Income Management in Australia: Protecting the Vulnerable and Promoting Human Capital Through Welfare Conditionality

Abstract

The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform and Reinstatement of Racial Discrimination Act) Act 2010 (Cth) provides a new framework for regulating and administering social welfare payments in Australia. It is aimed at welfare recipients designated as “vulnerable” in, select, disadvantaged areas and extends to those vulnerable groups the application of income management — a device used to quarantine welfare payments — initially applied to Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory in 2007. This article offers an overview and analysis of these new provisions, examines the evidence-base offered by the Australian Government to support the extension of income management and situates the scheme in the context of a proliferation of welfare conditionality measures introduced by the Labor Government since 2008.

Keywords: Australia, Indigenous peoples, Race discrimination, Social security