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Govt Intervention Restricts Indigenous
Welfare Spending
September 7, 2007, The Age
Thousands of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory will be unable to use quarantined
welfare payments to buy food anywhere other than Woolworths or remote community
stores.
The move is part of the Commonwealth's intervention into NT Indigenous communities.
The Federal Government is going to start quarantining half of the welfare payments for people in
Aboriginal communities, so that the money can only be spent on food and essentials.
Some of the people live close to major centres such as Alice Springs in central Australia and
leader of the intervention Major General David Chalmers says people will be able to organise with
Centrelink to spend some of the money using a special card at Woolworths.
"They'll agree with Centrelink where they're going to want to spend it," he said.
"There will be flexibility so that initial agreement isn't binding you can change it on a pay period to
pay period fortnight to fortnight basis.
"But nonetheless there will be some restrictions on the flexibility of that 50 per cent."
One such restriction is that Aboriginal people will not be able to buy bread from a bakery using the
quarantined funds.
"If you want to buy bread at a bakery then you would use 50 per cent of your discretionary money
to do that," he said.
He says people would also need to use the discretionary portion if they wanted to buy clothing at a
shopping centre.
See: ABC News
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