Centrelink users who need an urgent cash advance may soon find it easier to get one – up to a point.
The government's bid to streamline and reform its social services payment systems will continue, with changes to its urgent payment system due to come into effect this week.
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It was traumatic: Senator
Greens senator Rachel Siewert hasn't held back when questioning staff from the Department of Human Services over the so called Centrelink 'robo debt' recovery.
The requests will be granted almost automatically but capped at two a year, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Anyone requesting more will be moved on to weekly instead of fortnightly payments, and given financial counselling to help manage money better.
Under the urgent payment system, no additional money is granted by the government –it comes from the next scheduled welfare payment. Advance payments, which are provided as a loan, and crisis payments, will remain untouched.
In the past year the department granted 400,000 urgent payments to 210,000 people, including 38,000 people who requested a second advance payment within 15 days of the first and 10,000 who were paid advances six or more times.
Minister Alan Tudge said the payments were in response to aggression faced by Human Services departmental customer service centre staff, with 21 per cent of incidents coming in the wake of an urgent payment request. The vast majority came on the back of a refusal.
The changes are part of a raft of reforms which include a pilot program to streamline disability support pension claims.
Of the 110,000 people who apply for disability support, just a quarter are eligible. The government hopes by working with doctors and patients, there will be a better understanding of who is eligible for the payments, with the claims process being redesigned to speed up the process for those who will be able to receive the pension.
The government has been pushing ahead with its reforms of the social services sector, with ministers Tudge, Christian Porter and Michaelia Cash working togerther to change how Australians view and treat welfare.
The social services sector has questioned the effectiveness of some of the proposed reforms and trials, including the drug testing trial to be launched in January, and the removal of the energy supplement – set up by the Gillard government to offset the carbon tax.
The government aims to cut the payment, worth between $4 and $7 a week for welfare recipients, which has pushed The Australian Council of Social Service into a campaign to save it. CEO Cassandra Goldie has appealed to Labor and the crossbench to block the move.
"The community sector is united in its opposition to it. The government should focus on improving the adequacy of our unemployment payments rather than throwing their recipients into further destitution," she said.
"Newstart is unbearably low. Business, unions and the community sector all agree that the level of the unemployment needs to be increased. It is extraordinary that the Turnbull government persists in trying find budget savings by cutting income support to this group even further."
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