Welfare recipients should spend their payments on food and clothing, and not on drugs and alcohol.
Indeed few welfare recipients with drug and alcohol addictions would themselves argue against this. The question is how the government should go about persuading them to make the most appropriate use of their payments.
It can focus its efforts on either force or reason.
Forced income management is the easy option. It is effective in ensuring the payments are used for the daily necessities of life.
A Senate report released earlier this month endorsed plans to expand income management from Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to selected welfare recipients across the country.
But the cost to human dignity makes income management counter-productive. Any disadvantaged person robbed of their dignity will find it almost impossible to flourish as a member of society.
Compulsory income management is supported by government bureaucrats, who have no contact with the recipients themselves. They can see that it makes economic sense, at least in the short term.
Such draconian measures are strongly opposed by charities and welfare groups, which have regular face to face dealings with the recipients and can see most clearly what allows welfare recipients to overcome their difficulties.
St Vincent de Paul National CEO John Falzon said: 'This Inquiry heard evidence from all over Australia. The evidence overwhelmingly showed that income management can be a useful tool when it is voluntary and backed up with supports and services. It also showed that compulsory income management is degrading and stigmatising.'
St Vincent de Paul and similar organisations reject the view that people who are doing it tough need to be set apart and treated as though they are dysfunctional. People who are treated as dysfunctional for a sustained period of time invariably become dysfunctional.
It is much better if the government can show them how to beat drug and alcohol addiction and not remove their ability to take responsible decisions towards this end.
Compulsory income management assumes that some welfare recipients are unable to make rational decisions that take into account the long-term consequences of their actions. The same might be said for some governments.
Michael Mullins is editor of Eureka Street.