Here is a draft alternative media release for Jenny Macklin — what she should have said as a response to the current consultation rather than harping on about truancy and grog.
Income management
Ignoring evidence may explain why the income management gap doesn’t close
Today the Productivity Commission releases its latest report on Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage, which shows only 13 of 45 measures showed any improvement and seven went backwards.
Whatever happened to evidence-based policy making?
The federal government is adding another serious question to its social and financial policy competence by informing the public that it is proceeding with the promised evaluation of the New Income Management Program.
Children still at risk despite income management
Does income management work to make children safer? The evidence is not clearly there in the various evaluation studies that have been done.
Government more ready to fund bureaucrats than welfare recipients
Why not do a cost-benefit study on the costs of quarantining income voluntarily or compulsorily versus the benefits of more cash, direct services for children and some widely available financial education for the same groups?
Business as usual under Labor’s ‘new’ income management
Implementation of income management reforms has just meant one more round of racist, humiliating interaction with government bureaucracy for communities suffering under the intervention, writes Paddy Gibson.
Does Macklin’s office have no shame?
Jenny Macklin’s dismissal of a review that has found income management is not making an impact on tobacco and healthy food sales in remote NT communities is an insult to the Government’s professed commitment to “evidence-based policy”, writes Melissa Sweet.
Income management evidence trivialised in a lemonade solution
Jenny Macklin’s response to the latest evidence that Income Management doesn’t work is only the latest example of anti-evidence based decisions in the welfare system, writes Eva Cox
Macklin’s twists truth on income management
Jenny Macklin has dismissed a new study revealing the government’s income management policy is not making an impact on tobacco and health food sales in indigenous communities. The study’s authors hit back.
Cox: Should we base policy on opinions or evidence?
MP Jenny Macklin says that she hears positive feedback from women about income management in the NT intervention, yet all evidence shows IM doesn’t work. How do you balance personal claims against expert evidence? asks Eva Cox.
Macklin’s income management a junk-food bonanza
The federal government’s NT income management scheme has been branded a nutritional failure, with indigenous communities continuing to load up on junk food despite stringent measures meant to boost fruit and veggie sales.
The nasty maternalistic state
Sole parents and the unemployed beware: Jenny Macklin is trying to take half your income away. It’s the most drastic change to our social security system ever — and almost nobody knows about it, reports Eva Cox.
Data without destiny: Macklin fudges evidence
Jenny Macklin’s latest effort in justifying policy is her gross over-promoting of the results of a very small and dicey survey of 76 income-managed residents in four communities in the Northern Territory.
Income management the ultimate form of nannyism
Rather than invoking nanny, let’s have an informed discussion about income management rooted in some sensible analysis of its potential benefits and costs — including the likely harms, writes Melissa Sweet.
Tough Love: has it ever worked?
As the government prepares to roll out income management to all Australian welfare recipients, health policy experts ask: will it actually improve Australian’s health and wellbeing? A resounding “NO”.
Labor brings welfare quarantining to a Centrelink near you!
Rather than attempting to punish struggling, low-income families, the government should be dealing with the underlying causes of neglect and delivering proper support for families in crisis, writes Fernando de Freitas.
Income management works. Roll it out.
The government’s plan to extend income management beyond the NT intervention to the rest of Australia is good policy, says former Howard government adviser David Moore. Tough love is needed to protect women and children.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Income management and refugees
Crikey readers continue to weigh in on the messy asylum seekers debate. Plus, the surprising nature of extending compulsory income management to all Australians on welfare.
Mal Brough and the command(eer) economy
Hidden in the 500 or so pages of the government’s National Emergency Response legislation is Mal Brough’s plan to commandeer community stores — an extraordinary move, which would be inconceivable anywhere else in Australia.
