Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews wants to streamline welfare payments

Updated

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews has signalled he wants to streamline welfare payments, describing the structure of the current system as being as complicated as a "bird's nest".

In the next couple of weeks Mr Andrews is set to release the first report from a review into the welfare system, conducted by former Mission Australia head Patrick McClure.

Both men spoke this morning at the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) national conference, where Mr McClure revealed some of the review's proposals.

"What we will be proposing in the interim report is a simpler architecture with fewer payments and supplements," he said.

"Across this system there would be an employment focus that encourages people to work who have got the capacity to work."

Mr McClure said there would be "rewards" for work, listing more consistent rules for income tests, taper rates for benefits and "better integration" of the tax system.

"Also another principle would be that there would be adequate support for people who can't work," Mr McClure said.

The proposals are likely to be welcomed by Mr Andrews, who today noted the complexity of the current round of payments.

"The reality of our welfare system in Australia is that we've got dozens of payments, supplements and allowances," Mr Andrews said.

"If you draw a diagram of the welfare system it looks like a bird's nest and it's difficult to understand from that and it must be difficult to understand for lots of people who are participants in the welfare system."

He said years of often ad-hoc decisions to introduce new payments has prompted him to ask how it can be reined in.

"Can we simplify the system? Can we redesign it so it's established on some understood, reasonable principles but constructed in a simple way?," he put to the conference.

"Could we have four, five or six payments rather than the dozens we have at the present time?"

Opposition spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says the review is "secretive" and is masking a Coalition attack on the nation's social safety net.

"Kevin Andrews' new 'simplification' agenda is simply code for another round of savage cuts," she told ABC News Online.

"Labor will fight tooth and nail to stop this Government from dismantling the safety net that Australia has spent generations building."

Expert panel to advise on early intervention measures

The minister has also announced he will set up an expert panel in the next month to advise him on early intervention measures to prevent "the dysfunction which occurs in individuals and communities".

Mr McClure's review was commissioned in January with an emphasis on unemployment benefits and the disability support pension.

According to information tabled by the Department of Social Service to a Senate committee, the review has as its top guiding principles that changes provide "incentives to work" and "adequately" supports those who are "genuinely not able to work".

Mr McClure conducted a similar review for the Howard government in 2000 and recommended in what became known simply as the McClure Report that all welfare payments be replaced by a single base rate with additional supplements to address individual circumstances.

Speaking after Mr Andrews at the ACOSS conference, Mr McClure said "the combination of 20 payments and over 50 supplements leads to many possible packages but also lots of inconsistencies in terms of income tests, means tests and taper rates and so on".

He said the system is currently "not flexible".

"We need to develop a simpler and sustainable income support system but in doing that we also need to build capability in individuals and families," he said.

Mr McClure said the Government needed to engage business more to ensure jobs were available for people who had been successfully trained.

His final report for the Abbott Government was initially due in the middle of the year, but Mr Andrews says it has been pushed back to September or October.

Topics: welfare, community-and-society, federal-government, unemployment, disabilities, budget, australia

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