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

by leave—I move:

That Social Security (Administration) (Declared income management areas) Determination 2012, made under section 123TFA of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed.

That Social Security (Administration) (Vulnerable income management areas) Specification 2012, made under subsections 123UCA(3) and 123UGB(2) of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed.

That Social Security (Administration) (Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipient) Principles 2012, made under subsection 123UGA(2) of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed.

That Social Security (Administration) (Specified income management Territory – Northern Territory) Specification 2012, made under subsections 123UCB(4) and 123UCC(4) of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed.

That Social Security (Administration) (Declared child protection State – New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria) Determination 2012, made under section 123TF of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed.

In moving this disallowance motion I would like to point out the reasons I think the Senate should support it. I am well on the record as not supporting income management, and I will articulate that yet again here, as well as why I think this is a disastrous approach and why it would be a good idea to stop it going any further.

These regulations activate the income management powers, which are an extension of an expansion of the intervention powers which were brought in under the banner of Stronger Futures. One of the regulations deals with the extension of income management to the long-term unemployed in the Northern Territory. This is a technical regulation due to some changes that were made under Stronger Futures. The other motions extend income management to trial sites around Australia and provide powers to the minister to introduce the place based income management in the five trial sites of Bankstown, Shepparton, Logan, Rockhampton and Playford.

The Greens have consistently opposed income management because it is a radical and frankly terrifying departure from the basic principle of the social security safety net that makes Australia a fair and more equitable country. Maybe it is not fair to use the word 'radical', because this is actually one of the most socially conservative policies yet to come from the government. This government now has a strong track record in implementing punitive social policies. It is a government which, last time we met in this place, finished a job that even John Howard was not prepared to do they pushed another 150,000 single parents and their children onto the significantly lower Newstart payment. At least the Howard government grandfathered that cohort of parents.

It is a government that apologises for generations of trauma but then just as quickly moves to give its own, hands-on demonstration of a paternalistic approach to another generation of Aboriginal Australians. It is a government that favours delivering a budget surplus rather than providing better outcomes for low-income families.

If it is not a radical departure from the basic tenets of our social security system, which is based on ensuring a minimum income for all eligible citizens without seeking to disempower the recipient by supplying their income in kind rather than in cash, then I do not know how else to describe a policy whose stated objective is to control how income is spent in order to 'encourage socially responsible behaviour, including in relation to to the care and education of children'. The concept of income management is clearly rooted in a notion of new paternalism that flies in the face of nearly 50 years of continual progression away from the heavy-handedness of a less enlightened era.

The social security net is one of the most important features of our democracy and the way of life in Australia. It is meant to ensure that there is some minimum standard of living for each and every Australian. There are already stringent tests to access that support in the first place. To now impose upon some of the recipients of that support that they must now demonstrate somebody's version of socially responsible behaviour is to promote the idea that disadvantage is primarily a result of the individual's failure to demonstrate the necessary social values and norms.

I do not deny that there is some welfare dependency in this country. There is of course—and I have spoken about this at length—entrenched poverty and patterns of prolonged interaction with the social security system in our communities. However, income management is not the answer. We need to be addressing the barriers.

For those who are inclined towards increasingly heavy-handed top-down solutions when they are confronted by wicked social problems, income management feels like a really easy solution. But the only people it actually helps are those who seek to deny the basic rights of all Australians to a minimum standard of living, regardless of their personal circumstances and regardless of gender, ethnicity, education or ability.

I have no doubt also—while I have had a go at the government—that those in opposition also have strong views around this particular measure. It was them after all who introduced income management in the first place. In fact we have evidence of these views most recently in the speech by the shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, which he gave earlier this year, in which he suggested that our social safety net was an entitlement and sought to imply that we need to be removing some of these entitlements; whether he actually meant the social security net is unclear.

A safety net is not a luxury; it is a basic right that we offer to all Australians. After all, anyone can find themselves out of work, laid off, ill, in crisis or living with crisis or family breakdown. Looking after one another is one of the proudest traditions in this country. Our social security system is a powerful demonstration of the basic values of equality and of opportunity.

This decision to start punishing and maligning the individual when there are clearly structural barriers, entrenched poverty and generational trauma violates this tradition. And for what? The evidence we have suggests that this is only making sure that some people are even further disadvantage and socially excluded. Concerns about the application of this policy on disadvantaged communities were possibly best expressed by Professor Tony Vinson, a member of the government's social inclusion board, who raised concerns that his widely respected research on disadvantaged regions—a well-known piece of work—would be wrongly used to target social security recipients or income management. He said:

… charting the distribution of disadvantage throughout Australia was intended to concentrate positive, inclusive forms of assistance for individuals and families caught in entrenched disadvantage, not to increase their exposure to sanctions.

The fact is that income management is a huge social experiment in new paternalism. Even the way the minister describes these five sites as 'trial sites' demonstrates that the government is embarking on a brand new path with this policy.

The government has consistently emphasised the importance of evidence based policy. For example, Minister Macklin has spoken of her 'unshakeable belief in the power of responsive, evidence based policy to drive progressive reform at many different levels'. However, we believe the growing body of evidence from the last four years worth of income quarantining in the Northern Territory demonstrates that this policy is not working.

I will point out here that the process of Stronger Futures and the extension of it to these trial sites has gone in the absence of meaningful evaluation. When I asked in estimates about the progress of the evaluation of the current NT process, I was told there was a draft for the first part of it which was sitting with either the department or the minister. It still has not been released.

While I am that point, there was an article on Saturday, 15 September, in the Weekend Australian which said:

NEW research from a major study of indigenous children and their families in 11 sites around Australia shows overwhelming support for income management, with 77 per cent of respondents saying income management had led to positive changes to communities.

It goes on to document that.

When I went to the FaHCSIA website to find that information on that Saturday, guess what? It was not there. Wave 3 of that longitudinal survey was not there at the time—it is now but it was not then—and wave 4 is still not available. When I asked in this chamber, through an order for the production of documents motion—which the chamber supported—those documents indicated to me that wave 4 data had not been released. In fact, on the note that I got, it says: 'Wave 4 data has not yet been released.' That is a document that was tabled in the Senate in response to my order for the production of documents motion. So I ask: how come that information was released when it was not publicly available information and any other member of the community could not check the validity of that information? Maybe I am too cynical, but my cynical response is that that was a leak so that the government could claim, without any evidence or any backup that anybody could look at, that people are happy on income management.

But when you look a bit deeper and look at the survey that was undertaken you see that there are in fact some issues around that. The question does not differentiate between whether it is compulsory income management or voluntary income management—and people's responses to voluntary versus compulsory income management are very different. It combines Centrepay in with the question about income management. Centrepay is completely different from income management. The survey was over a large number of Aboriginal communities, not just those who were subject to income management. I question the use of that data, but it is an example of more of the same. Income management and the so-called successors of income management have been a matter of spin by this government to try to justify continuing this top-down paternalistic approach.

I had some other background work done on income management. The background briefing I received, looking at weighing and summarising the evidence, said:

There is no clear evidence that the policy is working. In none of the locations in which it operates is there unambiguous evidence for or against the effectiveness of income management. The overall picture emerging from the available evidence is one in which positive changes have been uneven and fragile.

There are no demonstrable improvements that justify the continuation of income management. The independent report from March 2010 by the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, in collaboration with the University of New South Wales Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation and with support from the Fred Hollows Foundation, raised serious concerns about the continued future wellbeing of Indigenous children and families under the Northern Territory intervention. The health impact assessment found that compulsory income management had ‘profound’ long-term negative impacts on psychological health, social health and wellbeing as well as cultural integrity.

The study of income management, looking at women's experiences, which was completed by the Equality Rights Alliance in May and June 2011, shows that, of the more than 180 women with direct experience on income management who participated, 79 per cent wanted to exit the system, 85 per cent had not changed what they bought and 74 per cent felt discriminated against. That discrimination has a palpable impact on people. The government conducted a telephone inquiry of store owners and concluded on that basis that the sales of fresh food had increased. I said at the time that was a very dubious way of collecting information. Earlier on in the income management experiment, the Menzies Institute demonstrated, using other assessment tools, that there had not been a measurable impact on the sale of tobacco or junk foods.

On top of the example I used about spin on results, this adds up to there not being quantifiable evidence to show that income management works. In fact, there is evidence to show that it disempowers people. The Public Health Association of Australia, in evidence to the recent Senate inquiry, acknowledged that this practice disempowers individuals. They said:

In addition to undermining autonomy and self-determination—which are pre-requisites for good health and wellbeing—universal compulsory income management violates Australia's human rights commitments and the principles of citizenship.

Given the lack of evidence and the potential to negatively impact on the community empowerment, it is deeply concerning to the Australian Greens that income management is being rolled out in these five new trial sites and that the Social Security Legislation Amendment Act, as it is now, empowers the minister to give referral powers to the state and territory agencies, ostensibly extending income management by stealth across Australia. These are, we believe, inappropriate powers to hand over to the states.

Let us look at the instruments that I am seeking to disallow and look at what they talk about—and, specifically, I am referring to Social Security (Administration) (Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipient) Principles 2012. This is the instrument that puts in place allowing the income management of so-called vulnerable people. And why could you be vulnerable? Financial hardship, failure to undertake reasonable self-care—who's definition?—homelessness or risk of homelessness. I will take you to one of the paragraphs that talks about financial hardship. It says:

(a) the person is unable, due to a lack of financial resources, to obtain goods or services, or to access or engage in activities, to meet his or her relevant priority needs; and

(b) the lack of financial resources mentioned in paragraph (a) is not solely attributable to the amount of income earned, derived or received by the person.

Of course, you have to put that in! You have to put that in because every single person on Newstart would be experiencing financial hardship, as we know that Newstart is $130 below the poverty line. So just when do you decide that a person is in financial hardship when they are already living $130 below the poverty line? Who decides? Centrelink, a social worker, decides that someone is living in financial hardship. Then there is 'failure to undertake reasonable self-care', where it says:

(a) the person is engaged in conduct that threatens the physical or mental wellbeing of the person;

Under homelessness it says:

(c) is using, or is at risk of needing to access, emergency accommodation or a refuge.

What is 'at risk'—that they are living in poverty; that they are not able to know where their next rent payment is going to be made? People are very nervous about this vulnerability criteria and what it actually means. Then it goes onto decision-making principles and talks about the person who ' is applying appropriate resources to meet some or all of the person’s relevant priority needs.' Again, it comes back to: if you are living on Newstart you cannot meet all your relevant priority needs. Income management is about punishing people. It is a top-down punitive approach that does not address the fundamental barriers of how people manage to get off Newstart and into paid employment.

I have also been asking constantly about the cost of these particular measures. Last time I asked about the cost —bearing in mind at estimates we were told only 102 people had gone on at the five trial sites at the moment—the government could not tell us what the total cost of establishing and setting up income management in these five trial sites was. I have had a bit of a stab at it, as have other people at some of the other sites and, in the Territory scheme, which affects around 20,000 people, the community calculated it as $4,100 per person per annum. Just to put this into a bit of perspective: this is a third of the allowance paid to unemployed people on Newstart.

I was trying to do some figures on the costs of the rollout of income management in Western Australia. Looking at the figures that we were able to access, it works out at about $11,900 over the period of time that the trial has been operating. Those were only the figures I was able to get hold of at the time and that were publicly available. This is a significant cost and, again, the amount per person from information that we got from estimates and the income management in the APY Lands is $8,000 per person.

My proposition is that that money would be far better invested in helping people overcome the barriers to gaining employment, to gaining education. Imagine if we invested that sort of money in early childhood learning to overcome the impacts of otitis media. You would automatically raise the number of kids that would go on to year 12. I also believe that you would be diverting a lot of people out of the criminal justice system for those that were listening to my talk earlier about the impact of otitis media and poor hearing, and interaction with the criminal justice system.

This is not the appropriate way to be helping the most disadvantaged in our community. These powers in these trial sites as yet do not address the issues around long-term unemployed and disengaged youth other than the instrument that deals with that issue in the Northern Territory. Again, income management is not the best way to deal with long-term unemployment. We have heard a wealth of evidence in the inquiry into Newstart that is ongoing at the moment that clearly shows where money needs to be invested and where we need to be addressing long-term unemployment. Income management is not the way to address that.

There is no evidence that income management works. There are other measures that we should be addressing that would truly close the gap and give people long-term support. It is interesting to note some of the reports that have come from the financial counsellors, because part of this measure was supposed to be financial counselling. The financial counsellors have concerns. (Time expired).

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak to the Disallowance of the Social Security (Administration) (Declared income management Areas) Determination 2012 and the four other associated disallowance motions.

I have just listened very carefully to Senator Siewert who is a very credible individual who speaks with great passion about Indigenous communities, but the Greens are a political party that have a longstanding policy of opposing policies whose genesis was part of the Northern Territory emergency response. I am very pleased to see that Senator Crossin, the other senator for the Northern Territory, is also in the chamber and I hope she makes a contribution to the debate today. It is one of those rare moments where we will agree pretty much on everything, I hope, which is probably once a decade. Both parties have spoken along the same lines and pretty much because we can speak with some confidence.

When the Northern Territory emergency response legislation was first considered—obviously, very controversial legislation—in the last year of the Howard government, I can recall assisting its passage. I think it was the second longest debate in Federation. I was minister at the time and I took it through this place. I understood it was very controversial. There were lots and lots of question about what if and what would happen. I can understand people's concerns about whether it had a net positive impact some time ago.

It is useful to look at its genesis. This was a response not because we decided we would just like people in the Northern Territory to have some assistance in managing their income; it came from what was quite clearly a shocking report. Evidence was given in over 73 communities, evidence was given freely and expertly in a particular way. I think that it should be the benchmark for taking evidence in many of these communities from witnesses, women, victims. The report, amongst other things, reported the systematic sexual abuse of children. Whilst that was the headline out of it, it made some very important links between chronic alcoholism and the dysfunctionality that followed: the breakdown of law and order—and I am talking about customary and mainstream law—and the breakdown of what any human being would consider to be social norms.

Some of the evidence was quite clear: why were communities so dysfunctional? How come we had this level of breakdown of social norms and lack of responsibility from parents—did they know where their kids were; just the whole horror story. And wherever we talked there was alcohol. It was variously described by people from both sides of this place as 'the rivers of grog'.

Clearly, that had to stop and, again, there was quite a clear, causal link between the availability of cash as a payment, invariably from Newstart or some welfare payment in the community. Sadly, there are far too many people in the communities who are poor. That is the circumstance: they are just simply poor. Far too many of them are reliant on a welfare payment. Of course, I think that the link has been clearly made between that and access to alcohol and other substances of abuse.

Therefore, the cash payments had to be quarantined, or, 50 per cent of them had to be set aside. That ensured a 50 per cent reduction in the funds available to buy alcohol. It is very simple. A lot of people try to confuse it, but that was in effect what happened. Fifty per cent of the funds in the community, whether they were in your bank or were taken out were simply not available to buy alcohol. It was not available to buy cigarettes, it was not available to buy pornography and a whole range of annoying things like that—not cigarettes so much, but I think that people were pretty embarrassed about the pornography thing, and rightly so. But clearly, the main motivation was to stop the alcohol.

Anecdotally, and from my observations, it was quite startling. I saw changes which were stark in the communities that I had been travelling around many of for a decade or so, particularly in the northern Northern Territory.

Perhaps the Greens would argue that there were a number of things that may have caused that and that it was not only the income quarantining—perhaps it was the provision of the extra 63 police officers, the Substance Abuse Intelligence Desk or the very intelligent application of law enforcement and compliance to ensure that alcohol did not get out of the community. Sure; that was all part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response legislation. But most importantly, the income quarantining led to a 50 per cent reduction on the funds that could possibly be used to purchase grog, ganja and other substances of abuse.

I think that when looking at this disallowance motion the real question is whether it is more important to look at and listen carefully—which it always is—to the Greens' position or to listen to what is overwhelmingly the position of the communities, particularly the women in those communities, who have been quite vocal and who have made their position on this very, very clear.

I acknowledge to Senator Siewert that at the time, who would have known? As the parliament we often think, 'This will be the solution,' and in five years' time we think, 'Oh, we probably could have tweaked that,'; with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps that would have been the case. But I am not so sure with this particular piece of legislation. I think that we got it pretty much right—and I know that there have been pockets of resistance, as I would call them. I think there is some pretty good evidence that counters that resistance.

I think that the first one was a joint study conducted by FaHCSIA and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. They looked at the—

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

Oh, don't tell me—

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can tell you that it has a lot more credibility than the Equality Rights Alliance who you were quoting to me a minute ago, Senator Siewert! If you could just afford me the decency that I afforded you, I would most appreciate it!

They went on to say that three options were given about income management: good, bad and undecided. The headline number here from an objective study conducted by impartial assessors, who had no vested interest in the communities that these measures targeted, is that double the number of respondents said that income management was good rather than bad. It is a very simple headline right across the communities.

There were a number of communities: Tennant Creek was actually just under fifty-fifty, so only 46 per cent of them said that it was good. However, places like Gapuwiyak in Arnhem Land said that 92 per cent responded 'good' and Aputula in Finke in the central desert responded with 80 per cent saying it was 'good'. I think that the worst one in terms of our side of the argument was Nguiu and the Tiwi Islands, where only 23 per cent said it was good.

But overall, the headline number was that double the number of respondents said it was good rather than bad; exactly twice as many of the people who get income managed. I would have thought that it was those individuals who would know best. In fact, on 25 August we had a change of government in the Northern Territory. Whilst that is probably unremarkable, three of the people who were elected in the southern end of the Northern Territory—two in the southern end and one sort of in the middle—were women, one of whom was re-elected and the other two who were new candidates. They were Bess Price, Alison Anderson and Larisa Lee.

Certainly, through my relationships with Bess and Larisa we often discussed these matters through that process, as you would. I know that I said there were some compelling arguments from people; they were all saying that we have done the wrong thing and all those sorts of things. I have to say to Senator Siewert that I do not think we get too much argument from her but that I would have thought we would from people like Bess Price, Alison Anderson and Larisa Lee, who are Aboriginal women who have spent much time in these communities. This is not only with the visiting that we tend to do, with respect to my colleague on the other side, Senator Crossin. I would love to say that I do more than that, but I certainly have not lived in them in the same way that these women have. They were born and brought up in these communities, and they certainly are able to reflect on the before and the after. I have to say that I have been very impressed with the answers that I get. The Greens certainly cannot put their hands on their hearts and claim to have more experience on Indigenous issues and more experience of life in the bush and remote areas of the Northern Territory than Ms Price, Ms Anderson and Ms Lee.

The reason that I make the point about this is that there has been a bit of a question about what people in the Northern Territory think about the intervention. There were possibly other issues; perhaps one other issue was a shire, to be honest. But if you ever needed a plebiscite on income management or the intervention, which was a bad and dastardly thing, then the election was fought on the basis of the intervention—certainly in Bess Price's and Alison Anderson's electorates. You would get more of the intervention if you voted for Alison Anderson and you would get more of the intervention if you voted for Bess Price—it was not so much with Larisa; she had a number of other issues. But they voted for them in their droves. There was an 18 per cent swing for Bess with a concerted process. There were a number of other issues; I do not want to distract from this particular issue.

In Central Australia, given the debate and given the issues that were canvassed there, particularly by the First Nations Political Party and the Greens who ran a single issue—'This is all about the intervention. You don't need any more intervention'—it was a clear plebiscite. No-one voted for them—well, close to no-one. I do not want to be misrepresented; there were a couple of people who were obviously lost on the day. So there was a clear plebiscite on this issue. Those are individuals whose life revolves around whether or not their income is quarantined. They had a choice to give some sort of mandate regarding whether they wanted it or not and they spoke out very clearly.

While I was talking to Bess a few weeks ago, she shared with me some of her perspectives about Indigenous culture. She grew up with descendants from pre-white settlement. It is very hard to imagine in our context, even in here, that there are people like her alive today, but that is how remote those places are. As a young woman she knew people who predated people coming in with their Land Rovers and helping people out. She was able to help me understand, as have many of my Indigenous friends, why it is that we have the demand-share system, as we call it in Indigenous communities. Often it is the case that when you have food you are culturally obliged to share it with your kin. There are some very practical reasons for that. If you have a kangaroo, you do not put half of it in the fridge or eat a foot and put the rest of it away. You simply do not have that opportunity. There are no fridges for storage, so you have to eat it all now. The demand-share system effectively deals with that circumstance and says, 'This is how you separate it. This is how you deal it. When Uncle asks you for something, you have to give it to him.' There are a whole range of very practical cultural processes around that. But, sadly, the notion of property and sharing has not translated well into a modern, cash based economy where one person has the resource. The obligation to use that now, even as they are trying to save, is very difficult. Its translation, sadly, is lost in that circumstance.

Imagine for a moment a woman who is raising a family and gets a pension or a Newstart payment as cash deposited into her account. There are plenty of people in her extended family in the township, including some who have a substance-abuse problem. Sometimes how they spend their money is not a choice. She is obliged to help. If she refuses, it is a serious matter. It is not a serious matter later; it is a serious matter now. Someone is instructing you to provide something to him or her to meet cultural obligations, and that makes it very difficult. Sometimes if you break those laws, you can be vulnerable to not only verbal abuse but also assault or isolation in the community. It is a very serious thing. It is not our notion of humbug—'I just wonder if I can borrow a tenner until Friday.' It is nothing like that at all. It makes it very hard for the people who wish to break out.

Let's have a quick look at what happened when we introduced the BasicsCard. I do not know about the Central Desert, but I have certainly spent a fair bit of time recently in some of the more northern coastal communities after its introduction. It was not right across the board, but I can remember the difference in many of the women who understood what was happening with it. When someone started humbugging, the women would say something like, 'BasicsCard: yaka rupiah,' meaning, 'There's no cash.' It is an answer to someone who is humbugging them: 'BasicsCard.' They cut off 'Yaka rupiah' and it became just 'BasicsCard'—nothing. They are far better off in that situation. I can tell you that the beneficiaries are very much the people who used to be the victims.

I refer again to the AIHW report of 2009. There are dozens of measures about the effectiveness of welfare quarantining. I will go through a couple of them. It is not only about money; it is about whether you have the capacity to have cash for alcohol. Participants were asked if their families were eating more fresh fruit and vegetables. This was not storekeepers; this was participants in the Institute of Health and Welfare report. It was reported that 56.9 per cent said yes and only 8.3 per cent said no. Also, vandalism was reported as going down by 18 per cent; there was 29 per cent less violence on the streets; 47 per cent of people reported feeling safer in their communities—that is something we take for granted, but that figure is pretty significant; 66 per cent said children are better looked after; 60 per cent said alcohol and drug abuse is down; 52 per cent reported that humbugging is down; and 63 per cent said there is less gambling.

Bess told me about a man in her family group who looks after six children and said that welfare quarantining saved his life—it was as simple as that. He said, 'I am now able, even in a cultural sense, to say, "Look, I've got to look after these kids. I've only got this much cash. Humbug me for some of that, but the rest of it is going to be for food for the kids."' I did a survey myself in a community of Wadeye that has had its challenges in the past. It has gone through some in the last couple of weeks. It has had challenges with alcohol, violence and gangs in the past. When I last went to Wadeye I spent a bit of time there. I commissioned a different survey. I hired local people who spoke the local language and ask them to find out what the people in Wadeye thought about a number of issues, and the BasicsCard was one of them. They had four options on how they rated the BasicsCard: really good, good, okay and bad. Forty-eight per cent said it was really good. That is top marks: 48 per cent. Seventy-three per cent rated it as either good or really good. That is a pretty significant statistic. The result is that money is not being wasted in funding the addictions of friends and kin. Money is actually being spent on looking after children and buying food and shelter. The Greens stand up in this place and claim to be acting in the interests of Indigenous people, but 73 per cent of people in Wadeye support the BasicsCard and, in that plebiscite, 0.7 per cent of people in Wadeye voted for the Greens candidate at the last election.

Indigenous women in the APY lands have been calling for welfare quarantining for a couple of years. They have seen the effects of the Basics Card across the border, they have seen the reduction in hunger, they have seen the kids getting fed, they have heard the women and elderly say that they are safer, and they have been asking for welfare quarantining to come into the Northern Territory. They have been able to observe. They are not subject to it, but they are subject to discussions with their peers. They are subject to discussions with individuals whom they know and trust. They say: 'What's this about? Is this about what the Greens tell us? Was this was introduced by a government to punish people?' They would say 'Yaka—nothing.' They would say: 'This is here to help us. The help that comes to us is simply because we do not get the cash anymore.' A mother would say, 'I am able to know that of the welfare that comes to me, to my husband and to our family half has to be used for things like rent, food and clothing'—all those sorts of issues we take for granted.

I know this has been an ongoing issue for the Greens, and I think I represent everyone in the Northern Territory, particularly the Indigenous people, when I say that they do not support it. Aboriginal people who are subject to this legislation and to welfare quarantining do not support the disallowance of this motion. It is never too late for the Greens to change their minds. It is never too late to represent the people they claim to represent. If they are at cross-purposes with anyone in this debate they are at cross-purposes with those they purport to represent in the centre of Australia.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in this debate about the disallowance of five regulations relating to income management. The federal Labor government is driving major reforms to support vulnerable and disadvantaged people as they balance their budgets, go back to work and give their children the best possible start in life. I am sure everyone here would agree that it is neither fair nor acceptable for children to grow up in a family where no-one has ever worked.

This trial is a new approach balancing new responsibilities with new opportunities. Since 1 July 2012 income management has been operating in Playford in South Australia in addition to four other trial locations around the country: Logan and Rockhampton in Queensland; Greater Shepparton in Victoria; and Bankstown in New South Wales. There are already more than 100 people participating in income management across these five sites; most of these are volunteers.

Income management helps families ensure their welfare payments are spent in the best interests of their children. It ensures that money is available for life essentials and provides a tool to stabilise people's circumstances and ease immediate financial stress.

We have heard people argue about rights. It is all well and good to make sweeping philosophical statements in the abstract, but I remind people to remember the rights of children—to a decent meal, to decent clothes for school, to feel safe and provided for and to go to school. This is about making sure that kids get the best start in life. It is not about taking away rights; it is about helping people to stabilise their circumstances.

It is also important to remember that income management is only one part of a suite of measures our government is using to help support vulnerable people. As part of our government's plan we are also investing $13.6 million over five years to deliver financial management program services to assist vulnerable individuals and families in the five income management place-based locations.

Our party is about a pragmatic and evidence based policy that seeks to help the vulnerable and the disadvantaged. The evidence we are already seeing is that income management works. More than 1,200 are now participating in income management in Western Australia. More than 1,000 of these people have volunteered to become part of income management. More than 200 people were referred to income management by child protection authorities. An evaluation of people participating in the trial in Western Australia found most respondents said that income management had improved their lives and those of their families. A recent news story reporting on income management interviewed a mum in Western Australia named Karen. Karen is currently participating in income management, and in her interview she commented: 'It's got me out of debt. I've actually got money in the kitty that I'm saving up.'

I urge the Senate not to support these disallowance motions.

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

I would like to address a couple of the issues that came up just then. One is that this is evidence based. I have been through a number of examples where it is not evidence based, and I was very disappointed that Senator Scullion referred to the AIHW report. I asked questions in estimates about this a couple of years ago when that quote was being extensively used. The AIHW refused to be involved in that survey process, so their name was put on the report because they looked at one tiny part of that survey. They said that their ethics committee said they would not be involved in that process. To continue to keep quoting it is exactly what the government wanted—they wanted to attach the institute's name to it so they could get some cred for that report. They went around and asked people. It was not a quantitative analysis at all; it was a qualitative analysis. I think we should stop using that report.

The government says this is about the rights of children. I will quote that back to the government every time it says it cannot afford to increase Newstart. Does the government care about the children that it is dumping onto Newstart from Parenting Payment Single? Did it read Anglicare's report from two weeks ago that showed so many children going hungry and that people cannot afford to feed their families? Where was the government's care for the children then? Now the government says it cares about income managing people, but it does not look at the long-term psychological damage it is going to do to those families. We hear there is evidence that so many people, mainly women, in the APY Lands want to go on to income management. The Greens have repeatedly said we do not object to voluntary income management. If people do choose to go on to income management, that is their choice. There is a very different approach between voluntary income management and compulsory income management. I did not talk about voluntary income management because I ran out of time, but I have said repeatedly we do not object to voluntary income management.

Senator Scullion spoke about income management in the Northern Territory, but he did not deal with the trials. These motions relate to the trials in Bankstown, in Rockhampton, in Logan, in Playford and in a small part of the Northern Territory. But Senator Scullion did not talk about how income management is being rolled out without evidence that it works. Of course, he brought up the tried and true, saying it was all based on the Little children aresacred report and that that is the genesis of the Northern Territory intervention. We all know clearly that income management cannot be justified by the Little children are sacred report. That report made a large number of recommendations, most of which have not been implemented. It is a flawed argument to keep going back to that report when even the authors of that report do not support the Northern Territory intervention. But they keep quoting it to justify their stance on income management.

Income management is a flawed policy response. As a country we would be much better off investing the money that is being wasted on income management in really addressing the barriers to overcome disadvantage, to really support families that are doing it tough and help them overcome the barriers that they face. That is where the money would be better invested, instead of spending at a minimum $4,000 per person, a bit more than a third of the money they receive on income support. We would be much better off redirecting that money, and by supporting this disallowance motion you would give us another chance to spend the money properly. I urge senators to support this disallowance motion.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question that the motion moved by Senator Siewert be agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 18:31 to 19:30