Thousands of Australians are currently transitioning off the cashless debit card after legislation to abolish the income management program passed in September 2022.

This decision came after a federal parliamentary inquiry into the program’s impacts on communities in the Northern Territory (NT).

Research by law students at The Australian National University (ANU) featured in the Darwin Community Legal Services’ (DCLS) submission to the inquiry.

Matthew Shaw and Eugenie Lynch-Grant published research papers on cashless debit cards and access to legal services in remote Aboriginal communities while working at DCLS as part of the ANU College of Law internship program. The internship includes involvement in relevant legal matters as an intern in the DCLS legal practice.

According to Matthew, “it reminded me that practising law can and should be a tool to help people — a lesson which I think can sometimes be lost in the minutiae of legal reasoning in a big, cerebral law school like ours”

What is income management?

Compulsory income management was first introduced in 2007 by the Howard Government as part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response.

Under this scheme, eligible people had 50-70% of their social security payments quarantined, so it could only be used on certain purchases.

This initiative was introduced to decrease the purchase of alcohol, tobacco, pornographic material, and gambling services using social security payments.

The cashless debit card program was further introduced in 2016 and mainly targeted regions with high First Nations populations.

While the program has now been abolished, compulsory income management remains in the NT.  

What are the issues with income management?

Eugenie’s internship research paper, Shame and Success: Legal Interventions in the Cashless Debit Card ‘Opt-in’ In the Northern Territory (DCLS, 2021), explored how income management discriminately targets and negatively impacts people experiencing intersectional disadvantage.

Eugenie explained that one of the significant issues with income management is how it is framed as a blanket solution to issues the government determined were of concern.

“Real change requires investment in community-run and focused approaches, rather than punitive and control-based measures, like the forms of compulsory income management,” Eugenie said.

“It also takes away from the autonomy of the affected First Nation’s people to self-determine and learn money management.”

Costing taxpayers over 70 million dollars, Eugenie believes this scheme also has an “immense human and societal cost of experimenting and trialling a new social security system on disadvantaged citizens”.

Furthermore, a report by the Australian National Audit Office on the effect of compulsory income management found that it is “difficult to conclude whether there had been a reduction in social harm and whether the card was a lower cost welfare quarantining approach.”

Access to social security legal assistance

In its submission to the inquiry, DCLS also focused on the issue of access to social security legal help in remote NT communities.

DCLS drew upon Matthew’s internship research paper, The Case for Inverting Non-Profit Legal Service Delivery in the NT (DCLS, 2022), to recommend an alternative service delivery model. 

Matthew explained that most non-profit legal services in the NT rely on a hub-and-spoke model, with an urban regional centre ‘outreaching’ to communities to offer services, usually for two-three days at a time.

According to Matthew, the dearth of funding means the need greatly outweighs the services available.

“The transient nature of the service delivery makes meaningful, long-term relationships far more difficult to establish,” he said.

A pathway forward

Matthew said one of the obvious solutions to these issues is the inclusion of First Nations people in policymaking.

He believes that it is not enough to “rely on consultation as the magic glue to hold the system together”. 

As the power still lies outside the hands of the people the policy is designed to assist, it is doomed to fail, Matthew explained.

“We must begin by placing the existing local knowledge, strengths and assets of First Nations communities at the centre of any service delivery model.”

Matthew said this is to ensure that “policies — including legal service delivery — can be dictated by the clients rather than simply for them”.

Learn more about the ANU College of Law internship program on our website.

Want to be involved with Indigenous and environmental justice, human rights, advocacy and education? Find out more about the ANU Law Reform and Social Justice program.