Punishing poverty

While Income Management will impact people who receive Youth Allowance and other benefit payments, welfare groups are concerned that sole parents will be hurt the most.

Unlike other welfare recipients who are expected to remain under the scheme for short periods of time, many sole parents with young children will effectively remain under the scheme for a long time.

Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, Eva Cox says these measures will force many people on the parenting payment or Newstart Allowance to request an exemption in order to retain control of their money.

“It will impact on the mass of sole parents who will have to either accept having half of their income controlled or prove that they are good mothers,” she said.

Exemptions for sole parents include proving that you are a responsible parent, where parents with pre-school age children (48 months) must show that their child is enrolled in structured activities such as childcare or play groups.

“Mothers who support their children by spending time with friends or informal playgroups … it appears would not be considered ‘structured activity’ and therefore would not meet the responsible parenting test,” Terese Edwards, CEO of National Council for Single Mothers and Their Children said.

Income Management is a part of Labor’s new approach to welfare reform that seeks to extinguish passive welfare. In a speech to Parliament the now former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the legislation is a part of the government’s commitment to moving people from welfare dependency to a more active role such as working.

“We are of the view that welfare should not become a way of life for any Australian and that encouraging welfare dependency helps no Australian,” Mr Rudd said.

The program is an amended version of the measures introduced as a part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response initiative, already spread across 73 Indigenous communities.

While Minister Macklin has indicated that a national roll out of income management would not occur before late 2011, opposition leader Tony Abbott has said that if elected he would implement a national scheme immediately.

Despite introducing legislation that now applies 20,000 welfare recipients in the NT, the Federal Government is yet to produce any solid evidence to suggest that managing a person’s income will influence their purchases of fruit and vegetables.

Prior to the government extending Income Management to all welfare recipients across the NT, the Menzies School of Health Research released a report that examined the impact of the scheme on store sales.