Australia: Church Groups Pessimistic About Welfare Overhaul

A group of church employment organisations in Australia, including The Salvation Army, Catholic Welfare Australia and the St Vincent de Paul Society, will voice their opposition to Government changes to welfare to a parliamentary inquiry today, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

|TOP|The church groups, along with other church-based members of the Job Network, include UnitingCare and Anglicare Australia, have all criticised the proposed welfare changes claiming they will create a new underclass of working poor reliant on charities, family and friends, in order to supplement low wages.

“This is an agenda that passes the buck on poverty and inequality,” said the St Vincent de Paul Society, in CathNews.

According to Sydney Morning reports, instead of creating incentives for people to find work, the biggest changes in the system in decades will force people on welfare to accept jobs with no award conditions or pay rates or face the suspension of their benefits for eight weeks.

“It contributes to greater income inequality at a time when there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that the slide into growing inequality has been arrested. Furthermore, it does nothing to really enable people to participate in work, education or the community. It does not offer dignity. It takes away hope.”

St Vincent de Paul issued a report earlier in the month entitled ‘Working out of welfare’ in which it presented evidence of entrenched poverty that would arise as a result of government welfare policies and continued cuts in funding.