Our social security system should be there when we need it, just like other essential services such as Medicare and public education.
For Jesse and Cheyanne, who both receive income support payments, the experience has felt very different.
Accessing financial support when they need it most, has meant navigating a complex employment services system centred on compulsory activities. This system, put in place by government and outsourced to contracted providers, is difficult to navigate and threatens people already in precarious situations with having their only source of income cut off without notice.
“You're required to apply for a certain amount of jobs every fortnight, and then you're also required to do a certain amount of mutual obligations,” says Jesse.
“If you don't do those things, your payment will get suspended.
“You're already stressed because you don't have a job. You don't have enough money to buy food or to do what you need to do. And then you have to spend money to go into a place that's not going to help you at all.
“It feels very much like, more of a parole officer than a job service provider. They will harass you as if you're a criminal.
"People deserve dignity. They don't deserve to be punished just because they don't have a job. I feel you'll have much more success if you give people room to breathe."
After starting to receive Centrelink payments at 18 or 19, Cheyanne remembers being scared because she was “getting money that stops [her] from being on the streets.”
“I remember this woman on the phone, was just like, very flippant, like, your payment can get cancelled,” she says. “The pressure and the fearmongering that happens, it's so damaging.”
Opportunity for change
Jesse and Cheyanne’s experiences, as shared in a recently launched short documentary, from the Antipoverty Centre with support from PRF, are not isolated.
Antipoverty Centre Operations Coordinator Kristin O'Connell says the threat of having payments cut off, together with compulsory activities, contributes to stigma which, alongside financial stress, can have devastating effects on mental and physical health.
Antipoverty Centre is a collective of activists, advocates and researchers with direct, contemporary experience of poverty and unemployment. Its goal is to help ensure the voices and rights of people on the lowest incomes are at the centre of social policy development and discourse.
“Reforming the social security system, particularly with regards to employment services, is an urgent priority,” says Kristin. “And we know that for it to work well, the system needs to listen to the people who know it best – those who are living through it every day.”
PRF Delivery Impact Manager Jess Graham-Franklin says she welcomes the recent announcements about employment services reform, and says the video demonstrates the harm that is possible when access to an adequate income depends on compliance with employment programs.
“Employment services reform is a good step forward. These services should help people find work while income support should ensure people have enough to live a decent life. The two should not be so tightly linked that people lose their income because they miss an appointment or overlook an administrative requirement.
“There needs to be a clear dividing line.”
With reform to the employment services system underway, the documentary reinforces the importance of placing people with lived experience at the centre of reform conversations.
Cheyanne doesn’t want to say the social security system can’t change, because she believes it can. But she says the way it currently operates, “isn’t designed to benefit or help people.”
Kristin says what’s needed is better person-centred support.
“Our social security should do what our whole community wants it to do – support people when they need it, listen to us and treat us with respect.”
