Phil O'Reilly: Former Welfare Expert Advisory Panel Member on new benefit sanctions in place from today

A view that new sanctions for beneficiaries failing to meet jobseeker obligations, are "sensible."

The changes, as part of the Government's traffic light system, are being rolled out today.

It includes money management - which puts half of someone's benefit onto a payment card, that can only be used at approved stores for four weeks.

Former Welfare Expert Advisory Panel Member, Phil O'Reilly told Ryan Bridge sanctions encourage people to get off a benefit.

He says they also keep taxpayers' faith in the system too.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New benefit sanctions come into force from today. They're non financial,
so half of your benefit will be put on a
payment card for four weeks. You can only buy essential stuff.
You can't buy things like alcohol and tobacco. You can
also be made to do up to five hours of
community work experience, but it's only if you breach your obligations.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Phil O'Riley is the former Welfare Expert Advisory Group member
with us This Morning fel Good morning money. Right does
this actually work? This stuff?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Certainly, sanctions do work. Exactly how well they work is
always open to debate. They work for two reasons. One
is they encourage people to get off the benefit. But secondly,
very importantly for people like you and me who are
paying tax in order to give persons a befefort, they
keep our face in the system too, that if you're
going to be if you're not going to play by

(00:47):
the rules, there's going to be a bit of a
sanction on you. So they do actually work in mostly
context here and.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
If you read the news you would get the impression
that everybody's going to be put on a paying card tomorrow.
In fact, only ninety eight wealth ninety eight percent of
benefit stories are actually fine. Only two tend to breach
the retegations.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, that's right. I mean most people what we found
in the worldare expert advisor. We work a few years
ago was most people actually do try and get a job.
And of course right now the harder to get a job,
so it's turning up to interviews and so on, and
so I think you know that this is quite a
small minority, very small minority as matter of fact, and
it's only one part of the sanctioned regime. And what
I like about the card issue Ryan in particular, is

(01:26):
in the past, taking money off of beneficiary often means
you're actually taking it off the kid of the beneficiary
of the child, or the wife or the husband of
the beneficiary of the partner. This way, you're not taking
any money away. You're simply sort of proscribing how it
might be. And I think that's actually a very sensible
way of doing it, because the worriesome thing about taking
money off dealers it might as you hurt kids, and
that's that's all. It's problematic. The work obligation piece is

(01:48):
a little bit more interesting in the sense that in
order to work, obligation to work you've got an employer
who wants to employ you, and if you're forced to
get to work for a community organization, that might be
a little more problematic. I think those two things alone,
used expeditiously and new sensibly, I think we'll have an impact.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Job seeking numbers have gone up, of course, twenty one
eleven point six percent in March on the same time
last year. Looking at the budget unemployment data that they're
projecting it, I mean it's going it's coming down, but
it's taking its time, right, so we will rightly see
more on the job seeker benefit or no massive increase
for a while.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
That's correct, And that's the whole point about the unemployment
benefit system more generally, it's a shopping zuber in the economy.
As you get the economy slowing down, as you get
more people out of work, of course we should all
support those people and make sure that they're not left
on the street and all the rest of it. And
so that's really what's happening with the job seeker benefit.
It's simply an indication that the jobs in the economy
are hard to come by. What should hope is that

(02:46):
as we see interest rates reductions as we see changes
to that capital gains, so the capital tax issue coming through.
Over the next few months, hopefully we'll see the economy
start to pick up. And that's exactly when you get
those job numbers coming down. Nothing much you can do
about it, it's just a nature of the economy.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
There was a faux part. Don't say capital games text.
Thank you for being with us this morning, fellow Riley,
former welfare expert Advisory Group MEMBA.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
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