Centrelink: More Than Just Money
It is no secret that the pandemic has shone the spotlight on our public institutions. Perhaps the most prominent example of this has been Centrelink: a system which is intended to provide support for the most vulnerable but which is routinely shown to be arbitrarily restrictive. While some of the problems are obvious, the JobSeeker rate being below the poverty line, for example, other problems — relating to administration and organisation — are less so. It is these less prominent issues which I hope to highlight.
It would be nothing new for me to argue that Centrelink is often intentionally difficult to navigate. Even if this is the case, it is often defended as necessary by those who believe that we should discourage people from relying on welfare by making it hard to access. I disagree with the idea that we should make welfare inaccessible so as to prevent over-reliance, but I am willing to concede it as a reasonable point of view. To those on the left, I argue that there are small changes that should be fought for alongside funding and payment increases. To those on the right, I argue that even if welfare should not be depended on, there is a difference between discouragement and arbitrary harm.
“What’s the impact of a few inconveniences if the end result is free money, right? Hopefully, the reader understands that a ‘few inconveniences’ can have far-reaching consequences.”
I myself receive Youth Allowance and Rent Assistance. I should also point out that I am lucky enough to be in a position where I am not adversely affected by the worst aspects of the welfare system. However, since I receive these payments, I am frequently given cause to reflect on how distressing my situation would be if I were not so lucky.
One of the earliest experiences I had with the system was when I first applied for JobSeeker. I submitted the claim and waited a month to be told that I wouldn’t get JobSeeker because I was eligible for something else. What was I eligible for instead? I wasn’t told. I had to call, ask, and then submit a new claim. Claims take weeks to be checked even if they contain immediately disqualifying information. This is partially addressed by the fact that claimants are back paid to the date their claim was submitted, but this is little help when the result is rejection.
More recently, I woke up to a ‘new message in my MyGov inbox’. The new message was a summary of my regular payment minus Rent Assistance. The message didn’t explicitly say that the payment had been cut, and it offered no explanation as to why or what I could do. Again, I had to call and ask. I was promptly told that I probably had to submit a rent certificate.
These are administrative inconveniences, but they are inconveniences which cause unnecessary uncertainty for people who need certainty. It forces long wait times — whether its a few hours calling in the morning or a few months waiting for a claim — on people who can least afford to wait. Rent is due next Monday, back pay can’t help you if it comes three weeks after that.
Moreover, these are only two experiences that I’ve had over the last few months. If basic things like claim validation and updates about payments expose people to uncertainty like this, it’s not hard to imagine how much worse it could be for more arduous operations. And this is the point of my including these experiences in this article. They only scratch the surface of the inefficiencies rife in the system.
While these problems would be straightforward to address, they often fly under the radar. On the one hand political advocacy tends to focus on the bigger picture. On the other, for some it seems like trying to fix the system isn’t worthwhile because its already sufficient that it exists in the first place.
Last year, the government was dragged into boosting welfare payments by $50 a fortnight after cutting the coronavirus subsidy. This year, the government was dragged into boosting welfare payments for those in lockdown after it had introduced payments for workers losing hours.
Scott Morrison recently appeared on Triple J Hack where he was asked why someone who supplements their welfare payment with casual work is ineligible for the disaster payment. The reason was essentially that welfare was a different form of support distinct from the disaster payment, and that a boost was therefore unnecessary. This was also in spite of the fact that this hypothetical individual was not a stereotypical ‘dole bludger’, but someone who had simply been dealt a bad hand. It’s hard to read this as anything other than arbitrary punishment for deigning to access support.
It’s easy to write this off, but it is indicative of a broader ambivalence towards the workings of the welfare system. What’s the impact of a few inconveniences if the end result is free money, right? Hopefully, the reader understands that a ‘few inconveniences’ can have far-reaching consequences. While we fight political battles about payments and funding, there are problems which have straightforward solutions which are ignored because of ongoing indifference.
“This goes beyond underfunding and low payments.”
It is, however, important to point out that indifference does not necessarily result from the belief that poor service provision is good. A belief that government is fundamentally inefficient, callous, and separated from the people it serves could lead to an apathy for reform. However, whether resistance to reform is driven by the belief that this is the only way the system can be or that it must be this way to discourage welfarism, it is clear that there are reforms to be made which are straightforward improvements irrespective of government’s inherent efficiency. On the latter point, it is hard to imagine that a culture of welfarism is the inevitable result of improved communication between Centrelink and its claimants.
My experiences over the last few months have given me — and hopefully my relaying these experiences have given the reader — an opportunity to reflect on how all of this affects people who are doing it tough. What happens to someone whose income is cut by a third for no other reason than they’re on welfare? What happens to someone whose payment is cut by a third without any explanation or path forward?
This goes beyond underfunding and low payments. We should also be boosting funding for the Centrelink and increasing individual payments, but alongside the issues these measures hope to address is a broken administration system. If we funded the system better, we would still be exposing people to arbitrary uncertainty and instability. Poor administration sounds like a relatively minor problem when the same system doesn’t pay people enough to survive, but it is also one of the easiest things to fix.
Eligibility should be transparent. If you answer a question in a way that disqualifies you from the payment you’re claiming, it’s not too much to ask that you are informed straight away rather than being made to wait a month to find out.
Information about your claims should be freely available. If you need to complete a task, submit a document, or you’ve submitted a claim for the wrong payment, you should be told. It’s beyond absurd that the current system forces you to call and ask what’s going on. And it’s unusually cruel that the first indication that something has changed is the notification that your payment has been cut.
These are only two suggestions on how to improve the system. Neither of these make payments easier to receive and neither of them makes it easier to rort the system. However, it does make the process more humane. It reduces unnecessary burdens which add a great deal of frustration — and potential distress — to an already difficult process.
It should not be politically controversial to suggest that the welfare system should be transparent and accessible. Maybe you think we should restrict access to payments, but that doesn’t mean we should be making people wait over a month to be told they weren’t eligible for the payment they initially applied for, but they might be eligible for something else. And it certainly doesn’t mean we should be cutting payments without explanation and making claimants spend hours on the phone trying to figure out why.
Regardless of your views, your beliefs, or your partisan alignment, the system we have is not only inadequate, it is actively harmful. This is not simply a problem of underfunding, though that is certainly a contributor. Even if it originates in ambivalence, the result is a system that punishes people for trying to seek help. Even if you believe that we should discourage people from becoming dependent on welfare, this is not the way to do it.
