The rise and rise of income management

Income management started with Aboriginal people on welfare in the Northern Territory. It's now being rolled out in communities in Adelaide, South Australia. It's a scheme which helps people in poverty manage their money, or rather tells them how to do it and takes away their control of their own money. With this being rolled out now to people against their will who didn't want it, is this now what the Abbott gov would like to see with more Australian's getting welfare?

Needless to say, I consider the ability to manage my own money empowering and helping with self worth issues, as all people would. To take away that right is to attack my self worth and control over my own life. I know from my experiences with my late wife that this is the case. If you're dying it's one of the last things you lose the ability to do, not one of the fuckin first. It was one of the things she cherished, even dying in hospital, that she was still able to spend her own money on what she wanted.

I didn't pay fuckin tax for 30 years of full time work so I could have it dribbled back to me out of my control.   

For the last two years income management has been rolled out around the nation. Ms Shaw has argued it as an assimilationist policy, also a policy to “break the spirit.’ In the northern Adelaide shire of Playford income management has risen by more than 700 per cent during the second half of 2013. According to the Department of Social Services, on December 27 there were 495 Playford residents on income management as opposed to 71 residents on May 23. 

Spokesperson for Stop Income Management Playford, Pas Forgione said that 403 of the residents were “forced” onto income management. “It was without their consent.” 

“Most of the massive increase is due to the introduction last July of new youth triggers for Income management, mainly affecting young people on the Unreasonable To Live At Home rate of Youth Allowance.” 

Uniting Communities CEO, Simon Schrapel said the huge spike in the rollout is an assimilationist policy for all Australians. “The rapid rise in Playford residents being forced on to compulsory income management should sound a warning for the whole community – the basic right to be in control of how you spend your own money is being eroded and it will only foster a greater level of welfare dependency which is one of the things the scheme was supposedly designed to reduce.’ 

Despite income management disproportionately targeting First Peoples families in Playford, many non-Aboriginal families have been hit. They are now beginning to feel the pinch of Big Brother in just only some of the ways that the Northern Territory Intervention rolled out. more