28 JANUARY 2000 The Service's Manager, Robert Johnson, described the measures as cynical. misdirected and counter-productive. "These latest changes are cynical in targeting the victims of a lack of jobs for further punishment, especially in areas of high unemployment like Tasmania. They are misdirected because the Government ought to be strengthening genuine support and assistance, rather than maintaining this ‘be cruel to be kind’ mentality. And they are counter-productive in that they will discourage more unemployed people from seeking work and to simply give up." "The Commonwealth Government is clearly dissatisfied with the current level of job knockbacks unemployed people are forced to experience in order to qualify for income support", Mr Johnson said. "The intent of a tightening of these measures can only be to further encourage unemployed people to give up their job-seeking and withdraw from the labour force. Presumably this is the solution the Commonwealth has in mind to help it to achieve 'fuller' employment levels outside of the growing labour markets in Sydney and Melbourne." The Hobart Community Legal Service especially criticised the further financial penalties to be applied to unemployed people who failed to satisfy the Government’s higher level of fortnightly job knockbacks. "The Commonwealth proposes to impose a 6-month cut of 18% in social security payments for any unemployed person who fails to reach up to ten knockbacks each fortnight. This means that the Government expects to see up to 2.5 million unsuccessful job applications each week by the unemployed — even allowing that some will be successful — and reduced assistance to many of those applicants. Every week, this Service experiences growing demand by Centrelink clients due to the increased tightening of eligibility criteria for what is, by any measure, a low level of income support", said Mr Johnson. Mr Johnson anticipated that the latest Commonwealth proposals would result in a further increase in demand for its Welfare Rights Advocacy Service. "We constantly see the desperation faced by people who have to make a choice between just giving up, or persisting with a largely futile, personally stressful and ultimately demeaning set of rules in order to remain eligible for some degree of income support. It seems as though the Commonwealth Government is set to make that level of desperation greater, and the choice even more unpalatable", he said.
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