Kids' plight forces Macklin's hand on income management
Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin's radical move to extend income management to all welfare recipients in the Northern Territory is in part a recognition that child safety in the NT is far from satisfactory.
A crucial decision in the Federal Court today has determined that the Federal Government can proceed to take over the Alice Springs town camps.
Jenny Macklin has a Crime Commission report on her desk that has not been released to the public.
It is believed to show that conditions for children in some NT Aboriginal communities are still far from satisfactory, and in fact, they remain in an egregious state.
Ms Macklin is well aware that if she had caved into pressure, and changed the income management scheme to a voluntary one, that the small gains may have been lost.
Her decision to roll out the measures to all Territorians, so her policies don't breach the Racial Discrimination Act, is a sign that conditions are really in a bad state.
Some of the Alice Springs town camps, like Hoppy's Camp, remain places of terrible despair and poverty.
The Federal Government plans to sign 40-year leases over the camps in exchange for more than $100 million in infrastructure upgrades.
The Government says it has not been able to improve the conditions of the camp because of legal action.
ABC 1's Lateline program visited Hoppy's Camp in 2007.
We found children and the elderly living in squalor, and if The Australian newspaper's article this week is true, nothing much has changed.
The camp's location on the edge of Alice Springs, across the road from the Northside Shops, is surreal.
Commuters, shoppers, pass by every day, they can peer through the wire fence and see people drinking away their lives and the children missing school.
The locals are so used to witnessing such scenes of despair, they become de-sensitised to the senseless nature of it.
The Independent Member for Macdonnell, Alison Anderson, regularly visits the camp and takes food and provisions for people.
She is one of the few Aboriginal leaders who support welfare quarantining - provided, she says, that it is extended to all welfare recipients regardless of race.
But opponents make the case that given the majority of welfare recipients are likely to be Indigenous, Aboriginal people will always be unfairly discriminated against.
According to Janet Hunt, who is the national president of ANTAR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) if the scheme is applied nationally, more Aboriginal people will be caught up in the scheme;
"Extending income management to non-Indigenous Territorians does not really resolve the issue of discrimination, as the vast majority of people affected will be Indigenous, and it will be three more years before some version of income management is nationally applied, and thereby likely to affect more non-Indigenous people," she said.
The expansion of the welfare quarantining scheme will start to roll out next July. There will be exemptions including those on veterans, aged and disability pensions.
People will be able to apply for individual exemptions.
There are four key classes of recipient which will be targeted for compulsory income management:
- People aged 15 to 24 who have been in receipt of specified welfare payments for more than three of the last six months
- People aged 25 and above on specified welfare payments such as Newstart Allowance and Parenting Payment for more than one year in the last two years
- People referred for income management by child protection authorities
- People assessed by Centrelink social workers as requiring income management due to vulnerability to financial crisis, domestic violence or economic abuse.
The final category could also include the elderly or disabled.
Those on the aged or disability pension could apply to have their income managed if they are "humbugged" or "threatened" by other people to hand over their welfare money.
There are some people in the Central Deserts region who would like to see income management extended to all of their cross-border region of the NT, South Australia, WA and Queensland.
They say large amounts of cannabis and other drugs are hurting communities despite all the Australian government monies going into new police stations and police housing under the COAG (Council of Australian Governments) national partnership.
Jenny Macklin has a tough road ahead.
Her spokeswoman says it is about changing the "culture of welfare dependence" for all Australians.
In the first instance, it is about the immediate problem of the poor living conditions of many Australian children.