ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a sketch of how the confluence of opportunistic right-wing populist politics, a shift towards behaviour modification and compliance-focused forms of welfare, a weakening of human rights-based safeguards, and the creation of a culture within the human services sector that focuses on sanctioning rather than assisting clients have radically altered the way ‘welfare’ is being delivered in Australia. Taking Australia as a case in point, the chapter visits the Targeted Compliance Framework (TCF) and Conditional Income Management (CIM), two of the policies at the core of compliance-focused ‘welfare’, the chapter argues that the confluence of these elements has opened authoritarian recesses in Australia’s human services where clients are stripped of their rights and social significance and are no longer able to reliably redeem their rights. The chapter highlights the role of human services professionals in moderating the impact of sanctions as a last defence against the rise of authoritarian ‘welfare’.
