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Showing posts with label Nationaal Party of Austalia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nationaal Party of Austalia. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 March 2020
One aspect of Scott Morrison's personal war on the poor and vulnerable becomes the subject of a legitimate study
“Income
management quarantines a portion of social security payments, placing
these funds in a special account that can only be used to pay for
essentials such as food and bills, and cannot be used to purchase
alcohol or tobacco. Compulsory income management was first introduced
to Australia - and, indeed, the world - in 2007 as part of the
Northern Territory Emergency Response (‘the intervention’), and
has been through several incarnations in the decade since. A
comparable policy - ‘money management’ - was introduced to New
Zealand in 2012.
While
numerous government evaluations of income management have been
undertaken in Australia, their findings have been inconsistent.
Stakeholders and politicians alike have called for a rigorous and
independent study of the program to better understand its impacts.
To
date, no evaluations - independent or otherwise - have been conducted
into money management in New Zealand.
This
project therefore represents the first large independent study of
compulsory income management in Australia and New Zealand. It
investigates how income management has developed as a policy, how it
is being implemented by service providers, and how it affects the
lives, choices and autonomy of benefit recipients.
A
key aim of this study is understand the lived experiences of those
who are subject to compulsory income management, and feed these
findings back to policymakers.” [About
The Study,
February 2020]
COMPULSORY
INCOME MANAGEMENT ‘DISABLING, NOT ENABLING’, STUDY SHOWS
Restricting
where and on what social security payments can be spent does more
harm than good, according to the first large, independent study into
Compulsory Income Management (CIM) policies in Australia.
The
University of Queensland’s Professor Greg Marston said the majority
of participants using the BasicsCard or Cashless Debit Card reported
practical difficulties making purchases and paying bills, which
introduced new instability into their lives.
“Income
management proponents say it can stabilise recipients’ lives and
finances, and our study found some people have experienced these
benefits,” Professor Marston said.
“However
many more people have faced additional financial challenges because
of the policies.
“Many
also found their expenses had increased as they were blocked from
participating in the cash economy and burdened with new fees and
charges.”
The
study team said CIM had often been framed as an intervention to
strengthen benefit recipients’ independence, build responsibility
and help transition people away from “welfare dependency” and
into work.
Professor
Marston said previous evaluations had raised significant concerns
about the capacity of income management policies to meet their stated
objectives, yet income management continued to be expanded.
“There
have been recent moves to extend the Cashless Debit Card across the
Northern Territory, but our findings show that CIM has in fact
weakened many participants’ financial capabilities and autonomy,”
he said.
“To
manage their finances, many participants have become reliant on
family members, service providers or automatic payment systems.”
Researcher
Dr Michelle Peterie said the study was unique for its focus on
individuals’ and communities’ experiences with the Cashless Debit
Card and BasicsCard.
“These
voices have frequently been lost or ignored in the policy debate,”
she said.
Dr
Peterie said the research showed a voluntary, opt-in form of income
management could have a place, however the social, emotional and
economic costs of continuing with a compulsory, widespread system
outweighed the benefits.
“The
overwhelming finding is that compulsory income management is having a
disabling rather than enabling affect on the lives of many social
security recipients,” Dr Peterie said.
“This
was true across all of our research sites.”
Professor
Marston said a policy approach that focused on providing employment
and training opportunities and ensuring accessible social services
and affordable housing would be a better starting point for creating
healthy, economically secure and socially inclusive communities.
The
research involved 114 in-depth interviews, conducted at four trial
sites (Playford, Shepparton, Ceduna and Hinkler), and a mixed-methods
survey of 199 people at income management sites across Australia.
ENDS
Full
study can be accessed at
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bff47d1da02bc49ad4e890b/t/5e54c6934eb2985cbbf830a5/1582614180484/Hidden+Costs+Report+-+FINAL.pdf
Monday, 29 April 2019
Scott Morrison and News Corp need fact checking - again!
The Australian Labor Party released its
dividend
imputation policy in 2018 and began to come under sustained political
attack by the Morrison Government and News Corp with claims that there was a
$10 billion dollar hole in Labor’s costing of its policy.
On 18 June
2018 the Parliamentary Budget Office issued
a media release:
Imputation
credits policy costing
Earlier today, comments
have been made about the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) estimates of the
gains to revenue that may flow from the Australian Labor Party’s (ALP’s) policy
to make imputation credits non-refundable.
“The PBO brings our best
professional judgement to the independent policy costing advice we
provide. We have access to the same data
and economic parameters as The Treasury and draw upon similar information in
forming our judgements,” Parliamentary Budget Officer Jenny Wilkinson stated
today.
“We stand behind the PBO
estimates that have been published by the ALP in relation to this policy,
noting that all policy costings, no matter who they are prepared by, are
subject to uncertainty.” In its advice,
the PBO is explicit about the judgements and uncertainties associated with
individual policy costings.
The PBO confirms that it
always takes into account current and future policy commitments, as well as
behavioural changes, in its policy costings.
In this case, as outlined at the recent Senate Estimates hearings, these
included the superannuation changes announced in the 2016–17 Budget and the
scheduled company tax cuts. In addition,
the PBO explicitly assumed that there would be significant behavioural changes
that would flow from this policy, particularly for trustees of self-managed
superannuation funds.
The PBO was established
as an independent institution in 2012 with broad support from the
Parliament. A key rationale for the
formation of the PBO was to develop a more level playing field, by providing
independent and unbiased advice to all parliamentarians about the estimated
fiscal cost of policy proposals. The
purpose of establishing the PBO was to improve the public’s understanding of,
and confidence in, policy costings and enable policy debates to focus on the
merits of alternative policy proposals.
Ten months later on 25 April
2019 News Corp’s The Daily Examiner ran an article on page 8 concerning Labor’s
dividend imputation policy which stated:
The independent
Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated Labor’s plan would save $7 billion
less over a decade than the party expects and that it would affect 840,000
individuals, 210,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs) plus some bigger funds.
Now the
Parliamentary Budget Office publishes
the requests for information it receives, including requests for policy implications and
costings, however there appears to be no new request for information and
costings on Labor’s dividend imputation policy on its website.
Morrison
& Co have been caught out misrepresenting the source of their costings
before and even flat out lying on occasion, so one has to suspect the veracity
of their latest attack on this particular policy.
It's just as likely costings and other figures were done on the back of an envelope by Morrison or Frydenberg.
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