Senators have granted a two-year extension to a program for which there is little supporting evidence.
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Income management
Displaying all articles
The Morrison government has introduced a bill to parliament to make the cashless debit card trial ‘ongoing’.
The first independent, multisite study of compulsory income management in Australia suggest little evidence to support political enthusiasm to extend the policy.
The government wants to triple the number of Australians on the Cashless Debit Card in the face of scant evidence it does them any good.
That the Cashless Debit Card continues to be pursued exposes a dogged obsession with implementing punitive policy at the expense of vulnerable people.
The trial of the cashless welfare card, to control unhealthy spending in Indigenous communities, is being expanded partly due to emotive well-funded campaigns. Meanwhile, evidence is being ignored.
It’s a mystery why another trial of the Cashless Debit Card is necessary – particularly given how it has led to further economic and social harm among its participants.
Income management was first applied to Indigenous communities before being implemented more widely. The Healthy Welfare Card policy appears to be on this same path.
How can it be determined whether any improvements that may occur as part of the 12-month “cashless debit card” trial are the result of the card or increased funding for services, or a mix of both?
The government should follow the evidence-based advice before wasting more money on a new “trial” program that further infantilises mainly Indigenous welfare recipients and won’t work.
Various studies, culminating in the final evaluation report of income management in the Northern Territory, have found such programs don’t achieve the claimed benefits. Why did the budget extend them?
In recent years, Tangentyere Council Research Hub has undertaken data collection in Alice Springs town camps as part of a longitudinal study of income management. The final report of around 300 pages was…
The mess of federal budget negotiations has taken over the limited space for social policy debates. However, we are due to get final reports on a range of inquiries. These include the McClure report on…
The prime object of welfare reform should be to increase the well-being of people rather to reduce public expenditure. Good policy should be able to achieve both goals over the longer term. Too many current…
One of the bizarre bipartisan policy overlaps between the Coalition and Labor is in the area of income support known as welfare payments. Labor has been seen as the party that cared about the poor and…
For a brief moment, it looked as though the Coalition would be better than the ALP on welfare policy. It appeared that the new government would listen to evidence for policy changes in its newly retitled…
The federal government’s assessment of its compulsory income management trial in Greater Shepparton has not provided sufficient…
If Finance Minister Penny Wong is serious about delivering budget savings to Australians, perhaps she should rethink the government’s commitment to its contentious income management program. By cutting…
Top contributors
-
Professorial Fellow, Jumbunna IHL, University of Technology Sydney
-
Associate professor, Australian National University
-
Lecturer, The University of Melbourne
-
Advisor, Author and Researcher, The University of Queensland
-
Professor of Social Policy, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland
-
Professor, Director Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit, Monash University
-
Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland
-
Griffith University
-
ARC Discovery Indigenous Award Researcher, The University of Queensland
-
Research Fellow, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, University of Sydney
-
Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor Curtin Medical School Public Health Physician, Curtin University
