THE leader of one of the nation's biggest welfare organisations has broken ranks, telling the rest of the welfare lobby to get real and stop whingeing about expected reforms in the budget designed to shift the disabled and jobless into work.  

Mission Australia chief executive Toby Hall said he believed half of the 800,000 recipients of the disability pension should be able to get a job, and accused the Australian Council of Social Service and the welfare lobby of "patronising" the unemployed by taking the view they are incapable of work. "This is about a mindset," Mr Hall said,"Our sector needs to change its attitude and help people move off unemployment benefits."  

Mission Australia has government contracts to help 55,000 long-term unemployed into work.

ACOSS, Anglicare, St Vincent de Paul and 10 other welfare groups gathered in Canberra yesterday to warn the government they were "alarmed" about the tone of the current debate over welfare reform in the budget.


Julia Gillard has declared a war on idleness, revealing she will use the May 10 budget to press people to "pull their weight" and not give in to welfare dependency and economic exclusion. The Prime Minister has vowed to use the prosperity from the mining boom to fund programs to boost workforce participation, arguing that many people on disability and other pensions should be working.

Tony Abbott has also made welfare reform a key element of Coalition policy, including suspending unemployment benefits in areas where there is unskilled work available, such as cleaning and fruit-picking, and making work-for-the-dole mandatory for people under 50 who have been on benefits for more than six months.  

ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie said: "It will be a mistake if the government assumes that this will be achieved by imposing unrealistic 'activity requirements' or harsher penalties for people on social security."

St Vincent de Paul chief John Falzon said: "Putting the boot into disadvantaged Australians might be therapeutic for welfare bashers on both sides of politics but it will not get one person into employment, it will not give them the dignity the Prime Minister is fond of spruiking."  

Mr Hall objected to this stand, claiming "a number of people in quasi-lobby groups who don't work directly with the unemployed" took the attitude "poor person, they'll never be able to work, let's look after them rather than help them get a job".

Instead they should be asking why it was so easy for so many people to get on to the disability support pension. "It's because the classification of people for the DSP is not working," Mr Hall said.  

"There is a genuine group of probably 300,000-400,000 with genuine disabilities, severe disabilities who may be wheelchair-bound," he said.

The "other half " of those on the disability pension "most of us would question why they had been put in the category of disabled". People with backaches or short-term health woes should not be put on the disability pension where they lost engagement with the workplace and lost self-esteem, he said. They should instead be retrained and put to work.

Mr Hall called for the budget to deliver a $500 million boost to training programs to help the unemployed get numeracy, literacy, and work-readiness skills, and fund more retraining for older unemployed people.

Mr Hall backed former Mission Australia chief Patrick McClure's call for a single basic welfare payment to be introduced with add-ons for the disabled, those with families and those studying. The jobless benefit needed to be increased by $10-$20, not the $50 welfare groups have called for, he said.  

In a perfect world those 400,000 disabled people would want to get a job and there would be 400,000 jobs available just waiting for them to step into........sweet!!!

this is not about people with missing limbs,or downs syndrome ect,,its the fit ones with "bad backs"

The people this idiot is talking about are people whose lives, health and economic rights this and previous Governments and employers have destroyed.  And no they are not able to work and no the Govern,ment will never be free of its guilt and its obligations for its cruelty and crimes against humanity in the name of neo-liberalism.

$10-$20 a week?

Just who is this smack-knuckle trying to kid?

Parity with the pension, NOTHING less.

Maybe Toby Hall should get a real job.

Perhaps as a speed-hump?

Prevailing wrote on Apr 29^th, 2011 at 9:03am:



I hope you do. It is time people started taking action against people like this. The trouble is that the system is so set up to undermine the disadvantaged, for instance I bet legal aid will not be available to you. The government know when they have you over a barrel.

Mass protest or class action comes to mind.

Mission Australia has government contracts to help 55,000 long-term unemployed into work.

ACOSS, Anglicare, St Vincent de Paul and 10 other welfare groups gathered in Canberra yesterday to warn the government they were "alarmed" about the tone of the current debate over welfare reform in the budget.





gove contract to help disabled people back into thje workforce is not the answer..


what is the point of employing people when they are already paid out of the public purse.. it still looks like charity...

and btw 55000 jobs is hardly a dent in 400.000 is it?

and dont tell me the public service wont be picky either..and these jobs.. are they where the evil disabled live by any chance.. let face it a disabled person is hardly in a position to jump the train or bus.. it all sounds very knee jerk to me..

the m ission needs to look at creating jobs... not looking at fitting them into a system that is already there... what about all this new age R/E jobs that we keep hearing about..green jobs..lol..