Welfare cuts tougher than Cape York trials: Pearson
Posted
Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson says the Federal Government's plan to strip Centrelink payments from parents whose children skip school is tougher than the welfare trials currently underway in Queensland.
Legislation is before Federal Parliament to freeze welfare payments to parents for three months if their children are frequent truants.
Mr Pearson is the director of the Cape York Institute and says he has been at pains to ensure that in the Queensland trials payments are managed, not stripped, from families.
"The Cape York approach is that we don't take money away from families," he said.
"There is a lot of mention that we [are] stripping people from welfare, [but] nobody loses any money.
"A clamp might be put on your money to make sure that you spend it on your children's clothes and so on but our approach does not deprive people of money.
"We want to put people in a position where if they are taking responsibility there should be no interference.
"It's only where there is a breakdown, where people have failed to send their kids to school or are not abiding by their obligations, that's when there should be intervention."
