AUSTRALIA’S complex welfare payments structure is in urgent need of an overhaul.
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The government pays out a whopping $150 billion in welfare each year in a confusing, overly-bureaucratic system that encourages dependency rather than self-reliance.
A long-awaited report into welfare by former Mission Australia chief Professor Patrick McClure was released this week and, unsurprisingly, it recommends sweeping changes to a system that costs taxpayers a fortune.
Generational unemployment, where children have no concept of work because their parents have always been on welfare, and getting older Australians to work longer are key planks of Professor McClure’s report.
Any changes to welfare will be unpopular in some quarters and there will be predictable accusations that the poor and the vulnerable are being targeted unfairly.
But the fact is our welfare apparatus is dense, expensive and unfair as it is with many people rorting the system often at the expense of those who need it most.
It has been allowed to reach the point where it is almost out of control.
Social Services Minister Scott Morrison yesterday sounded a warning when he pointed out that welfare spending makes up a third of government spending and is projected to be the biggest area of spending over the next four years.
All this at a time when government revenues have dropped back dramatically as a result of a slump in the mining boom.
Professor McClure’s roadmap for change does not discriminate against anyone, instead focusing on getting people back to work while ensuring genuine recipients are no worse off.
At the moment there are 20 welfare payments and 55 supplementary payments and it is the cost of administrating these 75 different streams of welfare that is causing much of the expense.
Australia has one of the most generous, complicated and expensive welfare systems in the world.
There is a better way. It has been found by Professor McClure and government should not waste a moment more in implementing the changes so desperately needed.