>:o >:o >:o More than 1,000 unemployed pregnant women could be stripped of Newstart for months at a time under the government’s planned “earn or learn” policy, new figures have revealed. Pregnant women are not exempt from the government’s proposal to take unemployed people under 30 off income support for six months at a time, a budget measure which is likely to be blocked in the Senate. There is no specific record of how many pregnant women are on income support in Australia but data is kept on how many apply for exemptions from compulsory activities, usually because they are late in their pregnancy or experiencing difficulties during it. In the past financial year, 2,353 pregnant women applied for an activity exemption from Newstart, Youth Allowance and the Single Parenting payment, according to a response from the Department of Social Services to a question on notice from the Greens. Of those, 816 were on Youth Allowance, which means they were under 30, and 1,402 were on Newstart. Applying the statistic that 20% of Newstart recipients are under 30, about 280 of those women would likely be affected by the earn or learn policy. This means more than 1,000 pregnant women would be affected by the government’s earn or learn policy each year. DSS also confirmed pregnant women would be subject to the policy, although they can apply for exemptions on a number of grounds. Greens senator Rachel Siewert said it was confirmation there would be serious impacts for pregnant women because of the policy. “I cannot believe that a government would deny pregnant women access to income support for six months at a time, condemning them to poverty,” she said. “Exposing people to poverty while pregnant will have serious health and mental health impacts. A lack of nutrition, increased stress or an inability to afford secure accommodation, medical care or basic costs like a power bill will make things incredibly tough for a mother and her unborn child.” Siewert also asked the department during June estimates how a pregnant woman was supposed to support herself if not given income support for months at a time and the department pointed to $229.6m put aside for emergency relief. “Emergency relief is not an adequate response to exposing pregnant women to extreme hardship. By the time people reach the point of accessing this assistance, they are going to have been living in poverty and struggling to make ends meet for weeks or months,” Siewert said. “How does the government genuinely think people will manage to look for work and deal with issues like discrimination from employers while they are living on nothing and are trying to take care of themselves and their unborn child?” The policy is not expected to pass the Senate, with the original two social services bills being split into four earlier this month to make it easier for the government to pass some of the less controversial measures. The six months on and off income support has had almost universal condemnation from the crossbench and social services minister Kevin Andrews has said he is open to negotiation on the proposal. When asked about exempting pregnant women in June, a spokeswoman for Andrews said there would be ways for a pregnant woman to be exempt from the six months off income support. “Encouraging parents to participate in the workforce helps break the intergenerational welfare cycle, and children who grow up in working families are less likely to be unemployed later in life,” she said. The spokeswoman said regulations known as the jobseeker classification instrument would be used to identify jobseekers who have barriers to employment and allow them to claim benefits. The instrument does not recognise pregnancy alone as a barrier to employment, unless there are complications, until six weeks before the baby’s due date. “Job services providers are expected to take into account any advice from a treating medical practitioner, including advice regarding the work capacity of a pregnant woman, when applying job search and activity test requirements,” the spokeswoman said.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 05:06:10 +0000
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