Keywords: Welfare Payments
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AUSTRALIA
- Colin Long
- 09 February 2015
19 Comments
The Coalition Government falsely claims that Medicare co-payments and cuts to welfare and publicly funded institutions such as the CSIRO and the ABC are necessary to 'fix Labor's mess'. There are indeed structural problems with the economy, but essentially the plan is to strip the public sector by cutting universal access to a range of services that also includes tertiary education, to create a dominant free market that marginalises Australians on low incomes.
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AUSTRALIA
- Catherine Marshall
- 06 February 2015
18 Comments
The rewards of parenthood are immeasurable. But the price that women pay when they become mothers is unjust. This includes lost opportunities, gender wage gaps, and sparse superannuation savings. They really need an efficient and fair maternity leave scheme to support them as they transition from worker to working mother. Tony Abbott's 'signature' policy is now gone, and the 'replacement' families package has a big gap to fill.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 22 September 2014
5 Comments
Considering my indebtedness to the two Aborigines who met [my family's ship arriving in Hervey Bay from Ireland] 151 years ago, I owe it to all my fellow Australians to agitate these issues of law, morality and politics here in Ireland so that back in Australia, the homeland which, in my religious tradition, was known as the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.
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AUSTRALIA
- Adrienne McGill
- 16 September 2014
9 Comments
Transitioning people with episodic illnesses like bipolar and severe depression from disability support into the workforce is problematic. However, one obvious solution to help some people in this group has been overlooked to date: self-employment.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 11 August 2014
18 Comments
The Prime Minister's Team Australia campaign will only work with policies of social inclusion. The Budget’s harsh and divisive welfare rules will drive young Muslim unemployed into the hands Islamic radicals. Church welfare agencies have suggested a solution by way of an independent entitlements commission to ensure welfare payments are fair.
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AUSTRALIA
- Catherine Magree
- 29 July 2014
22 Comments
Imagine how the quality of the debate would improve if those who blamed the victims of poverty and illness for their plight were publicly labelled welfare sceptics or denialists, and forced to back up their claims. Social research academics would be thrust into the spotlight. If this issue received the scrutiny it deserves in the media there would be a sea change in attitudes to poverty, unemployment and income support over time.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 17 July 2014
14 Comments
My response to government reports is often like that of a small boy watching a magician. You know that a rabbit will be produced out of the hat, but you can’t quite work out how it will be done. For a Government set on cutting costs the McClure report into Australia's welfare system will be easy to cherry pick by further depriving the already deprived. The risk is that it will not pull a white rabbit out of the hat, but a ferret.
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AUSTRALIA
- Lin Hatfield Dodds
- 02 July 2014
9 Comments
Australia's welfare system was designed for an era where men were the breadwinners and women worked outside the home only until marriage. Australia is a different place now, and the McClure review is an opportunity to update and simplify the system. But it must not confuse short-term cost-cutting with efficiency.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 27 May 2014
3 Comments
'Some of us would question Benedict's assertion that the Church "must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot ... replace the State." But we would all agree that the Church "cannot and must not remain on the sidelines".' Frank Brennan's presentation at the Jesuit Social Services Symposium on 'The role of faith based community organisations in contributing to a civil society'.
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ECONOMICS
The 2014 Federal Budget has created a new hierarchy of virtue in Australian society, with well off investors deemed to be good and the disadvantaged bad. It is not so much class war as a war between capital and the rest of society. Those wielding significant capital are useful, while those who can save little, and have little to invest, are considered a burden.
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AUSTRALIA
The Budget does not signal an end to the 'age of entitlement', as there are still plenty of beneficiaries of government expenditure or foregone revenue. You don't need to be an economist to see that collectively the Budget measures will impact negatively on the income levels of the poor and disadvantaged. The discussion now must be who will pick up the pieces left behind by Government in developing a system with obvious gaps.
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ECONOMICS
- Fatima Measham
- 07 May 2014
16 Comments
French economist Thomas Piketty argues that current conditions have set us on track for a return to 19th century-levels of inequality. The Commission of Audit proposals suggest that the auditors and the Government are keen to expedite this neo-Dickensian era. It's all done in the name of 'incentives' toward 'personal responsibility', but this cannot remain coherent in the face of those who will be hit hard by the proposed suite of cuts and co-payments.
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