"Indue, which includes Conservative Coalition party luminaries as shareholders, stands to make a packet from the humiliation and micro-management of the every-day life of already-disadvantaged".

How come? Please explain. Disgusting if true.

Ah, the follies of youth. Rail against practical solutions that are working (however imperfectly) and offer no practical or workable solution other than to create a rights charter that people who can't manage their own lives and money must follow. No recognition that such people also have responsibilities and hence whatever is put in place must be a balance of rights with responsibilities.

"Instead of humiliating marginalised Australians government ought instead be seeking to empower them, perhaps including through the mechanism of a Guaranteed Minimum Income". Wonderful in theory but totally unrealistic in practice, recognising that a GMI has never worked anywhere in the world over the last 12,000 years of so-called civilised history.

I disagree! I believe there is a case for a cashless welfare card! Particularly where there is coercive control, domestic abuse etc!

And those requirements need to be across the board and universally applicable! Rather than race based!

Aside from that, I believe we need to own our own behaviour and stop blaming this or that circumstance or long ago historical events that cannot be changed or indeed claimed cultural exemptions etc!

We approach an era where we will become a cashless society and need to be, to shut down the black economy and money laudering etc-etc.

Finally, we need to adjust welfare incomes so that they meet all unmet need! That cannot include substance abuse, alcohol dependency/addiction nor drug dependency/addiction!

One of the new clever tricks by the Ice pusher is Ice labs under the floorboards of houses on (half a metre or more high) stumps. Where nails are replaced by screws. And means the house can be raided almost at will and nothing other than telltale odours or that stench remains?
The floorboards screwed and unscrewed at will with electric screwdrivers as required by the process or police raids?

Nor are the inhabitants overcome by the fumes which then are carried by favourable breezes to neighbours who respond with runny noses, watering eyes and major to very severe headaches! And babies licking the bathroom tiles!

There's way too much-unstubstantiated humbug in this area to allow it to influence very sensible decisions that in the first instance, more than halved domestic/child abuse!

Reversing previous sensible decisions is as good as more than doubling current domestic and child abuse and make no mistake, that'll be labor's legacy!

If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Genius!
Alan B.

Disagree, Bernie. Incomes could be raised to where there's no poverty whatsoever, if we but embrace cooperative capitalism and expel/outlaw all the profit demanding, paper shuffling middlemen! And commission sales! The latter replaced by salaried officers and standard fees for services or outcomes

Things that did indeed work have been dismantled by idealogues or fundamental fanatics/control freaks? All of who wanted other less egalitarian outcomes!

Outcomes which included more and more of our finite wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. And that phenomenon created the Great Depression!

An outcome aided and abetted by remarkably unhelpful commentators like yourself?

A guaranteed universal income just above the poverty line is going to go straight back into the domestic income stream and discretionary spending! Thus boosting the domestic economy, the GST and tax receipts!

For every one dollar invested in an "ADEQUATE" universal income outcome, you get at least two and a half back!

You think maybe that's a bad outcome? Genius?

Can't died in a cornfield over a century ago!
Alan B.

Tristan
In the unlikely event that you are interested in feedback;
Your motives may be admirable , but your ignorant idealism can only harm the welfare of Aboriginal people and the socialist cause .Go to a remote community and experience the horror at first hand; or if you can only argue from your study , read Peter Sutton , The Politics of Suffering.

"While a relatively small proportion are affected by gambling addiction or alcoholism,"
Tristan, I suggest you take a trip to the NT, particularly the larger towns and observe for yourself how wrong that statement is.
David

Alan B. - thanks for the comment but can you give me just one example anywhere in the world over the last 12,000 years where a GMI operated for a reasonable length of time successfully?

But why are people with a lot more money than the people who cannot manage money profiting from those who can't. The card might help no hopers, but why/how can others profit from it as the author says. He's probably not going to tell me.

Sorry Tristan, you got it wrong right from the start.

These people are not being restricted in what they can spend their money on, but on what they can spend the tax payers money on. This is the whole idea of course, to get them to decide they want more money than the handout, & to decide it is worth going to work for it.

A couple of idealistic yank friends of mine were members of JFKs peace corps, working in the Pacific Islands. Through out the islands it was found that developing a plantation & giving it to the people of an Island or village was a dead loss. No one would tend it, & each only harvested what they immediately wanted. The things reverted to jungle.

I saw this in PNG when white planters were bought out, & the plantations given to the locals. the plantations rapidly became jungle again.

They then developed a system where they would pick out a few they thought were more switched on, & help them develop a small plantation business. with some of these prospering, the rest became jealous, & wanted the same. Soon lots of individual enterprises were going strong, where hand outs failed.

Granted I'm not sure that the islanders were better working their plantations rather than sitting around as they had been, catching a few fish, & growing a little taro, but the system worked.

Those who don't want some control over their spending of their handout could perhaps go back to hunter gathering, or growing themselves a few veggies.

The cashless welfare card reduces access to drugs for junkies.

Perhaps Labor wants to kill off these Junkies?