By Val Plumwood
I have a friend in Canberra, Sean, who is a child-care worker, a gentle person who hates war and loves working with children. The work is important but, because it is seen as women's work, it doesn't carry any sickness benefits. In early August he got shingles, (contracting such diseases is an occupational hazard of child-care work), Since the disease is classified as contagious, he was required to take two weeks off work with no pay. He lives simply, but because he has no savings was forced into series of encounters with our social "safety net", the revamped and increasingly draconian Social Security system. This is an experience which lies in wait for many Australians who fall out of the "productive" category. I interviewed him about the experience.
What happened when you went to the Social Security office?
I went first to the doctor, who told me to eat well and keep my immunity up, and that I couldn't get any workers' compensation. Although I was sick, I went to the Social Security office. They kept me waiting two hours, sitting on the floor, before I was seen. I applied for sickness benefits and told them I had no money in my bank account and no income, no way to eat. They told me I would have to wait a week, then the money would be paid into my bank account.
What did you do about eating for the week?
On the strength of their promise that the money would be paid in a week, I borrowed $100 from a friend.
I guess you were lucky to have friend with some spare cash. What happened at the end of the week?
I went back to the bank and inquired how much was in my account. There was $3 in my account. For making the inquiry, I was charged $1.20. This is the activity fee, a special charge levied by the banks on people who have less than $200 in their accounts. So then I had $1.70 in my account. The cheque hadn't arrived, and I had no way to eat, or to pay my friend back. There was no food in the house and I hadn't eaten properly over the weekend.
I went back to Social Security and asked what happened to the cheque. I got no real answer but was asked what the emergency was. I explained I had no food and was hungry. I was told that there was a directive that emergency cheques would only be given out on the condition that:
1) I had a firm offer of a job (this wasn't taken to include the job I already had and didn't allow for the fact that I was sick), or
2) All my possessions had been stolen, or
3) There was some other emergency. But emergency cheques would not be given out for food or accommodation. I said "What will I do about food?". They said: "You can go to the Salvation Army."
What did you do then?
I refused to leave the office and demanded a cheque. I waited five hours and was finally given a cheque. I just made it to the bank before it shut, so I was able to eat.
You were obviously unusually persistent. What do you think most people do in these circumstances?
What would you do? Probably go out and bust into a car or something like that. It doesn't make much sense except in punitive terms. The paper the other day said there is an 11% increase in serious crime, and it costs around $30,000 a year to put a person into a prison, more than it costs to send a person to university. And if you have to steal to eat, then we're back to the days of the convict system.
Surely you must have had something you could market. Did you consider selling one of your organs?
Yes, my stomach, because it doesn't have a function now.
The idea that you are not entitled to eat unless you have a job offer seems to mark a major new philosophical turn on the part of the social welfare system, the conception of individuals and their value in increasingly and explicitly instrumental terms.
Plato's Republic is often criticised for its totalitarian character, which resides largely in its instrumental conception of people as only worthwhile and deserving of care from others if they are useful to the state (for us read "the economy") and the basing of entitlements on the performance of their jobs and contribution to producing the good.
In the Republic the non-productive are simply allowed to die. But the Republic seems more humane than our present system since at least it did provide everyone with the opportunity to contribute if they were able to.
Our system as it now stands seems to have dispensed even with the appearance of conforming to the liberal principle that individuals are ends in themselves, worthwhile in their own right, and that we have a responsibility to provide care for one another on that
basis.
Those deemed "unproductive" are now to be left to the contingency of private charity. The guiding principle seems to be the view that the economy is not here to serve us, rather we are here to serve the economy, and that doing so is the gauge of our value and entitlements to social care. Such a development is not only uncaring, it is positively sinister.