Here's Why

Centrelink cuts services only to the disabled

Centrelink have quietly "re-organised" by firing and moving staff into specialised units, and away from local branches. This is a move that makes life more difficult for people subsisting on a Disability Support Pension. Instead of going to your local branch of Centrelink to show your rent receipts and bank statements, if you are disabled, then you must travel to a specialised unit in a distant suburb. If you're not disabled, the your local branch is just fine, no extra hurdles for you. In my case, when I was sick from the ciguatera fish poisoning, I was being threatened with breach of contract because I was unable to walk the four blocks to my local Centrelink branch. Due to the astonishing computer problems and uncaring policy within Centrelink, I was forced into many letters and phone calls to correct wrongly entered information and outrageously bad calculations. Centrelink imagined I owned a house, or had full-time work, or any sort of fantasy that could cut me off. Always, the only thing that would cut past the psychological problems that Centrelink staff have with talking to people over the phone, was to speak with them in person. In person, they couldn't cling hold to their belief that I was some kind of fake, and they could see my documentation, and were forced to accept the reality of my words. Over the phone, deniability and flippancy is the rule. On paper, fantasy is the rule. So now disabled people are being forced to travel for the convenience of an arbitrary "restructuring" that has been accomplished as an excuse to fire hundreds of Centrelink officers from each branch. If I visit my local branch in person, now that a four block walk is relatively easy again, I will just get their sole receptionist, who will then send my documents into the maze at the specialist unit, where it is guaranteed to be misread, wrongly entered into the computer system, and not be available to anybody I speak to or write to about problems of fact. The software Centrelink uses cannot get simple arithmetic correct. In my last encounter, I amazed them by using a spreadsheet to show all of my finacial information and what my payments had been and what they should have been. Spreadsheet technology is more than twenty years old. I've asked Centrelink staff at the call centre, the specialist unit, and at Centrelink Customer Relations about the change in the way disabled people are treated, and they are not allowed to comment, or don't know. Shortly the criteria for eligibility for the Disability Support Pension is going to be HALVED from being judged by a doctor to be able to work thirty hours a week without harm, to judgement by a clerk that you are cablable of working fifteen hours a week. They will want proof that there will be any harm, yet they have demonstrated that they don't accept any kind of proof, until you're dead. There are no more Commonwealth Medical Officers anymore, the Centrelink clerks get to make a medical judgement on how much work will hospitalize you. You don't get to say "no" to being damaged if it won't kill you outright. I have had medical certificates rejected by Centrelink clerks. The whole point of a medical certificate is that it is written by a certified medical doctor who has his phone number and address printed on the letter-head. This is so that anybody presented with the medical certificate can contact the doctor and question them about what the doctor has written. Its a simple system that lets people check the validity of a claim of illness or injury. Yet Centrelink staff have continuously made judgements, including rejecting medical certificates, without making any efforts to contact the doctor at all. A Rally to protest at the dysfunctional way that Centrelink is being run is being planned for 2005 at The Artful Dodger During my problems with incompetence at Centrelink, I have benefited from good advice and help from Welfare Rights Australia and The Commonwealth Ombudsman's Office. I highly recommend giving them a call or writing them a letter if you're having Centrelink problems. Trust me, you WILL have problems under the new "Work 'till you drop" scheme.

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here

Posted by iwoolf at February 28, 2005 1:26 PM | TrackBack