We will bring you some of the press conference independent MPs, social service and poverty advocates, legal experts and disability advocates held just a short while ago very soon, but here is a piece from the Antipoverty Centre’s Kirsten O’Connell and Maiy Azize, Deputy Director of Anglicare Australia have written for The Point on why the police powers over welfare amendment is so bad:

For most people in Australia, losing your income without warning would be unthinkable. For someone living on a Centrelink payment, it could mean losing your home, your food, your medication, and your ability to keep your children safe.

And yet the Government is trying to give itself the power to cut that income off before a person has been found guilty of anything at all.

It is punishment without conviction. It has no place in a fair society.

This is not a small administrative change or an obscure bureaucratic power. It would allow police to trigger the cancellation of income payments, family assistance, and even parental leave for people who have not been arrested, charged, or convicted.

In fact, the person may not even be aware a warrant exists.

There is no guarantee those payments would ever be reinstated, even if the person is later found not guilty or have no case to answer. There is no guarantee they would receive backpay. There is no independent review. A single minister would hold enormous discretionary power over whether a family has money for rent and food.

This approach fits into a much larger and dangerous trend. The Robodebt Royal Commission laid bare how governments have increasingly treated people on social security payments as suspects, how quickly political rhetoric slips into implying that people who receive social security are doing something wrong. The Commission warned about the way politicians exploit “taxpayer versus welfare recipient” narratives, and how easily that kind of language slides into punitive policy.

This latest proposal shows that lesson is being ignored.