Employment, unemployment and welfare reform
Glenn Redmayne
Disability Council of NSW
Contact Email:   dwoffmarrickville.nsw.gov.au

This paper begins by analysing the assumptions made in relation to welfare dependency of people with disability in the Commonwealth government’s Welfare Reform agenda. It addresses issues that prevent economic and social participation of people with disability, which includes and extends beyond an appreciation of structural, attitudinal, support and broader systemic issues commonly experienced by this group in their attempts to achieve financial independence.

It locates the discussion on welfare reform in the context of people with disability’s experience of “welfare dependency” and poverty entrapment, and stress the need for policies and programs that promote the rightful inclusion of people with a disability in all facets of economic and social life.

It challenges the concept of “mutual obligation”, a concept that seeks to alter the relationship between Government and those individuals who are regarded as welfare dependent. It demonstrates that people with disability bear extra costs as a direct result of disability, and that it is the inadequacy of the current physical and social structure that prevent the individual from achieving economic independence. It argues that a reform of the welfare system must be a rights-based reform that broadens the income support system and addresses disadvantage experienced by people with disability.

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