42% of people on the DSP are poor

Was reading through stuff at the Australian Council of Social Services last night (I don't get out much) on their website. They had a specific bit about people on the Disability Support Pension and the assertion that we should cop  a 3 fold increase in Medicare costs, less indexation, and on and on. 

My point all along is that there's not the slightest room to move; there is no extra money to magically cough up. $36 might as well be $360 for the ability we have to pay such money. People don't seem to realise just how knife edge things are.

Well here we have confirmation from ACOSS that we on the DSP are some of the poorest people in the country. Far from the Murdoch lies that we're on easy street sucking money from all and sundry, we are in fact hugely represented in the Australian poverty figures. So much so, that 42% of us on the DSP are living in poverty. This from April:

The Australian Council of Social Service and disability advocacy members today urged the Federal Government to ensure that changes being considered to the Disability Support Pension do not further exacerbate the health conditions, poverty and disadvantage experienced by people who rely on the important payment. 

"ACOSS supports a review of income support payments, but we won't support any changes that simply take money away from people in desperate situations and which will risk making them sicker and more disadvantaged," said ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie. 

"Reform is needed to improve job prospects and invest more in skills development and support. The last thing we need is to plunge people into further distress. If the Government chooses to go down that road - it would be a major backward step and extremely damaging to some of the most vulnerable members of our community. 

"We know that people with disabilities and those with severe work incapacities, such as mental illness, face enormous challenges. More than 600, 000 people with disability are living below the poverty line. A shocking 42% per cent of people on the DSP are already living in poverty. This is unacceptable and it would be unconscionable for us to make the plight of those who rely on the DSP worse. more

What a sobering statistic.

There are many reasons for this I suspect. Logic suggests a few possibilities. People get sick during their working lives before reaching aged retirement. This interferes with their ability to look after their future as healthy people do. It's a bit hard to go out and earn money with incurable illnesses that disrupt daily routines, to say the least. So we end up in the later stages of life with no property and having to (in many cases) pay private rent. Our superannuation gets raided to pay off debt that becomes unserviceable when you get sick, or we simply have to declare bankrupcy. We end up with no job, no property, no car, no nothing except survival on a pittance. Often friends and family fall away and people are left isolated, poor, and alone.

I'm not bitter about getting sick or ending up where I am now. At the moment I'm happy to live in a country where I'm supported and have a chance to make ends meet and get by. What does make me angry is when I'm either misrepresented in the Murdoch media, or by the gov itself. Then the gov uses that misrepresentation/demonisation to clobber me, counting on it's demonisation of me to convince the public that I deserve to have my pension cut and costs increased. 

In reality the gov is using it's own propaganda to target and hurt one of the most vulnerable groups in Australia. Using capitalist dogma about imaginary debt to do so.

I just can't get my head around it. How could a gov be so heartless. So cruel. So mean, to the most hurt? A gov that claims Christian credentials. It's no wonder I ask myself, am I just Abbott's social trash?