Punishing poverty

It found that compared with store sales 18-months before Income Management, the scheme “had no beneficial effect on tobacco and cigarette sales, soft drink or fruit and vegetable sales”.

Within its findings, the report states: “… our study showed that across 10 stores in the NT, income management had no effect on fruit and vegetable sales or turnover, contrary to results reported in official reports. The average daily turnover of fruit and vegetables throughout the 18-month income-management period was about 152gm per person.”

Senator Rachel Siewert of the Greens said the government’s current evidence is based on poor consultation.

“Their evaluation process is this: ‘Let’s ask the people who are already subject to income quarantining whether they think their kids have put on weight or are eating more.’ When half of the 76 people they have asked - of the over 15 [and a half] thousand people who are quarantined - say yes, that means that income management is working,” Senator Siewert told the Senate (PDF 963KB) last Monday night, an hour before the bill was passed.

Irrespective, the government has allocated $410 million over five years to manage the 20,000 welfare recipients, which equates to approximately $5,000 per person income-managed, each year: or ten times what that person would receive to help them get a job.

Currently, Income Management applies to all people under 25 who have been on welfare for more than three months or people over 25 on welfare for a year.

Head of the Sole Parent’s Union Kathleen Swinbourne said she is concerned about the new policy direction. “There is a great deal of Australian and international research that shows that the more impositions you put on people, and the more you reduce their autonomy, the worse the outcomes for them and their children.

“This legislation appears to be punishing people for being poor, rather than helping them to run their own lives and care for their families,” she said.