In June the Government passed a bill extending blanket welfare quarantining from a handful of trial sites to the entire Northern Territory and then across the country.
The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott supports the policy. In an address to the Sydney Institute this week, he asked, 'if the automatic quarantining is just and fair in the north, why not implement it elsewhere?'. 'An incoming Coalition government', he added, 'will carefully review the operation of this wider form of quarantining after July next year, when it has been in operation for 12 months, with a view to extending it more widely across Australia.'
The Coalition's approach seems very similar to the Government's. But welfare quarantining is bad policy, especially when applied to whole populations. Early indications from the Northern Territory suggest that the
program has little, even negative, effect when applied to
whole populations.
It is a rhetorical response to a political problem, not an evidence based response to very real, urgent social problems.
According to the National Welfare Rights Network there were more than 341,000 people on Newstart Allowance for more than one year as of June 2010, an increase of 40,000 since December 2009. These people are living in chronic poverty. Yet the lack of substantial welfare policy in the election campaign so far suggests the social services sector will be expected to go to the polls without knowing what the major parties plan to do to address long term unemployment and poverty.
Susan Helyar, National Director of UnitingCare Australia, notes that income management consumes thousands of dollars per recipient — almost all of it spent on government administration and bureaucracy. And she rightly points out that this money 'could be much better spent on rolling out programs that work'.
To highlight just one example, there are huge unmet needs for mental health services among the unemployed. A 2003 study by the Australian National University's Peter Butterworth found that over 30 per cent of single women with children receiving income support were suffering from anxiety disorders and over 20 per cent from affective (depressive) disorders. It's hard to imagine that income quarantining is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression. The unemployed are already burdened by substantial 'participation' requirements.
Caring for children will often mean caring for their parents. Like all of us, income support recipients may need a push from time to time. But decisions about how obligations should apply ought to