post, Jay Coonan calls for a paradigm shift in government and community understanding of the social safety net. Jay is an antipoverty activist and unwaged social policy researcher relying on the welfare system to survive.
Recently, the Saturday Paper published explosive evidence that Services Australia, the agency tasked with ensuring people have access to welfare payments, is on the verge of collapse.
This isn’t news to those of us who rely on Centrelink payments, and it’s no accident. Chronic under-resourcing of Services Australia reflects the contempt our government has for people who need help.
Denying income support to those who need it kills people. This is the reality I am forced to confront in my work as a welfare advocate, while politicians shield themselves from the consequences of their choices.
I’m seeing unprecedented levels of distress among people who have a problem with their payment or are waiting for a claim to be processed, spending weeks getting nowhere. People call and simply cannot get through. We are at the point where many routinely have their phone number blocked by the agency. In desperation, some are turning to MPs to try and get help from Services Australia. Even this no longer works.
While the system fails, spin doctors blame seasonal pressure … an excuse that’s been rolled out since February.
Services Australia has been a shambles for some time. Instead of addressing the disaster, the government has been doing victory laps for inflated indexation increases and congratulating their pets.
Meanwhile, millions of people both in and out of work are suffering a cost of living crisis that is creating and entrenching mental health issues. Housing and healthcare are unaffordable. Food insecurity is high. Vital networks of mutual aid and formal supports are breaking down, while the government increasingly seeks to outsource responsibility for our survival.
We’re directed to overwhelmed food banks that overcharge for bad quality goods and aren’t even open to all who need them, or privatised community housing providers that cherry pick the most “desirable” poor people, while swallowing up the payment “increases” the government claims are to help us.
How did we get here?
Since the 1980s politicians have sought to force people off welfare into bullshit jobs with no security. While ‘dole bludger’ rhetoric has been softened and replaced with the myth of ‘welfare dependency’ across the political spectrum, this doesn't reflect a change of attitude but a shift designed to sell cruelty under the guise of benevolence.
The destruction of our social safety net, public housing and universal health care is a bipartisan neoliberal project. To get away with it, politicians and business leaders have turned the poorest people and working class against each other – sorting the “lifters” from the “leaners”.
As Commissioner Holmes wrote in the Robodebt Royal Commission report, “Anti-welfare rhetoric is easy populism, useful for campaign purposes. It is not recent, nor is it confined to one side of politics… those attitudes are set by politicians, who need to abandon for good (in every sense) the narrative of taxpayer versus welfare recipient.”
Discourse about responses to crisis in this country never focus on systemic issues, and the same is true of the ongoing disaster at Services Australia. It is not just a matter of fixing mismanagement and the toxic culture at the agency.
The government could radically improve problems at Services Australia tomorrow. It could immediately cease raising and collecting so-called debts that largely stem from the institutional failure that is playing out before our very eyes, redeploying those staff to process claims. They could get rid of confusing rules, waiting periods and the parental and partner income tests that trap people in dangerous homes. They could stop spying on us to save money and permanently increase staffing to sustainable levels.
Past political leaders have shown it’s possible to take ambitious action in response to crisis. In the aftermath of World War II soldiers returned to high house prices and expensive goods. Prices were regulated and massive investments were made in public housing. In 2020, the Morrison government increased some welfare payments to the Henderson Poverty Line and suspended “mutual” obligations overnight, two significant moves that people said changed their life. At the same time, they drastically increased capacity at Services Australia.
To make these types of changes, which we so desperately need, would see an increase in social spending – spending that would go directly back into the community and enable people to keep a roof over their heads, bills paid and bellies full.
They could do that, or they could continue down the path of disaster capitalism, obsessing over budget surplus, abdicating responsibility for our wellbeing to private institutions and cutting welfare supports to the bone.
Who is more worthy of support and public funds? Corporate companies and their board members who destroy our planet, people who accumulate massive assets and minimise their taxes, or those of us who are poorest?
Things are not looking up for welfare recipients and others on low incomes. The Albanese government has shown no sign it will abandon the rhetoric that has enabled harmful policies to flourish.
To fix Services Australia and rebuild the social safety net, we need the whole community. It is time to get behind us and make politicians fear the consequences of failing to support the people who need it most.
Content moderator: Antipoverty Centre