Introduction

In Australia, almost 19% of the population has a disability (ABS, 2009) and its prevalence will steadily rise with the increase in life-sustaining interventions and an ageing population (AIHW, 2008). The number of Australians receiving the Disability Support Pension (DSP)1 has grown substantially. In 1990, there were around 316,000 DSP recipients (Yeend, 2011). By the beginning of 2014 there were about 825,000 (Maley, 2014). The proportion of the working-age population claiming the DSP grew from 4.3% to 5.5% between 1994 and 2012 (Maley, 2014). Increasingly, DSP recipients are women, at 43% in 2008, up from 26% in 1990 (ACOSS, 2011). The current cost of the DSP is around AU$15 billion per annum, representing about 21% of the welfare budget (Ireland, 2014).

In the name of promoting paid work and cutting costs, the main policy response to the rising DSP expenditure has focused on tightening the eligibility rules and assessment procedures and moving DSP recipients into work where possible or onto Newstart, Australia's stringent unemployment benefit. In April 2011, in a speech on the ‘Dignity of Work’, the-then Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard concluded that ‘there are many thousands of individuals on the Disability Support Pension (DSP) who may have some capacity to work’ (Whiteford, 2011, npn). Later that year, the government made a series of changes to DSP policy, including tighter ‘impairment tables’ to reduce DSP eligibility and, for new clients under 35 years of age, a mix of initiatives were put in place to encourage employment. Partial pensions could be retained for people working up to 30 hours per week and new applicants who did not have a severe impairment had to participate in a ‘programme of support’ (typically focused on job search or employability) before becoming eligible for the DSP (Lunn, 2011; Australian Government, 2014a).

The result of these reforms, over time, is an anticipated wider use of Newstart as a benefit for disabled people. But a greater reliance on Newstart instead of the DSP will produce a severe loss of income for many disabled Australians. In January 2014, the Newstart benefit was just AU$250.50 (around L136) per week for single people, well below the AU$413.55 (around L225) available for single DSP clients. The single Newstart payment is well below the poverty line, which in September 2013 was estimated at AU$408.98 per week once housing is included (Melbourne Institute, 2013).