ACOSS Reports & Submissions
Each year ACOSS prepares numerous submissions to the Federal Government. We also undertake research and produce reports on policy areas that impact disadvantaged Australians. The latest ACOSS submissions and topical papers appear below as downloadable links.
Most recent papers
January 2006
Welfare to Work - effects & solutions
After a brief Senate Inquiry, Parliament passed the Welfare to Work Bill on 6 December 2005. The Welfare to Work policy included two significant changes: a move to put more people who would have been entitled to pension-level payments onto allowance-level payments and a change to the compliance system for people on allowance-level payments including a maximum eight-week no payment penalty. The policy changes are outlined in the report.
January 2006
Employment structure and incomes in the Australian care workforce. Evidence from the Census suggests that there was significant change in the distribution of employment between occupations and industry subdivisions in the community services industry between 1996 and 2001. In this, the second Volume of Who Cares? we examine these and other developments. We present evidence of deinstitutionalisation, deprofessionalisation, functional underemployment, and relatively poor pay in community service industries. These factors appear to be driving care workers out of community services and into other human service industries like health and education.
December 2005
ACOSS has long argued that joblessness is the single main contributor to poverty in Australia. Long term jobless people are much more likely than employed people or short term unemployed people to have low education and skill levels, a chronic illness or disability, to live in a region of high unemployment, and to have an unstable employment history.1 Reducing long term joblessness therefore requires a combination of strong jobs growth and labour market assistance and training policies to help these disadvantaged job seekers to secure a reasonable share of the jobs created.
ACOSS Info paper 379. Includes: Definition of long term unemployment. Joblessness. Centrelink. International approaches to measuring joblessness. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
November 2005
Inquiry into The Employment and Workplace Relations (Welfare to Work) Bill 2005
Includes: Employment and Workplace Relations (Welfare to Work) Bill, single parents, people with disabilities, employment, unemployment, Newstart Allowance, Disability Support Pension, Parenting Payment, payment conditions, payment suspensions, likely affect of legislation.
November 2005
The Employment and Workplace Relations (Welfare to Work) Bill aims to move more social security recipients into jobs. ACOSS supports this goal and welcomed the Government's increased investments in employment assistance and child care. However, the Bill unnecessarily places many single parents and people with disabilities onto lower payments so they will have less to live on until they secure employment, and reduces incentives to work and study. It exposes them to harsh penalties if they fail to meet new activity requirements.
ACOSS Submission. Published by ACOSS, 2005. Includes: Employment and Workplace Relations (Welfare to Work) Bill, single parents, people with disabilities, employment, unemployment, Newstart Allowance, Disability Support Pension, Parenting Payment, payment conditions, payment suspensions, likely affect of legislation.
November 2005
This paper considers international evidence on the effects of reductions in payments and other policies to progress people from welfare to work, their relevance to Australia and the effects of payment levels on unemployment levels in Australia
ACOSS Info paper 382. Includes: Welfare to Work package. International comparisons of social security and employment programs. Denmark. France. United States. Single parents. People with disabilities. Employment assistance. Employment. Unemployment. Welfare reform.
September 2005
Single parents with school age children are a major target group for the Government's Welfare to Work policy. ACOSS shares the Government's objective to help single parents into employment. We welcome the increased spending on employment assistance and child care to that end. But the Government's Welfare to Work policy would also put many single parents onto lower payments and expose them to harsh penalties if they fail to meet new activity requirements.
August 2005
ACOSS Info paper 376
Includes: Mental health. Mental illness. National Mental Health Plan. Social security payments. Disability Support Pension. Poverty. Disability services. Housing and homelessness. Health care system. Private Health Insurance Subsidy. Medicare Safety Net.
July 2005
If the welfare changes announced in the Federal Budget are passed by the new Senate later this year, we estimate that a total of 150,000 people and 150,000 children, will be worse off in the three years after the changes start, in July 2006. This is due to an unprecedented change in future social security payments.
ACOSS Info paper 374. Includes: Social security. Unemployment. Employment. Jobseekers. Welfare reform. Workforce participation. Training. Job Network. Single parents. People with disabilities. Enhanced Newstart Allowance. Activity test. Poverty. Breaches/penalties.
July 2005
We acknowledge and support the main elements of the investment needed to get jobless people into employment. However, as it is presently structured, the "Welfare to Work" package has critical weaknesses that will reduce the employment gains and push many people into poverty.
ACOSS Info paper 378. Includes: Welfare to Work package. Single parents. People with disabilities. Social security payments. Austudy. Newstart Allowance. Suspension regime. Employment assistance. Employment. Unemployment. Welfare reform.
