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Labor punishing the poor

By Jo Coghlan - posted Monday, 4 June 2012


The Gillard government had the opportunity to raise its profile on Indigenous issues recently had it selected former ALP National President Warren Mundine to the Senate. Instead, indigenous policy seems to remain on the fringes of Labor's national attention. Rather than developing more just policies than Intervention, the Gillard government has expanded Intervention to ten non-indigenous communities in regional and urban centres.

Bad policies, like income quarantining, remain bad policy regardless of how many people it effects. When the Howard government introduced income quarantining as part of Northern Territory (NT) Intervention in 2007 it was a bad policy. The Gillard government's extension of the policy in 2011-12 doesn't mean it is good social or public policy.

In June 2007 the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) was introduced as the federal government's response to the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children. One of the measures of the NTER was the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payments Reform) Act 2007.

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The legislation mandated that 50 per cent of Centrelink provided payments to Indigenous people residing in remote NT communities be managed by the federal government. Under the Act, money was withheld for rent, food, energy bills, medical care, and household goods. In order to introduce this measure the Howard government suspended the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) because the legislation applied specifically and exclusively to Indigenous Australians.

The Howard government argued that in introducing income quarantining less money would be available for drug and alcohol consumption, money would be spent in "socially responsible" ways, and incidents of child abuse would decrease. Studies however found that there was no correlation between income quarantining and socially responsible spending. Hence there was little correlation between income quarantining and reductions in child abuse.

The 2007 measure was little more than a punitive policy that failed to demonstrate any positive reduction in child abuse, the original rationale for the policy and it remains so in 2012. As Paul Toohey argues, NT Intervention was necessary because child sex abuse among Aborigines was "en masse', parents were failing to provide their children with fundamental protections and human rights." Again, Toohey argues (p.2) that Australians were asked to accept that:

Aborigines, after 60,000 years of survival in some of the most hellishly harsh country known to humans, had, in the last forty years, forgotten how to raise children: that the part of the Aboriginal DNA allotted to parenthood had been cast adrift from the genome or, perhaps, was never really there.

NT income quarantining was initially implemented in 73 Indigenous communities. It affected over 45,000 Indigenous families, which represented 70 per cent of the territory's Aboriginal population. From indigenous banker, Glen Brennan, the message of NT income quarantining was:

Teetotalers and drunks, spenders and savers, good and bad parents - it makes no difference. If you're an Aboriginal person receiving welfare payments in the NT, you live under the Emergency Response and half your welfare must be spent on the priority goods like food, clothes, rent and health care. You can't use the money for alcohol, tobacco, pornography or gambling – well at least not the quarantined half anyway.

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Rudd's economic equity model of income quarantining

With the election of the Rudd Labor government in November 2007 complete with the national apology to Indigenous Australians (delivered by Rudd in February 2008) some may have thought that Intervention measures such as income quarantining would be wound back. As Rudd told the national parliament:

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again. A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

Regardless of the economic equity sentiment contained in the national apology, the former Minister for Health, Jenny Macklin, maintained that income quarantining would continue as long as it proved to deliver better outcomes for indigenous Australians. Income quarantining would continue, Macklin said, as long as there was "sound, evidence-based" research that the policies were closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare have consistently found that there is no evidence that income quarantining has had any positive health or economic benefits on indigenous Australians. The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs in its 2009 monitoring report 'Closing the Gap in the Northern Territory' even acknowledges that there was no evidence that income quarantining makes a significant difference to any of the originally stated objectives.

In 2011, the Gillard government failed in its bit to suppress a government report that showed federal spending on indigenous-specific programs had "yielded dismally poor returns". The report prepared by the Department of Finance and Deregulation, titled 'Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure" found) that income quarantining, which cost the federal government $165.9 million in 2009-10, should be "comprehensively evaluated before any consideration of further expansion."

In June 2011 however, the Gillard government released the discussion paper 'Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory' which signaled only minor changes to income quarantining provisions (mostly affecting quarantine exemptions for indigenous students). This was even though then Health Minister Jenny Macklin, mirroring the reservations held by Paul Toohey and Glen Brennan, said that there was a "stigma" surrounding income quarantining.

Regardless of the lack of evidence-based research about the effectiveness of quarantining and the high costs of implementing and administering the scheme – listed in the 2011 federal budget at $117.5 million over five years – the Gillard government has expanded income quarantining to ten communities, indigenous and non-indigenous, in NSW, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland.

Income quarantining in the suburbs

Introduced in July 2011, income quarantining, now recast as the benign sounding 'income management', is compulsory for long-term welfare recipients, including sole parents. The new regulations presume whole categories of economically and socially disadvantaged people are irresponsible with their income.

Just as NT income quarantining attached a stigma to those it affected, its expansion to communities now labeled among the "nation's most disadvantaged communities" expands the stigma. In expanding the policy it maintains the narrative that it is parents, and not governments, who are to blame for their children "missing out on the benefit of the growing economy and the opportunities it brings".

According to the Gillard government, the expanded income quarantining policy acts to"stabilise dysfunctional families" and removes barriers to participation in community and work. However, as with the NT model, there is no evidence to support that withholding government income will do either. If anything, income quarantining is more likely to put families at risk under greater social and economic pressure. The criteria for quarantining is families assessed by Centrelink social workers as "vulnerable to financial crisis". Under the expanded Gillard model up to 70 per cent of government payments can be quarantined under income management.

According to the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS, 2010) report 'The Contest for a Fair Australia' all Australians are increasingly under financial pressure because of a stagnating national economy. For ACOSS"anyone of us could face losing our jobs, or our homes, and our children could struggle to find work when they leave school." It is not only low-income Australians but it is middle-income Australians who are increasingly under financial pressure. Rising living costs over the last decade in electricity (91 per cent), housing (58 percent) and health (63 per cent) are leaving more people economically vulnerable.

There are about two million income support recipients in Australia who rely on government income. About 60 per cent of income support recipients have work-generated income of less than $20 a week. One-third of all Centrelink recipients have no private income at all. This rises to around half for all people on Disability Support Pensions. Households that are heavily reliant on benefits also have relatively few assets, with most reporting savings of under $1,000.

Arguably the rationale of 'under financial pressure' as a criteria for income quarantining is problematic. Many middle-class families who receive government incomes in the form of childcare subsidiaries and tax relief would ideally fit the criteria used for the Gillard government's quarantining model.

Policies of 'blaming the victim' or 'blaming the poor' mean governments don't need to confess to the failures of decades of state and federal government policies that have led to poor levels of education and school attendance, poor dietary and health levels, substance abuse, self-harm, suicide, incest and rape in Indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

Policies that seek to make 'victims responsible' for better outcomes often rely on punitive measures. In the case of income quarantining, non-compliance in the 2007 NT policy and the 2011-12 policy, results in the suspension of government benefits. Similar measures were noted in the Howard governments 'work for the dole' scheme, which also introduced measures that punished the victims rather than acknowledge the failures of decades of government neo-liberal employment policy.

When bad policy is not only maintained but extended, in the case of income quarantining, the policy not only becomes legitimised in the public's mind, but media and social commentators accept the normative nature of punitive, interventionist policies. Income quarantining is poorly thought out policy that is being driven by things other than best public policy practice or sound fiscal management.

Perhaps if the Labor Party had parachuted Warren Mundine into the Senate instead of Bob Carr, more light could be shone on just solutions for disadvantaged indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

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About the Author

Jo Coghlan is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University.

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