It’s budget day today, at that means Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison will stand up in parliament at 7:30pm tonight (AEST) and tells us, the Australian public, just where the hell our taxes will be heading and who are the winners and losers this time round.
We already know a little bit about where the money will be heading (several billion for a second Sydney airport) and who’ll be getting screwed over (young people with this new HECS repayment plan), but a report in the Daily Telegraph claims the government will be introducing a demerit points system for people on the dole.
Basically, welfare recipients who fail to turn up to job interviews or work-for-the-dole appointments will start losing payments when they reach four points. If they lose all seven points, they’ll have their payments cut-off completely for four weeks, effective immediately.
The Daily Tele also reported that serious offences may see welfare recipients lose their entire seven points in one hit, but didn’t clarify what offences those may be.
The details are scarce – gotta wait for the official announcement tonight – but with any system that works to “crackdown on dole bludgers” there’s huge room for error.
It plays on this idea that thousands upon thousands of people are out there actively working to rort the system, rather than taking into account the many, many factors that contribute to a person requiring welfare in the first place.
It also paves the way for unfairly penalising already vulnerable people who may be missing appointments due to circumstances outside of their control, like dealing with chronic health issues, living with disability, or simply living in a poorly services area.
We’ll have to wait and see the details of Morrison’s budget tonight before being able to asses this shit properly.
Photo: Matt King / Getty.
