Review of Disability Support Pension by Abbott

Typical. This is usually number one on the hit list isn't it when a conservative gov comes in; hit the fuckin pensioners. It's a moral crisis! There are too many on the DSP and will send the country broke! We must put an end to the pensioners taking advantage of us all!

FINANCE Minister Mathias Cormann has confirmed the government is reviewing the Disability Support Pension to ensure any person capable of working returns to employment. 

News Limited Sunday papers have reported the Disability Support Pension scheme is facing a significant overhaul, with the Abbott government contemplating a two-tiered system that would limit new entrants to temporary payments if their disability was not permanent, and subject workers under 40 to more regular reviews to determine whether they are capable or part-time employment. 

Speaking on Sky News' Australian Agenda this morning, Senator Cormann said the Disability Support Pension was "one of the fast growing areas of government expenditure." more

Note the picture of doom at the end; "fast growing" and "expenditure". Couple that with the Abbott fairy tale of a debt crisis and there you have it.

It doesn't concern me personally as apparently I have three permanent conditions (HIV, depression/PTSD, chronic kidney failure). They nearly threw the bloody pension at me when I finally applied for it. Readers of this blog would know how hard I tried to keep working but couldn't.

I realise that there will be cases of people abusing the system, but from my experience going on the DSP isn't exactly the pinnacle of human success. And can't those people be weeded out without demonising all of us and threatening us with some big club? There are very good reasons why I'm on the DSP, as I'm sure there are many others with just as good or better reasons. Why should any of us legit pension getters feel threatened by the gov over this?

Update:

From Bob Ellis.

AFTER 107 DAYS, it is clear the conservatives will redefine ‘disability’, as I said they would.

After betraying the whales and “liberating” Holden workers (their bosses couldn’t handle the world recession, so they should endure humiliation, and their children educational disaster) and the disadvantaged children, and after angering the Indonesians, the Chinese, the East Timorese, the Niuginians and the United Nations, and punishing the children of Tamil fugitives anxious for a better life, they are now kicking cripples, as tories in the past have been keen to do.

What a mean, sadistic bunch they are. What swindlers, what grubs. more