Rolling Through

How does job-seeking work in Australia if you are disabled?  That’s the elephant in the room of the latest reality TV offering from SBS, with a social conscience twist, “Could you Survive on the Breadline?”. 

The show invited three Australians with public profile to dip their toes into the world of living on welfare for nine days;  Jenny Leong, NSW Greens MP, Caleb Bond of Sky News and Julie Goodwin, MasterChef winner and small business owner.  The three all spent time with people on social security and dallied with poverty for nine days – film crew in tow.

We met Shanene, a disabled person on JobSeeker.  She has an acquired brain injury, as a result of domestic violence.  She trained as a social worker and used to have a good job. Her injuries forced her to give up her job and the income that came with it.  Instead, she spent time learning to walk and talk again.  You might think that would mean she’d receive the Disability Support Pension but despite her disability, she’s on JobSeeker.  She’s not alone.

About 40% of the people on Jobseeker are disabled and have a partial capacity to work.

“Could you Survive on the Breadline?” looked at Shanene’s experience of living on around $40 a day and living in a social housing estate, where police are often called due to domestic violence.  These are significant issues that she is dealing with every day.  So is the fact that Shanene is on JobSeeker. 

In the conversations on camera between Jenny and Shanene, no questions were asked about Shanene’s job seeking requirements, and how she copes with them, alongside all the other challenges she’s facing. No questions were asked about what kind of support she receives to find a job that might work for her.  No questions were asked about what would be needed for Shanene to improve her situation and get off JobSeeker.  

While living on an income that can leave them below the poverty line, disabled people on JobSeeker are required to look for work.

If you have a disability, and a reduced capacity to work, the number of jobs you are required to look for under Australia’s Compulsory Mutual Obligations are usually lower than people without disability, but the number of jobs you could realistically expect to do is also drastically reduced.

If you have a disability, you probably have less time available in which you can work. Dealing with a disability takes time out of your day.  For me, as wheelchair user, the time it takes for me to get organised in the morning, from waking up to getting out the door, is a lot longer than it is for other people. That means either getting up earlier and getting less sleep to work the same hours, or getting up at a better time but having fewer hours available.  A colleague noted once just how long it took me to get from “knock off” to out the office door.

A lot of jobs, especially at entry level, aren’t an option if you have a disability.

How many jobs can you actually get if you are disabled? Having a disability will mean that you have fewer jobs to choose from than someone who doesn’t have a disability to deal with. 

As a wheelchair user, I need to find a job that is in an accessible building, that I can get to via accessible public transport.  Of course, I also need to have the skills to do the job.  If it requires typing, then a group workspace is no good, because I use voice-to-text to be able to type quickly.

Taking all those different factors into account cuts down the number of job options fast. It also means fewer options to get a job that “just pays the bills” while you’re looking for the job you really want. It’s pretty hard to be a shop assistant or a waitress in a wheelchair. You have less opportunity to get any kind of experience and that makes it a lot harder to get any job at all.

In the final episode of the show, the celebrity participants went looking for work.  They didn’t go resume in hand, putting in applications and attending interviews where they talked about their impressive work histories. 

The celebrities went looking for the kind of work you could get with no experience; the kind of work you might apply for when things don’t work out and you just need money for food and rent.  Caleb worked as a food delivery driver and a cleaner.  Jenny got a trial shift as a kitchen hand.  Julie delivered pamphlets and furniture.

All of those jobs are manual labour. Some disabled people might be able to do them.  As a wheelchair user, I wouldn’t be able to do any of them. They’re all casual jobs, too.  If a disabled person got one of those jobs but wasn’t performing fast enough or needed a bit of support, it’s unlikely that the boss would take much time to help. Casuals are easy to dismiss. Employers have little incentive to keep them in the job. Most often, if it isn’t working out, the boss will “let you go”.  Then you’re back on JobSeeker, starting over again.

Almost half the disabled people on JobSeeker had their payments suspended in the six months to September 2021.

“Could you Survive on the Breadline?” made it clear that people who rely on welfare don’t have enough money for the basics.  They often go without food or can’t put petrol in the car.  The show didn’t mention the fact that people living on welfare can have their payments suspended.  Suspensions can happen for reasons like missing an appointment, not applying for enough jobs or sometimes just because your consultant makes a mistake.  If you have an episodic disability and have a bad day (or two or three) that can make it hard to meet your requirements.  

Centrelink can be much less forgiving than an employer.

When you have a job, if you give the boss a doctor’s certificate, they’ll accept that you needed the day off.  I’ve had a doctor get really angry because Centrelink wouldn’t allow for the fact that I was sick, even when she gave me a medical certificate. “Could you survive on the breadline?” focussed strongly on the very tight budget that welfare recipients are forced to live on from week to week. It didn’t address the fact that sometimes, even that meagre income is withdrawn.

The disability unemployment rate is double the general rate.

A lot of disabled people who find themselves unable to work apply for the Disability Support Pension, but these days many are refused and put on Job seeker – with a lower rate of pay and ongoing Compulsory Mutual Cbligations.  When someone is assessed for access to the Disability Support Pension, the questions that are asked don’t bear a lot of relation to the questions employers will ask in a job interview. The questions are about whether you can exercise without assistance, whether you can do daily tasks around the house and whether you can shop at the supermarket.  They ask whether you can use a standard computer keyboard, but have no interest in how fast or slow you are when you do.  Centrelink only asks whether you can use a keyboard, Employers ask how fast you use it.

Centrelink assesses whether they believe you have the capacity to work.  Employers will only take you on if they think you can work faster and better than your competition.  The assessment for the DSP doesn’t take that into account.

A lot of the reasons why disabled people find it hard to get work are very practical. The space is not accessible, the physical requirements of the job make it impractical, the closest train station is not accessible, the employer requires more hours than we can offer.

But the biggest problem I face in finding work is not the environment. It’s not whether I can find a way to do the job.  It’s whether the boss will give me a go.

 I’ve been to many job interviews where I haven’t disclosed my disability in the application.  I wanted to at least have the chance to talk to them before they started making assumptions about me – but sometimes I can tell from the look on their face as soon as I get into the room that I’m not going to get the job. 

As Graeme Innes, a former Australian Disability Discrimination Commissioner, who is blind, has often said, we are “limited by the soft bigotry of low expectations”.  Employers assume we can’t do much, and that makes them unwilling to take us on. They’ve made up their minds that it can’t be done before we get a chance to talk about work-around strategies we could use to make it doable; or they decide that employing the non-disabled person will be easier. It’s more of a known quantity, so they go with it.  It’s discrimination, and it’s illegal but it’s almost impossible to prove.

About 3 in 4 people with mobility impairments in Australia, live in housing that doesn’t meet their mobility needs.

I’m one of many disabled people who doesn’t live in housing that suits my mobility needs. Personally, although I’m a wheelchair user, I live on the first floor of an apartment building. If there was a fire, I wouldn’t be able to evacuate in my power wheelchair. Fortunately, I have some ability to walk and there are fewer stairs now than there were in the last building I lived in. 

It’s not just about emergencies, though.  The apartment I live in is a private rental.  There are no grab rails in the shower and my wheelchair doesn’t fit in the bathroom.  I can manage it the way it is, but it would be easier if it was more accessible. In terms of my opportunity to work, getting out the door in the morning would be faster, if I had a more accessible bathroom. If it took a shorter time to get ready in the morning, it’d be practical to work a bit further away from home and I’d have more employment options. A lot of disabled people would have better employment options if getting from A to B inside their own homes took less time and energy.

“Could you Survive on the Breadline?” introduced us to Simone. She’s on the Disability Support Pension.  She has a wheelchair because there are some days when she doesn’t have the use of her legs.  She lives in social housing. Not only is her home full of cockroaches rats and mould, as the show pointed out, we also saw that it has stairs at both the front and back entrances. Even when the government provides social housing to disabled people, they don’t provide accessible housing. On a day when Simone needs to use her wheelchair, she’d be unable to leave the house.

Disability Employment Consultants have sales skills, not specific vocational training to help disabled job seekers find suitable work.

Like other disabled job seekers, Shanene is very likely to have Compulsory Mutual Obligations; a set number of jobs she is required to apply for every month or other Approved Activities she has to complete, in order to receive her welfare payment.  What kind of assistance does she actually get to help her find employment? 

When you first sign up with a disability employment provider, they might be very positive about their chances of helping you find employment.  They might be encouraging.  They might make suggestions to improve your resume and give you a few interview tips. If you’re really lucky, they might even contact a couple of employers you suggest and attempt to generate job leads for you. 

But after a few appointments, they’ll lose interest. They’ll make sure you fulfil your Compulsory Mutual Obligation requirements and fill in a new job plan every couple of months. They’ll stop making suggestions.

If you express your frustration that you can’t get a job because too many employers are prejudiced and the world is set up for non-disabled people, be ready for them to come back at you with, “don’t focus on your disability”. The employment consultants I’ve had (and there have been many) don’t understand the challenges disabled people face in looking for work. 

I’ve never come across an employment consultant who told me they were disabled themselves.

I’ve applied to work at disability employment services but been unsuccessful.  The job ads for disability employment consultants just look for sales skills. They don’t even list “lived experience of disability” or “recruitment experience” as desirable.  It’s no wonder the consultants run out of steam so fast and disabled jobseekers spend years on JobSeeker.

Many disabled people would like to work and could work if they were able to negotiate with employers to create a job description that focuses on the things they can do well and works around the things that they can’t do; maybe rearranging who does what in the workplace.  There’s a system called Customised Employment that does just that.  It looks at what the job seeker’s interests and skills are and then looks for an employer who can create a job to match. So far, in Australia it only seems to be used by one provider in Victoria. It certainly provides a glimmer of hope for change.

The weekly introduction to “Could you Survive on the Breadline?” concluded by asking viewers, ““Have millions of Australians simply become reliant on the welfare system?”  There was no recognition that several of the participants in the show were on the Disability Support Pension.  It’s called a pension because you receive it if you have a permanent disability.  If you receive the DSP, your disabilities are significant enough that you are not expected to return to sufficient levels of work to support yourself.  It’s provided to people who are expected to need it long term. 

A couple of participants were working single parents on low incomes.  They were receiving payments to help with the cost of parenting, which are adjusted according to the income they earn and the age of their children.  Those payments will cut out when the children reach a certain age, even if the parents remain on a low income.     

Shanene was the only person on the show receiving job seeker.  She was the only person receiving a benefit that people are supposed to “get off” who wasn’t already working.  None of the conversations on camera with Shanene asked about what options she might have to get off JobSeeker or what support she has to do it. My own experience is that the options are severely limited for disabled job seekers in Australia and we receive little support to pursue them.

The framing of the show each week, ending with, “Have millions of Australians simply become reliant on the welfare system?”  did nothing to recognise people’s different situations and capacities. It simply played into stereotypes.

Does Australia want to be a country where those who can’t work enough to support themselves are condemned to a life of poverty?

I’d like to ask this question, “Does Australia want to be a country where those who can’t work enough to support themselves are condemned to a life of poverty?” I’d like to think the answer is “No”. We’ll find out at the next federal election.

What do you think about Australia’s welfare system? Let me know in the comments.

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