Government makes the poor pay

Vanguard February 2013
Jack D.

As the festive season approached in 2012 the government decided to get even meaner than ever. It is pursuing its ‘Make the Poor Pay’ policy with a vengeance and actions speak louder than words.

Globally capital is in a hell of a mess. The Australian government, on behalf of the capitalist ruling class, have decided to persecute the poor even more.

The Federal Parliament passed legislation in July 2011 that made it a criminal offence for a person on a pension or benefit to not tell Centrelink [more correctly Missinglink] of "anything" that "might" affect their entitlements within 14 days. This idiotic law was made retrospective to 2000.

In a recent court case, speaking outside of the High Court in Melbourne, VLA director of civil justice, access and equity, Kristen Hilton, said the change unfairly targeted vulnerable people battling with a complex social welfare system.

“We are concerned that the laws operate retrospectively, and that means because they are 10 years old it is impossible to comply with them,” Ms Hilton said. “The case is really about challenging the breadth of the law and also challenging whether or not and in what circumstances Parliament can pass retrospective laws.”

Ms Hilton says overpayment is different from fraud.

“This isn’t about letting people off the hook where there has been clearly fraudulent behaviour, it’s about people who have made a mistake, who haven’t understood the system,” she said. “Centrelink's own data shows that it gets things wrong one out of every three times.

“If Centrelink can get it wrong so often, it’s not surprising that people who are poor, illiterate, have a disability, or don’t speak English well might misunderstand what they need to report to Centrelink,” Ms Hilton said.

‘Missing link’ has got it wrong in other ways too. People with entitlements to a pension are too often denied. They make them ‘jump through so many hoops’, so getting people confused and enmeshed in an ongoing procedure of producing paperwork, telling them only one small step at a time. Each time there is a delay, sometimes a quite lengthy one, and people become confused, dispirited and frustrated.

One way street

They refuse to advise people if they have an entitlement such as Widows B pension. They leave the woman on “New Start” which requires her to go and seek work, fully knowing that the pension entitlement (in this case the same money) is rightfully hers. At the same time they pay the government fee to the privateer employment agency administering her case. We do not see the government bleating about the multitude of employment agencies that are ripping off the taxpayer via such underhanded moves. Oh no, it is the poor, the unemployed, the sole parents, the invalided people the government seeks to penalise and demonise.

Deeper lesson for all

There is a very threatening aspect to this matter. The making of law retrospective, in this case by a decade or so is a try on. If they get away with this then capital has a weapon to destroy working class organisational ability, in the formal sense at least, with the stroke of a pen; something they dearly wish to do.

With this demonization of specific groups in society, welfare recipients and the likes of the motorcycle clubs, and the attempts at isolating and attacking them as a whole, we can validly ask “What group, who is going to be next to be targeted?” There is, for instance, only one Motor Cycle club called “Outlaws” and they are still a legal club. There are many other clubs …. all currently legal. Yet the media, cops and others deliberately and blatantly lie calling them generally “outlaw motorcycle clubs” which is part of the process of isolating and demonising a group of people.

How long before you or one of your family or friends become targeted in this way? There was a time we workers were referred to as “Industrial Terrorists” when we were on strike years ago. Will that again be the case? There are shades of Nazi Germany in all of this attacking the poor and specific groups in society as the global capitalist crisis deepens.