The impact of breaching and financial penalties on income support recipients
Tony Eardley, Kate Norris, Jude Brown and Margot Rawsthorne
Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW, University of New England and University of Sydney
Contact Email:   t.eardleyunsw.edu.au

Breaching, or the imposition of financial penalties for infringing income support rules and obligations, has been highly controversial in recent years. This is mainly because of a large increase in the number of breaches imposed between 1999 and 2002 in the context of an intensified ‘mutual obligation’ regime. Welfare advocacy groups have argued that these penalties are unnecessarily harsh and tend to fall most heavily on the most vulnerable income support recipients. However, there has been little systematic examination of the impact of breaching, either in terms of hardship or in terms of its effect on future compliance with obligations.

This paper discusses the results of the first large-scale study of these impacts, commissioned by the Department of Family and Community Services and carried out by the Social Policy Research Centre in 2002/03. The research involved a review of existing literature, a national telephone survey of breached income support recipients, together with in-depth interviews with a small number of survey respondents, and a national postal survey of welfare agencies.

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