Welfare quarantine ‘must have Aboriginal community support’

QUEENSLAND’S Cape York mayors are demanding control over the proposed extension of welfare quarantining.

QUEENSLAND’S Cape York mayors are demanding control over the proposed extension of welfare quarantining that has been trialled in four Aboriginal communities.

In a meeting with Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, six mayors warned that the measures would fail without community support and that the welfare reform trial needed to be independently reviewed before it was rolled out across Cape York.

Six years after the launch of the Cape York Welfare Reform trial, the Newman government last month moved to enshrine the powers of the Family Responsibility Commission, suggested as a model for a nationwide rollout by Andrew Forrest in his blueprint for Aboriginal welfare and employment.

Under the trial, the commission was able to take control of between 60 and 90 per cent of a welfare recipient’s payments if they were convicted in a magistrates court, breached a public housing tenancy agreement, were the subject of a child notification order or didn’t send their child to school.

The joint state-federal trial, championed by indigenous leader Noel Pearson and costing $100 million, has reportedly cut some crime and lifted school-attendance levels in the four communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hopevale and Mossman Gorge.

Lockhart River Mayor Wayne Butcher said the extension of the Family Responsibility Commission would fail unless it had the support of each of the communities and its leaders.

“We want social change but the best people to push that through, to achieve that is from within the community,’’ he said.

“There has been too little consultation in the past, government has imposed policy on us and it doesn’t work because there is no local ownership.”

“We need a review of the welfare reform trial and the commission to see what works and what doesn’t and then for us to consult our community and work out the best way to get social change.’’

Last month, Queensland Indigenous Affairs Minister Glen Elmes told state parliament that the commission’s income management was needed in some communities and would soon be introduced into Doomadgee, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, before being rolled out to other indigenous communities.

Mr Forrest said in his report to the Abbott government that the commission and its “basics card”, which controls spending of welfare payments, should be the model to be rolled out across Australia’s indigenous communities.