Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I wish to take note of the response tabled by the minister, Senator Fifield, to the order for production of documents that I put to the Senate and that the Senate supported—an order to provide the final version of the report entitled Evaluating New Income Management in the Northern Territory. I am aware that the department had had a draft report prior to this final version. The order is for the final report which, as I understand it, was submitted to the government at the end of September. The response to the order to produce this document is: 'The government is not in a position to release the Evaluating New Income Management in the Northern Territory: Final Report at this stage because the minister is yet to receive it. I do understand that the Department of Social Services received the report, and that they are presently preparing advice to the government on its content. The minister expects to receive the final report soon and has every intention of releasing it publicly.'

This report has been with the government for two months now. As a final report, they knew what was in it. This income management is what the government proposes to extend if they support the Forrest report recommendation for a healthy welfare card. From reports in the media, the Forrest review is critical of income management. It says it has not done what it was set up to do. Now the government appears to be supporting, or at least giving serious consideration to, the idea of a healthy welfare card—which, as I have said in this place before, is income management on steroids—and extending it to everybody. Yet, the report on income management—the biggest experiment in the world, I suspect, that has been carried out on this form of income management and that has been going on for seven years—shows, if the media reports I have seen today are correct, that it has failed. The government is considering it, yet they have not bothered to give priority to consideration of the report. They have had it for two months and have not bothered to give it to the minister or to get the minister to consider it, yet they are busily considering the healthy welfare card. That is nonsense.

The final report should be publicly available so that everybody can see what a farce income management is and so that the public and the community can consider this report when they are looking at the concept of the healthy welfare card. Methinks that the government does not want to release a report that shows that income management has not worked—at least not while they are considering expanding it and giving it a boost across the rest of the country. It is outrageous that this report is not available and that the government is defying the will of the Senate. This report should be released immediately. I will continue to pursue it.

Question agreed to.