Posted March 26, 2020
People with disability who receive the Disability Support Pension (DSP) urgently need access to the increased Coronavirus Supplement of $550 per fortnight, consistent with the Jobseeker Payment and other payments recently announced.
People with disability who are in receipt of DSP are experiencing and facing additional, unforeseen costs in this time of crisis, which is causing significant levels of distress and anxiety, and only serving to further entrench DSP recipients into poverty.
Posted March 26, 2020
The Morrison government is being urged to extend its coronavirus supplement to the Disability Support Pension, after recipients were excluded from this latest stimulus measure.
Posted March 26, 2020
People with disability who receive the Disability Support Pension (DSP) urgently need access to the increased Coronavirus Supplement of $550 per fortnight, consistent with the Jobseeker Payment and other payments recently announced. People with disability who are in receipt of DSP are experiencing and facing additional, unforeseen costs in this time of crisis, which is causing significant levels of distress and anxiety, and only serving to further entrench DSP recipients into poverty.
Posted March 26, 2020
If you are a parent and you receive Disability Support Pension or Carer Payment, you will currently be entitled to the two one-off payments of $750, but not the fortnightly supplement of $550. This appears to be discrimination against people with a disability and people who care for someone with a disability.
Posted March 13, 2020
The growing number of Newstart recipients who are sick or have disabilities face “unrealistic” mutual obligations to find work and sometimes have their impairments exacerbated while struggling on welfare payments, a new research paper says.
Posted February 14, 2020
Disability support pension recipients were increasingly forced to pay back alleged welfare overpayments as the government’s botched robodebt scheme progressed, despite repeated claims that the program did not target the vulnerable.
Posted October 25, 2019
New figures show 40% of people on unemployment benefit have an illness or disability that prevents them from working full-time
Posted October 25, 2019
Among those who had applied for the disability pension, 88% said they believed Centrelink had not treated them fairly. Even among those who had managed to get on to the payment, 45% felt hard done by, compared with 33% who felt they were treated fairly.
Posted October 10, 2019
The mother of an intellectually disabled man who initially received a $15,000 “robodebt” has described the Department of Human Services’ conduct in seeking to recover the debt as a form of “disability bullying”.
Posted October 8, 2019
The Senate’s community affairs committee is on Thursday hearing from social service experts, who are continuing their calls for the scheme to be scrapped.
Posted September 20, 2019
People with disabilities who are considered capable of working receive Newstart, the welfare allowance for the unemployed, rather than the disability support pension which needs an extra 343 AUD (235 U.S. dollar) per week.
Posted September 20, 2019
Successive Governments have made meeting the eligibility threshold so burdensome and difficult that many people with disability, who may have been eligible in the past, can no longer access the Disability Support Pension (DSP). The Australian Federation of Disability organisations (AFDO) has commissioned three new studies by various Australian universities to highlight the economic and health impacts of disability, particularly for Indigenous Australians.
Posted September 20, 2019
Two in five Indigenous households relying on the Disability Support Pension ran out of money for basic items such as food and fuel in the last year, new research shows, prompting calls from disability advocates for the government to urgently review the scheme.
Posted September 17, 2019
Those with a mild disability would need an extra $87 per week at least to have the same standard of living as other Australians, while those with a profound or severe disability required $173 per week more. But the gap in standard of living became even more stark for people with disabilities who were deemed to have some capacity to work and placed on Newstart.
Posted September 13, 2019
Disability Advocacy Network Australia CEO Mary Mallett said the shift towards Newstart is a “huge concern” because there is a significant financial difference between the DSP and Newstart.
