Welfare experts warn the Coalition’s budget plan to quarantine welfare from jobseekers who test positive to drugs will have unintended consequences

Drug support worker Chris Gough has seen dozens of clients since the Coalition announced its controversial testing plan for welfare recipients on Tuesday.

On average, each person who has walked into his cramped Canberra office, five minutes drive from parliament, is receiving Centrelink benefits, lives below the poverty line and struggles with mental health issues.

They either experience homelessness, live in community housing or have a rental but struggle to put food on the table.

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Every case is complex, he says, and none fits the simplistic narrative upon which the government’s drug testing plan is based.

“When Barnaby Joyce gets on the ABC and says ‘it’s really simple, we’re paying taxes to these people, and the least that they can do is to turn up to a job interview straight’, it’s just simply not true to life,” Gough, the manager of Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy, said.

“It’s an oversimplification and it doesn’t work like that,” he said.

“We’re talking about people who can’t sit at their homes and write a resume, because they don’t have the internet, they don’t have a computer, and if they did, they might not have the education [needed].

“We’re talking about complex needs, co-morbidity with mental health and drug and alcohol problems, homelessness, poverty is a big one, and the criminalisation that’s layered on to drug use in society comes with legal issues as well.”

The treasurer, Scott Morrison, confirmed on Thursday the federal government would use wastewater to find areas of high drug use to better target its “random” testing of 5,000 welfare recipients.

The social services minister, Christian Porter, said the plan aims to drive “behavioural change”, arguing that dealing with drug use will encourage employment.



But Gough said punitive approaches to drug addiction had been repeatedly shown not to work.

He said the government’s attempts to force people into treatment would fail without more funding for already-stretched drug treatment and rehabilitation services.

A 2014 report by the federal health department found 200,000 to 500,000 Australians wanted to access drug treatment, but couldn’t due to a lack of places.

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That’s backed up by reports from residential rehabilitation centres across the country, which say that prospective patients are facing wait times of more than six months, and in some cases years.



“It’s just simply not that people are avoiding treatment, it’s just that the treatment places simply aren’t there,” Gough said.

“Without having drug placement places attached to it, it’s just going to cause more problems, increase poverty, increase homelessness, increase problems with mental health,” he said.

A joint statement – issued by the Australian Injecting and Illicit Drug Users League, Australian Federation of Aids Organisations, National Association of People with HIV Australia, the Scarlet Alliance, and the Australian Sex Workers Association – made a similar warning on Thursday morning.

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The groups urged the Coalition to increase its investment in drug treatment beyond the recent 5% boost as part of the national ice action strategy, instead of attempting to punish and coerce drug users.

Gough has warned of the unintended consequences of the Coalition’s drug testing plan.

He said many of his clients were barely struggling to survive on welfare payments like Newstart, which is already below the poverty level.

“If you’re looking at taking away their only source of income, you’re talking about direct consequences with housing, with crime, because they will be forced to commit crime to survive,” he said.



“We’re talking about pushing people from subsistence living to a place of utter desperation.”