In June the Government passed a bill extending blanket welfare quarantining from a handful of trial sites to the entire Northern Territory and then across the country.
The Opposition Leader Tony Abbott supports the policy. In an address to the Sydney Institute this week, he asked, "if the automatic quarantining is just and fair in the north, why not implement it elsewhere?"
"An incoming Coalition government," he added, "will carefully review the operation of this wider form of quarantining after July next year, when it has been in operation for 12 months, with a view to extending it more widely across Australia."
The Coalition's approach seems very similar to the Government's. But welfare quarantining is bad policy, especially when applied to whole populations. Early indications from the Northern Territory suggest that the program has little, even negative, effect when applied to whole populations.
It is a rhetorical response to a political problem, not an evidence based response to very real, urgent social problems, writes Frank Quinlan, the executive director of Catholic Social Services Australia.
According to the National Welfare Rights Network there were more than 341,000 people on Newstart Allowance for more than one year as of June 2010, an increase of 40,000 since December 2009. These people are living in chronic poverty.
Yet the lack of substantial welfare policy in the election campaign so far suggests the social services sector will be expected to go to the polls without knowing what the major parties plan to do to address long term unemployment and poverty.
Rather than rhetoric about welfare quarantining, the sector needs long term commitment to programs and services that help parents keep their children safe from violence, support the work of schools and teachers, and help parents provide children with healthy diets.
We need to provide high quality services for those parents with mental health problems and the minority with drug and alcohol addictions.
FULL STORY What welfare policies? (Eureka Street)
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