Abstract
This article aims to contribute to literature on the conceptualisation of ‘vulnerability’ and its use by neo-liberal welfare regimes to demean, stigmatize and responsibilize welfare recipients. Several conceptions of ‘vulnerability’ will be explored and utilised in the context of welfare reforms that purport to regulate social security recipients as highly risky ‘vulnerable’ subjects. However, as this article will make clear, ‘vulnerability’ is a somewhat slippery concept and one susceptible to abuse by powerful interests intent on increasing coercive surveillance, discipline and disentitlement for those designated as ‘vulnerable’. Legislation enacted ostensibly to address the ‘vulnerability’ of welfare recipients can foster intensive regulation and it must be asked who benefits most from such arrangements and the rhetoric that supports them.
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Notes
Jeremy Bentham proposed that all institutions should be grounded in architecture called the “panopticon”, to foster “A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind” with continuous surveillance (Bentham 1995, 31, 43–44). Whilst the panopticon proposed by Bentham was a physical structure, new technologies have made possible different types of architecture to enable the sort of constant surveillance he envisioned (Lattas and Morris 2010, 82).
Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007 (Cth).
Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform and Reinstatement of Racial Discrimination Act) Act 2010 (Cth); Social Security Legislation Amendment Act 2012 (Cth); Social Services Legislation Amendment (No 2) Act 2015 (Cth).
Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) ss 123UA-123UGA.
Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) s 123TI.
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) s 124PM.
Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) s 123TH.
Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007 (Cth) ss 4(3) and 6(3).
The Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform and Reinstatement of Racial Discrimination Act) Act 2010 (Cth) schedule 2 part 2 ss 36 and 37 introduced into the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) ss 123UCA and 123UGA respectively.
Centrelink is the Australian government agency that has long had responsibility for making social security payments.
The Social Security (Administration) (Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipient) Principles 2013, under principle 8(1), made pursuant to s 123UGA(2) of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth).
Section 123UCB of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) applies income management to those defined as ‘disengaged youth’. Section 123UCC subjects those who are deemed to be ‘long-term welfare recipients’ to income management. People who fall within either of these groups can seek an exemption if they are eligible under ss 123UGC or 123UGD.
Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (Cth) s 123UGD(1)(d).
The Commonwealth Ombudsman has power to investigate the administrative operations of government agencies pursuant to the Ombudsman Act 1976 (Cth).
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) s 124PJ.
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) ss 124 PB, 124PK.
Referring to Forrest 2014.
For instance, in the National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2016 the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report that “recent cocaine use was highest among those who were employed (3.8%) and lived in Major cities (3.2%) or high socioeconomic areas (3.3% and 4.0% in the highest and second highest socioeconomic areas, respectively)” (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016, 64). For this report “the 20% of areas with the greatest overall level of disadvantage is described as the ‘lowest socioeconomic area’. The 20% of areas with the greatest level of advantage—the top fifth—is described as the ‘highest socioeconomic area’” (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2016, 101).
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) s 124PD.
There were some early reports that examined income management in the context of other Intervention measures noting adverse effects, for example, Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association and Centre for Health Equity Training, Research and Evaluation, University of New South Wales, Health Impact Assessment of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (2010) 22–23; and suggesting that it should be voluntary rather than universal, for instance, Peter Yu, Marcia Ella Duncan, Bill Gray, Northern Territory Emergency Response: Report of the NTER Review Board (2008) 10.
The reference numbers for these contracts between the Department of Social Services and Indue Ltd are CN3323493-A1 and CN3290604 respectively, published on AusTender www.tenders.gov.au. Accessed 27 November 2017.
Reference number CN3323493-A2, published on AusTender www.tenders.gov.au. Accessed 27 November 2017.
Whether compulsory income management is a type of risk-based regulation is a matter for further study. Fiona Haines (2011, 1) explains that regulation often has “the goal of avoiding, or at least reducing, the risk of future harm.” Political discourse accompanying the cashless welfare legislation represents welfare recipients as highly risky subjects who need intensive regulation, as people especially vulnerable to making bad financial decisions. However, as Kathryn Henne (2015, 9) observes, “a society marked by heightened awareness of risk … can actually yield a perpetual preoccupation that seeks and manufactures more risk in an effort to control it.” This is apparent in the evolution of various compulsory income management programs.
Welfare recipients now subject to various forms of compulsory income management also experience diminished rights vis-à-vis previous generations who could access cash payments. There is an element of intergenerational inequity in this situation—and an ethical approach to poverty governance requires that people “inherit suitable conditions for living decent lives” (Thompson 2014, 170).
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) s 124PK.
Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Act 2015 (Cth) s 124PN and s 124PO. The legislation contains no procedures to ensure that affected welfare recipients have access to the information about them that is to be gathered, stored, monitored and shared.
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Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Dr Kate Henne, Dr Marina Nehme, the editors, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft; and to the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University (ANU) who supported this research as part of a body of work on regulation, welfare conditionality, and Indigenous peoples undertaken as the Braithwaite Research Fellow. Thanks are also expressed for support via an ANU Early Career Researcher (ECR) Travel Grant and an ANU College of Asia and the Pacific ECR Research Development Award.
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Bielefeld, S. Cashless Welfare Transfers for ‘Vulnerable’ Welfare Recipients: Law, Ethics and Vulnerability. Fem Leg Stud 26, 1–23 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-018-9363-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-018-9363-6