Compulsory Income Management in the Northern Territory – evaluating its impact

Australia has been experimenting with constraining the ways in which welfare recipients can spend their income support payments, limiting their ability to access cash and purchase some products. The policy objectives include to reduce spending on alcohol, gambling, pornography and tobacco in favour of meeting ‘basic’ family needs, especially for children, to limit the scope for financial harassment, encourage pro‑social behaviours, and build financial capabilities. In the logic of the programs these outcomes are expected to be manifest at the individual, family and community levels. The policy has primarily impacted on Indigenous Australians as a result of its geographictargeting, although a recent report has recommended a more stringentversion of the program be introduced universally to all welfare recipientsother than the aged. The largest of these experiments is ‘New IncomeManagement’ in the Northern Territory, which has had more than 35,000participants since its introduction in 2010. This article reports on the keyfindings of the major independent evaluation of New Income Management commissioned by the Australian Government