Income Management and Indigenous Women : A New Chapter of Patriarchal Colonial Governance

The author examines the ways Indigenous women are represented in Australia’s official income management discourse. Australian policies of austerity, as the author describes it, quarantine a substantial percentage of welfare payments that can only be spent on government defined priority needs at government-approved retailers and service providers. The author establishes that the needs of Indigenous women are stated as a central justification for income management, and in doing so, the government props up long-held perceptions of Indigenous women as irresponsible parents. These paternalist and colonialist discourses of passivity, incapacity, and vulnerability seek to regulate and control Indigenous women, reproduce injustice, and inhibit self-determination.