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Media Release
25 November 2009
Little to celebrate in Indigenous communities
as NTER welfare quarantining wound back
"There's little cause for celebration in today's announcement that the blanket approach to
the quarantining of welfare payments in the Northern Territory (NT) communities as part
of the NTER is to be wound back", said Kate Beaumont, President of the National Welfare
Rights Network (NWRN).
"Technically it may meet the requirements to be non-discriminatory and the Government
will no doubt claim that they have delivered on its commitment to restore the operation of
the Racial Discrimination Act.
However the reality is that the new income management rules, to be introduced first in the
NT, will effectively amount to a form of indirect discrimination, as a significant proportion of
the target group will be Indigenous people , at least in the early roll-out of these new
arrangements.
"When new criteria for Income Management is fully operationalised an estimated 20,000
people in the NT will have some of their Centrelink and Family Assistance Office
payments quarantined. This will see an increase of 25% to the current numbers with
15,185 Indigenous Territorians subject to Income Management (IM) at 26 June 2009 in
the 73 prescribed communities. Some of these numbers will be made up by those who
take up voluntary income management as a result of Government incentives for those on
voluntary income management for six months.
"The Government has repeatedly boasted that additional money is being spent on food,
including fresh fruit and vegetables under the NT intervention. They are assuming that
BasicsCard money which goes to some shops is only being spent on food. In reality as
long as these monies are not expended on prohibited items then monies earmarked for
"priority needs" could be spent on other variety products and not necessarily just on food.
"The Government will need to do better to ensure that Indigenous communities are
properly informed of their rights in any new arrangements. In the recent progress report on
the intervention the Commonwealth Ombudsman points out: 'It has been more than two
years since the NTER commenced and yet, a consistent source of complaints (to the
Ombudsman) continues to be concerns from people that they do not fully understand the
workings of Income Management and the BasicsCard'."
Plans to extend payment conditionality are the subject of a broader review which, to date,
has been subject to little, if any scrutiny by the media or the broader community. NWRN's
For comment:
Kate Beaumont, President, National Welfare Rights Network: 0414 792 923.
Gerard Thomas, Policy and Media Officer: 0425 296 882.
NEWS 
