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…
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…
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…
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?
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…
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 start of the new financial year has also heralded the start of one of the major reforms of our income support system, yet few know it is happening. The Income Management program quarantines at least…
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.
AFTER THE INTERVENTION: Peter Billings from the University of Queensland interrogates the legal basis for the Intervention and suggests some new approaches. The belated release of a 2010 review of Government…
The federal government’s assessment of its compulsory income management trial in Greater Shepparton has not provided sufficient…
