Sunday Herald-Sun welfare-bashing articles, 1 July 2018
A disgraceful ongoing campaign by Rupert Murdoch’s publications to demonize welfare recipients.
Annika Smethurst: We must free young Aussies from the welfare trap
Daily Telegraph, July 01, 2018
IF YOUR parents relied of welfare payments, chances are you will too.
It’s one of the uncomfortable truths in the latest analysis of our welfare safety net by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
It makes for depressing reading. The children of parents on social security payments are six times more likely to end up in the Centrelink queue than those whose families haven’t relied on benefits.
By the age of 25, about 90 per cent of young Aussies whose parents received welfare support will have also signed up for government payments. Children raised in single-parent families are more likely to depend on welfare and kids from welfare-dependent families are less likely to finish school.
Sadly, the data won’t surprise many but it could be the key to tackling Australia’s welfare problem.
Despite a litany of policies and enormous expenditures, no government has been able to break the entrenched poverty cycle, which is on track to marginalise another generation.
The latest attempt by the Turnbull government to tackle intergenerational welfare is to use the data from the PwC report to predict the likelihood of Australians ending up of welfare and then estimate a lifetime cost if nothing is done.
As an example, the report found that a 15-year-old with parents heavily dependant on welfare is expected to cost $240,000.
Critics argue that placing such price tags on individuals who, by the chance of birth face a lifetime of poverty, is unnecessarily cruel.
Simply trying to tackle welfare dependency through the lens of budgetary repair ignores the structural causes of poverty and inequality.
A generous country doesn’t just provide money when people need it, it should also help create conditions to ensure the cycle of welfare dependency doesn’t continue.
But ignoring this vital data will do little to help the 333,000 young Aussies aged 10 to 16 whose parents are heavily dependant on government benefits and will themselves struggle to escape the welfare trap.
If nothing is done to limit welfare dependency, Australia’s social security bill is forecast to hit $192 billion by 2019-20.
Taxpayers should be rightly concerned that one- third of the government’s annual spending goes towards welfare payments. But the benefits of breaking the welfare cycle will do more than boost the government’s coffers.
There is often an underlying assumption that people will not look for a job if the government provides them with support.
But being trapped on a drip-feed of handouts is often a demeaning place to be. Social Services Minister Dan Tehan is right to point out that the greatest cost of welfare dependency is the sense of purpose and worth denied to young Aussies who don’t have a job.
Those people capable of work, who game the system, should be called out.
Equally, young people whose circumstances mean they are likely to face a lifetime of welfare dependency should be given every chance to break free.
Government MPs are quick to remind us that last year was a phenomenal year for jobs growth, with more than 400,000 added.
The government cannot simply campaign on those numbers without taking advantage of the opportunity it presents to helps young Australians escape a lifetime of welfare dependency.
Over recent years, the number of people exiting the welfare system has increased. At the same time, the number of entries into the welfare system has dropped.
This is something that should be celebrated. Australia should be proud of its welfare safety net.
A generous country doesn’t just provide money when people need it, it should also help create conditions to ensure the cycle of welfare dependency doesn’t continue.
Hooked on Welfare
Sunday Herald-Sun Editorial, 1 July 2018
WELFARE dependency predictions revealed in the Sunday Herald Sun today will quite rightly shock Victorians.
It is alarming to learn that more than 330,000 young Australians are at risk of joining Centrelink queues before they turn 25.
Hardworking families in homes across Victoria will rightly be asking how this is possible in a country experiencing the longest run of economic growth ever.
While most Victorians work hard to pay their taxes, their bills and to raise a family, there is now a generation of children growing up who have known only the life of the welfare dependant.
A new report on welfare dependency by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers reveals that children of parents on social security are six times more likely to end up on welfare than those whose families do not rely on payments.
In Victoria alone, more than 83,000 children aged 10 to 16 live with parents who have relied on welfare payments for more than half of their childhoods. Disturbingly, the report reveals that nine in every 10 children who grew up in homes with parents highly dependant on welfare, received government payments by their 25th birthday – compared with fewer than half of those from non-welfare dependent families.
Welfare dependency as a birthright must stop.
Taxes paid by working Victorians must not continue to be wasted on a system that creates intergenerational welfare dependence. It’s an outcome that is just not fair, not only to taxpayers who foot the bill for welfare dependency but to those young lives destined to be reliant on handouts.
It is a problem that raises questions not only of the welfare system but of the education system’s apparent failure to mould these children into employable adults, not to mention the country’s intractably high youth unemployment rate.
The Sunday Herald Sun, as part of our campaign for a fair go for families, has proudly fought for Victorian families who are ripped off, or who see their power bills rising as their wages stand still. These same families, many of which struggle each week to make ends meet, will no doubt be aggrieved today to learn that some of the taxes they pay through their hard work are helping create a new generation of couch potatoes.
Among the most at risk of cradle-to-grave welfare in Victoria are children living in the electorates of Calwell, which stretches from Craigieburn to Keilor Park, and Gippsland, where 30 per cent of 10 to 16-year-olds live with parents who have been on welfare for more than half their childhoods.
Despite the government’s best efforts to target people at risk of welfare dependency, the report estimates the lifetime welfare bill for the current population will now top $4.8 trillion up $167 billion on last year. Almost $1 trillion of this welfare time bomb is made up of people under 20 who are likely to depend on welfare simply because their parents did.
How did we allow such a sad state of affairs to develop?
As the Sunday Herald Sun has previously said, there has to be tighter scrutiny of all welfare payments, but particularly of unemployment benefits. By paying people the dole year after year with little return obligation, we have created a generation of young people who either don’t want to work or are unemployable.
Perhaps it is also time for a rethink on ideas like requiring able welfare recipients to undertake some form of community or voluntary work in return for their benefits. Not only would this benefit the society that supports them, it would also help instil in their children a work ethic sadly missing in many homes, and the knowledge that contributing to society is a normal part of life.
We need the children of long-term welfare parents to know the value of work and aspire to obtain the self-esteem and self-respect it creates. We need the unemployed to be given incentives to work, not handouts.
We are lucky to have a generous social welfare system to protect those genuinely in need and those who really can’t work. At the moment it is clearly too easy for some young people to simply put out their hands and think that those of us who have jobs owe them a free ride.
The safety net of welfare exists so people who do not have the means or the capacity to support themselves can use it until they get back on their feet.
But taxpayer-funded help should not be a disincentive to find work and should never be an encouragement to young people to remain on welfare when they could be in work.
Ready for big bludge
330,000 join welfare
ANNIKA SMETHURST, POLITICS EDITOR
MORE than 330,000 young Australians are expected to join the Centrelink queue before their 25th birthday, new data has revealed.
An analysis of the welfare system, seen by the Sunday Herald Sun, exposes the extent of Australia’s welfare trap, with the children of parents on social security payments six times more likely to end up on a drip-feed of government handouts throughout their lives than those whose families have not relied on benefits.
In Victoria, more than 83,000 children aged from 10 to 16 live with parents who have relied on welfare payments for more than half of their childhoods.
Children in the northwest Melbourne electorate of Calwell, which stretches from Craigieburn to Keilor Park, face a higher risk of welfare dependency, with about 30 per cent of children aged 10 to 16 living with a parent who has been on welfare for more than half of the child’s life.
According to the report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, about 90 per cent of young Australians whose parents were highly dependant on welfare payments received government payments by the age of 25. The report estimates Australia’s lifetime welfare bill will top $4.8 trillion – up by $167 billion – for the current population.
About 20 per cent of that trillion-dollar time bomb will cover welfare and pensions payments for people now aged under 20, who are expected to be trapped in the welfare cycle.
It revealed that 15-year-olds with parents heavily dependent on welfare will cost taxpayers $240,000 in their lives.
With Australia’s annual welfare bill forecast to hit $192 billion by 2019-20 about 30 per cent of government spending – the latest data will help the government identify the groups most at risk of receiving cradle-to-grave welfare.
Social Services Minister Dan Tehan said Australia’s record jobs growth meant the government had the “best chance in decades to break the cycle of welfare dependency and save this lost generation”. “The children of welfare-dependent parents can pay a heavy price,” he said. “Welfare dependency costs the taxpayer billions, but it’s an even greater cost to the people who are stuck on welfare and miss out on the sense of purpose and self-worth that a job provides.”
Mr Tehan said it was encouraging that the proportion of working-age Australians dependent on welfare had fallen to 15.1 per cent – the lowest in more than 25 years.
The snapshot of the social security system also revealed that one in three Australians – more than 8 million people – receive welfare payments.
annika.smethurst@aewsxom.au
Linked from 1/7/2018 Journal