The Federal Government will shortly announce the extension of income management Australia-wide to black and white welfare recipients as part of its reintroduction of the Racial Discrimination Act in the Northern Territory, Crikey has been told.
In May this year, the Government committed to the introduction of legislation restoring the RDA and NT anti-discrimination laws in October, meaning either this week or next week. The Bill was not among those considered by Caucus earlier this week.
The Government has been grappling with how to restore the RDA while maintaining the income management system imposed on indigenous communities under the NT intervention. Currently, half of income support and family assistance payments, and all lump sums including the Baby Bonus, are set aside and accessible only via a “BasicCard” for buying essential goods and services. They cannot be used for products such as alcohol, tobacco, pornography or gambling. It currently applies in 73 prescribed areas in the NT and to people who live in town camps.
Last year the Government rejected a proposal to make income management voluntary, which would mean it complied with the RDA. Since then, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has been involved in extended consultations with indigenous communities.
Some legal academics and indigenous community representatives argue that income management can only comply with the RDA if it is extended community wide.
According to Crikey’s sources, the Government will extend income management to welfare recipients, white and black, across Australia, as part of its restoration of the RDA.
While the RDA affects other Intervention measures like alcohol and p-rnography bans, income management is the primary stumbling block to the Act’s restoration.
In recent months, the Government has rolled out income management on a “free and confidential” voluntary basis in other areas, and earlier this month announced success in rolling it out across Perth.
As part of the Perth initiative, however, the WA Department of Child Protection will also obtain the power from early next year to recommend to Centrelink that income management be applied for the benefit of children.
Under those arrangements, “income managed” families would, on the recommendation of the Department of Child Protection, have up to 70% of welfare payments and all lump sums quarantined and accessible only via BasicCard.
The WA initiative may provide the template for a nation-wide, non-voluntary income management process that would empower child protection agencies to impose income management on any family where the safety of children was at risk. Such an arrangement would not be racially-based and would therefore comply with the RDA.
A nationwide rollout will mean considerable additional costs for Centrelink, which administers the BasicCard scheme. Centrelink is receiving $105m in 2009-10 for administration of NT income management.
Minister Macklin’s office was unable to provide a comment by deadline.
This is just ludicrous. I recall a program where aboriginal people could nominate to receive their pensions, benefits etc weekly, and to receive help in learning how to budget and handle money. It was very successful, and so it was stopped. This happened under Howard. People in the NT in receipt of aged pensions, veteran pensions etc are also put on this invasive interruption to their lives; making them travel long distances to buy their essentials, even though they don’t have dependant children living with them. They, along with many others are incensed by this injustice. Some may be ill or infirmed in some way. Bad enough that they(or their wives) were treated like garbage while they served, but now they’re being forced into more difficulty and discrimination.
What about those ex priests, brothers and teachers in NSW who’ve been charged with various degrees of alleged sexual assault/abuse of students in their care at a well known school in Orange/Bathurst? Did they have their incomes quarantined? Have their homes been reclaimed by the NSW or Federal govt? As far as I’m aware, they’re all non-indigenous (white)males, so I guess not!
It is ludicrous to punish all indigenous people, implying that they’re all abusers of kids, but keep the dangerous legislation re the Family Law Act, that enables Judges in the Family Law Court to insist, that women comply with orders to hand their kids over to an abusive partner/father every second week or so, under the new laws introduced by Howard/Ruddock. I’ve heard mention of some amendments to this horrific practice, and it can’t come too soon. If I had young children, I’d pick them up and run if they were being abused by their father, but that would make me a criminal. I could be charged with contempt or kidnapping. How damned ridiculous is that?
Aboriginal people are being forced to pay up to $600 and more to get a taxi to Alice Springs or Darwin or another major town, in order to buy their groceries and other essentials, even though there’s a closer store, where they can buy some goods, like flour and sugar in bulk. Sadly, in some cases those stores have been forced to close down, as the Govt is nominating the major grocery chains as the only places where aboriginal people can shop. They’re being forced to fill a taxi in order to cut costs, but it takes ages to get there and back. Who looks after the kids when they’re not there? Damned stupid!
I also understand, that fresh food is ridiculously expensive, and I’d say the major stores would take full advantage of their ‘windfall’? Putting prices up when aboriginals go shopping. (I notice it on pension days in southern NSW?)Unless you have good refrigeration in the NT, people would need fresh food each day. How do they comply with dietary requirements of 5 servings of vegies and 2 servings of fruit per day for their kids? How much for fresh juice as opposed to cordials, which have too much sugar for kids general and dental health. I understand that aboriginal kids who used to have beautiful teeth are suffering from more decays etc. This is not conducive to ‘closing the gap’? Bad teeth can cause all sorts of illnesses and diseases!
I think Jenny Macklin and others (Kevin and Therese?) should live up there for a few weeks and find out what life is all about for aboriginal people in remote areas. They could live in one of the ‘homes’ built without wires connecting the light switch to the centre of the room. (recent report on aboriginal housing – The World Today – ABC – several months ago?) Read that to exercise the eyebrows. No running water in the kitchen? No locks on doors. Overcrowding! Too many of these houses built by shonky workpeople, who did things on the cheap and pocketed the profits! They should be hunted down and charged with fraud! And so it goes on, and on and on!
So for those depressed and stuck in the welfare cycle, with inadequate help to find work even if there is any in the areas they happen to live in will now be forced to reveal their low status whenever they need to buy groceries.
There is already a stigma felt by these people for being on welfare, even if no one actually knows, yet now it will be obvious to the the people in the shopping qeue, the checkout person etc… This is an extra weight on those who struggle with maintaining any self esteem whilst unemployed. The humiliation felt by a lot of welfare recipients can only be made worse by this.
Obviously no one will care as the impression most Australian’s seem to have of welfare is that everyone on it is selfishly lazy and a burden on the community, despite the fact that any welfare is spent within whatever area the recipient lives in and so therefore contributing to the business’s income and employment of staff at those businesses. Abolish all welfare and each community will simply have less money spent within it, besides the obvious increase in poverty, homelessness, crime etc. So demonising welfare and portraying it as a waste of money, a burden on the community does not make economic sense to me. Though anyone who believes they work hard and are regularly resentful of the inescapable fact of paying taxes will certainly disagree despite any recognition of the way welfare spreads money throughout communities and contributes to the economy.
This BasicCard approach will recieve a lot of support, yet I can only see how demeaning it may be for those on welfare (whether they are the ‘deserving’ welfare recievers or those ‘lazy partiers’ the right wingers love to hate), and that it excarbates the dislocation those welfare recipients feel from society. And for arguably no real benefit to anyone.
Dear Bernard,
Many thanks for your article. Perhaps you could clarify one point. My understanding is that if income Management were to be rolled out across Australia it would still only apply to parents where the safety of children is considered to be at risk.
In the NT ALL Aboriginal prople living in prescribed areas who are receiving wefare payments are Income Managed, whether or not they are caring for children.
I fail to see the justification for the continuation of Income Management in the NT in this form simply because other parts of Australia will be forced onto a similar system aimed at parents whose children may be at risk. Could you please explain the logic of this.
If this has worked for indigenous communities then obviously it should be extended to the general community. Parents and gaurdians who abuse alcohol or gamble excessively are not identifiable by skin colour, nor are they identifiable by whether or not they are on welfare. But if we can help families to stand up to those who destroy themselves and their family with drugs and gambling then we should do it, regardless of race, creed or economic circumtsances.
Now how can we deal with the financially well-off drug or gambling addicted lawyers, doctors, politicians, public servants, garbos, welders, motor mechanics, journalists etc who make their childrens’ lives hell?
I couldn’t give a stuff about the intervention being racially discriminatory but my libertarian instincts don’t run to respecting the right of one’s children to be useless junkies or other people to be unemployed burdens on the employed when a bit of the rough and ready heavy handedness which is the best that we can manage in criminal law and other mean of social control might at least jolt a few in the right direction.
Sorry Jaded John your argument won’t bear the weight you try to put on it. People spending welfare money may contribute to a depressed economy as a good war does or building pyramids but it doesn’t actually get over the simple fact that it involves enabling people who aren’t working (contributing to the GDP anyway) to spend at the expense of what people who are productive, or at least employed, might otherwise have been able to spend or save.
So Bravo to our courageous government of the Left. Let’s hope the Lower Orders (sorry Underclass – or should I say Permanently Disadvantaged Often Through No Fault of Their Own) can be brought into line even if bringing drunken Aborigines into line has proved a hopeless venture.