The Impact of Breaching on Income Support Customers

Between 1995 and mid-2001 there was a large increase in the number of penalties imposed on income support recipients for breaches of social security rules and requirements. This parallelled the expansion of obligations and requirements placed on workforce age recipients, along with the introduction of the Job Network from 1998. Breaching has become controversial and has attracted considerable attention from welfare advocacy groups and the media. It has been the subject of a number of both internal and independent reviews, resulting in a set of policy and procedural changes from July 2002 that have led to a substantial reduction from the previous levels of breaching. However, there has been little systematic information available on the impact of breaches on income support recipients, either in terms of how they cope with reduced income or how it affects future compliance with social security rules. The literature on the impact of breaches relies substantially on small-scale case studies or surveys of clients of non-government organisations. These studies provide a consistent picture of the risk factors involved in being breached and the difficulties faced by many of those involved, but they are not necessarily representative of the experience of all breached customers. There has been little direct evidence on whether being breached affects future compliance, although attitudinal surveys suggest it may increase job search effort. To help fill this gap in knowledge, the Department of Family and Community Services commissioned a study of the impacts of breaching from the Social Policy Research Centre. The research aims to assist in future policy development and is particularly relevant given the extension of participation requirements under 'Australians Working Together'.