ABSTRACT
The introduction in Australia of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which includes an Information, Linkages and Capacity Building program that focuses on economic participation, could present an opportunity for people with disability on JobSeeker Payment. The current mutual obligations placed on people with disability on JobSeeker Payment have not led to employment outcomes, instead of placing people with disability in situations of poverty and deprivation. This chapter applies governmentality and ableism to relevant Program documents and finds that, although the program does recognise the discrimination and social barriers which impact economic participation for people with disability, it constructs and governs people with disability through neoliberal principles and fails to deconstruct notions of ableism which underpin the social structure of the labour market. As such, this Program could produce social suffering for people with disability because it could perpetuate external and internalised ableism. Rather than disavowal and violence facilitated through programs like the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building program, there needs to be a reconsideration of human worth and some recognition of how objectives of economic participation for people with disability are inherently tied with neoliberalism and ableism.
