‘Income Management and Indigenous Women – A New Chapter of Patriarchal Colonial Governance?’

Abstract

Recent years have seen neoliberal austerity measures rise to prominence in Australia and other western nations, resulting in an erosion of welfare recipients’ rights to access non-stigmatised resource redistribution. This article focuses on intersections between race, gender and class in the context of cashless welfare transfers, referred to in Australia as income management, as most welfare recipients subject to it are Indigenous woman who have been portrayed in a negative way by discourses of passivity, incapacity and vulnerability. Australia’s special brand of austerity for (mostly) Indigenous welfare recipients has been a government issued BasicsCard that quarantines fifty per cent (or more) of welfare payments that can only be spent on government defined priority needs at government approved merchants. Income management has created considerable problems that remain unaddressed and unacknowledged by those responsible for welfare reform. Other countries interested in adopting a similar system of cashless welfare transfers, such as the United Kingdom, might learn from mistakes made by Australian law and policymakers responsible for income management.

Keywords: Austerity, Cashless Welfare Transfers, Neoliberalism, New Paternalism, Indigenous Peoples, Income Management, Colonialism, Intersectionality, Race, Gender, Class

JEL Classification: K39