New inquisition for all families on benefits receives bipartisan support
 
(Source: " Dud parents under the gun ",
 John Ferguson, Herald-Sun, July 5 2007).

STRUGGLING parents who neglect their children will face food stamp-style control on their welfare cheques. Parents who fail to educate children will be pinpointed under radical electronic controls on welfare payments.
The Howard Government is to announce the new controls, involving Eftpos-style cards rather than food stamps. Parents would have up to half their welfare payments tied to basic items such as food, power and gas. Essential items such as medicine and school books could also be bought with the swipe cards, but cigarettes and alcohol would be out.
Asked yesterday if the new deal for parents on the edge would include food stamps, Prime Minister John Howard said: "Well, something you could loosely call that...I think there are more sophisticated techniques and different descriptions now with Eftpos, but the principle is the same."
Thousands of parents are expected to be caught in the latest welfare crackdown. It follows the Government's intervention in the NT Aboriginal health and welfare crisis. But the national plan ratified by Cabinet this week could be even more far-reaching. The Government's concern is that too much money is being wasted at the expense of essential items that help secure children's futures. Central to the plan will be a national response to truancy. Parents who fail to send their children to school face Centrelink intervention.
"If parents neglect their children or there is evidence children are being abused, then we are going to change the law," Mr Howard said ". . . their family benefit and other payments can be quarantined -- not taken away, but quarantined -- so that the benefit of those payments is directed towards the welfare of the children."
Family and Community Services Minister Mal Brough has steered the radical new measures through Cabinet. Mr Brough visited the US where the electronic payments system is used widely. He told Radio 5AA in Adelaide: "What we're saying . . . is that here is a family who are not looking after their child, they don't warrant losing the child but the kid's not going to school...So part of that payment will be direct-debited compulsorily for things such as the school tuck shop...Let's just say, it might be lunch, the rent, the utilities. ..It's incredible to think kids are in a house and there's no power on. What chance have you got?"
The new system will provoke a strong response, dividing the community between those keen to ensure welfare is spent wisely and those concerned about the rights of the adult recipients.
Mr Howard said the push for change was justified because children came first. "This is justified because parents receive this money on trust, in a way, for their children," he said. "And if they're not doing their job, the community is entitled to say, 'We're going to stand in your place and see that the money is directed to the children'."
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd offered qualified support for the plan. Mr Rudd said Labor's position would hinge on the detail of any legislation. "When it comes to the rest of the Australian community, it's important that the core principle of what is in the best interests of the safety of children and security of children be the principle which guides our examination of policy and legislation," he said. "So when we look at this Bill from the Government, that's the principle we're going to be applying...Kids are critical; the safety of kids is critical."

[ Red Star comment – Every politician supports children in the same way they claim to support motherhood. But can they be taken at their word? The real agenda here is something else: an attack on poor families, who will be subjected to humiliating assessments by middle-class social workers who have no experience whatever of the pressures of poverty. The purpose is not to save money or children, but the State claiming the right to totally control the lives of families who are poor enough to be on government benefits. An unspoken assumption made by both Howard and Rudd is that it is only poor parents who are "duds", since rich "dud parents" will not be subjected to similar scrutiny. It is also disturbing that "Mr Brough visited the US where the electronic payments system is used widely. " Do we really want to follow the example of the U.S. welfare system, widely criticised as the worst in the industrialised world? It is much to be feared that both of the major political parties are attracted to the U.S approach to welfare. ]