Rally condemns 'mutual obligation'
BY JAMES VASSILOPOULOS
CANBERRA — Sole parents and people with disabilities protested outside Parliament House on June 22 against government plans to extend harsh new welfare provisions to them and to integrate unemployment, sole parents' and disabilities allowances into a single payment.
Rally organiser Julie Vojneski said welfare entitlements should be legislated so they could not be taken away and all "mutual obligation" activities should be voluntary, not compulsory as at present. "Why must welfare recipients undertake mutual obligation tasks yet business and government do not?", Vojneski asked.
The action was organised by Children and Lone Parents, and the Social Justice Action Group which was formed by students at the Woden campus of the Canberra Institute of Technology who are angry about the federal government's interim report on welfare "reform".
Sole parent Melanie Duncan told the rally that the income support now available is unrealistically low and that performing "mutual obligation" activities will "neither eliminate poverty nor create jobs".
Anthony Albanese, the parliamentary secretary to Labor's shadow minister for family and community services, said that Labor would oppose the extension of mutual obligation to other welfare groups. He said that the ALP supports an "active social security system, but not one based on punishment". However, Albanese opposed neither "mutual obligation" for the unemployed nor work-for-the-dole schemes.
Vojneski said that if the government's final report is bad, she will push for a national day of action to oppose the attacks on the welfare system.