CPA - The Guardian

A social security policy bombshell was dropped in Canberra last week but hardly anybody noticed. Overshadowed by the Liberals leadership turmoil was Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin’s announcement that welfare quarantining – imposed on remote Northern Territory Aboriginal communities during Howard’s NT intervention in 2007 – would be applied to the rest of the Territory from next year and the whole country from 2011. The targeting of Aboriginal communities was clearly in violation of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act. The Act was suspended and has remained a dead letter ever since. But the latest policy announcement is not about renewing commitments racial equality; it is a major step down the neo-liberal road of welfare “reform”.

From July next year, 50 percent of welfare payments to recipients in certain localities will be attached to a “basics card”. These can only be used for spending on items such as clothes, food and rent. The communities will be selected by their rates of unemployment, youth incarceration and “welfare dependency”. Benefit recipients objecting to this humiliation can apply to “opt out” but they will have their work cut out. The federal government claims it is convinced of the benefits of what it calls “income management”. It is even proposing to leave the door open for others to “opt in” to the paternalistic, authoritarian scheme.

The government is seeking to control the spending of parents referred by Centrelink, young people on payments for three of the past six months and people on Newstart or Parenting Payments for one of the past two years.

Macklin insists “community consultation” conducted among the Aboriginal people controlled by the existing scheme shows strong support for welfare quarantining. Labor and the Coalition joined forces to defeat a Greens motion calling for the release of the transcripts of these “consultations”. An independent review (Will they be heard?) conducted by former Chief Justice of the Family Court Alastair Nicholson, Larissa Behrendt, Alison Vivian and Nicole Watson came to different conclusion about the government’s consultations and the attitudes of the Aboriginal people in question. “The process is insufficient to qualify as indicating consent by Aboriginal people to special measures for the purposes of the Racial Discrimination Act,” the report noted.

The government is strong on spin but weak on results for the land grabbing Northern Territory intervention – now officially known as “Closing the Gap NT”. Figures released by the government show that domestic violence reports are now up by 61 percent, substance abuse is up 77 percent and 13 percent more infants have been hospitalised due to malnutrition. The human rights-violating intervention was defended by reference to the appalling conditions faced by Aboriginal people in remote communities but it was never about turning around this longstanding scandalous situation.

It is now clear that these remote communities were to be a test bed for something much bigger. This is not the first time this “foot in the door” approach has been tried first on Aboriginal people. Community Development Employment Projects were set up by the Fraser Government in 1977 for Aboriginal communities and served as a precursor for the Howard Government’s even harsher “Work for the Dole” and “Mutual Obligation” policies for the entire population.

“The government is saying it’s too hard to address the issue of multiple disadvantage in a manner that preserves dignity and respect for welfare recipients,” Uniting Care’s national director Lin Hatfield Dodd told The Sydney Morning Herald. It is true that governments managing capitalist economies are unable to meet the needs of the people for meaningful work, good quality public health, education, housing and transport.

They must meet the demands of the powerful in society first and contain the protests of the exploited with sticks and the occasional carrot. The numbers of low paid and underemployed are set to swell as the global economic crisis drags on. Unemployment must not be seen as an option to starvation wages. Intolerable humiliation is being added to poverty to keep people off the dole. The policy makers’ thinking goes like this – the system has now been installed on NT Aboriginal communities, it can now be imposed on people in other locations and eventually it will be imposed on all benefit recipients.

Photo from the Department of Defence website: A military officer chats with a Borroloola resident out the front of the local Centrelink office.

It has happened before. In the 1930s governments expressed the same concern that the unemployed were squandering their dole on alcohol and gambling. They sought to pay part of the dole in the form of a bag of groceries from designated grocers. A massive protest campaign saw to it that the insulting scheme was short-lived. The latest moves from the government must be met with the same spirit of resistance.

Radical neo-liberal “reform” is back on the agenda. Education “reform” is being discussed. A voucher scheme that would destroy the notion of free, secular universal public education is on the table. So is a plan to effectively scuttle Medicare and put the burden of health insurance onto the individual. Welfare “reform” was not going to be overlooked and Jenny Macklin’s announcement last week was but a first step. The challenge presented by this whole renewed anti-people drive must be met.

Next article – Pilbara workers take strike action

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