Dr Shelley Bielefeld has expertise in social justice issues affecting Australia’s First Peoples. Her publications and policy submissions focus on the impact of welfare law, land rights, criminal justice and constitutional issues pertaining to Australia’s First Peoples. Shelley has been invited to appear before the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs. She has been working on problems arising from the Northern Territory Intervention since its inception in 2007 and those connected with the Stronger Futures framework since 2012. Her work on Indigenous law and policy issues has been influenced by listening to concerns expressed by those who are subject to the Intervention and Stronger Futures. Before her employment at RegNet Shelley taught, developed and coordinated numerous courses at the University of Western Sydney and Southern Cross University, including Indigenous Australians and the Law, Contract Law, Property Law, and Constitutional Law.
Delivering social security payments by means of cashless welfare cards has had a protracted trial in Australia, with various income management schemes in operation, the latest of which is the Forrest Review inspired Cashless Debit
Card (CDC) issued by Indue Ltd.
These schemes have been controversial since the first compulsory income management program emerged as part of the Northern Territory Intervention, yet the trend of cashless welfare
delivery is expanding, considerably increasing the overall cost of social security payments. A key government rationale for various forms of cashless welfare is that something must be done to address the risk that welfare recipients
might use their income to support substance abuse and gambling.
Numerous welfare recipients subject to income management report that it has created additional difficulties for them in meeting their needs. Despite
this, advocates of cashless welfare are keen to declare income management a success, rationalising further expansion and possibly smoothing the path to increased privatisation of social security payments in the process. Unlike
earlier income management schemes operating with a government issued BasicsCard, the CDC involves a commercial financial services provider making a hefty profit from delivering this costly program
Evaluation reports have potential to generate important knowledge about how laws and policies operate, however they may also be selectively interpreted to garner support for preferred government policy pathways in order ‘to “prove”
program success.’ Unfortunately this has occurred with numerous income management evaluations to date, and the government’s media release declaring the CDC interim evaluation report ‘positive’ continues this trajectory.
The dominant political rhetoric on income management has presented cash payments to welfare recipients as a high-risk activity due to their presumed preference for poor purchases.
Such stigmatising supposition makes
for poor policy and income management legislation is an area ripe for reform—not for intensification via an 80 per cent CDC restriction—but abandoning altogether the coercion coupled with surveillance upon which this system
is based.
Dr Shelley Bielefeld is the Braithwaite Research Fellow at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University. She thanks Professor Jon Altman and two anonymous reviewers
for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. credit and acknowledgement as the first publishers: Shelley Bielefeld, ‘Cashless welfare cards: controlling spending patterns to what end?’ Must go to the (2017)
Indigenous Law Bulletin 8(29): 28-32. Dr Bielefeld’s research article may be found and downloaded at the following location Social Science Research Network (SSRN)