Yes, you can go to work

and no you will not get that cushy "disability support pension" you had your eye on. You will not endlessly get the "unemployment benefit" either. 

I know someone who has just gleefully informed me that they will be "pension age" in a few weeks. "That means I won't have to worry about all those stupid courses they kept sending me on," he told me.

This man has managed to avoid work almost all his life. He has had occasionally had a few months work here or there or elsewhere. He left school without any qualifications. He "injured" himself at the only job he ever got - on the production line in a factory. He was on a disability support pension for a while after that, then a part pension when he was told he was able to work for some hours per week. He has been sent on one low level course after another. He managed not to complete any of them so he remained unqualified. He was sent to "volunteer" at a charity shop and, although the manager is one of the most patient people I know, he was asked to leave. Now he will get a full pension with rent assistance. He will spend his days "watching the telly", playing cards and drinking with a mate who is in much the same position as himself.  It surely is a wasted life but he does not see it this way.

I cannot help contrasting him with the disabled woman who works in a local business. She is also on a disability support pension and she struggles to cope with her role at times but it is something she does with a real sense of being useful. It might just be for a few hours a week but she knows she needs that work. Her workmates are alert to her needs and will give her a little extra time when she needs it. "But you could just get the pension," is something people have discovered you do not say to her.

Yes, it might be a matter of personality and attitude. That said I still see no reason why the first person should be in a position to "work the system" when the second person does everything to avoid it. 

I am therefore increasingly concerned by the increasing numbers of children accessing NDIS payments. Some of them will genuinely need help but do we really have a country in which ten percent of boys and around seven percent of girls need to do this? Something has gone wrong somewhere. 

What is going to happen to these children when they leave school? If they had something they did not really need and had it for nothing at school are they going to expect the same as adults?  It may be that some of them will...and that won't be good for any of us.