Subversive control via punitive means?: The role of stigma and profit in Australia's cashless debit card policy

The cashless debit card is Australia's recent and most punitive form of income management; a social-security focused social policy approach to behaviour change. Evidence suggests the policy is a harmful social experiment which does not reduce the social harms or dysfunction it set out to perform. This paper questions the underlying motivations of cashless debit card policy implementation via contrasting policy theory and objectives with existing and emerging evidence of policy impact. Three key issues concern the creation and implementation of cashless debit card policy in terms of the vague aims and lack of evidence of the policy's success; issues of stigmatisation in relation to power, morality, and deviance; and the influence of economic ideology and profit making in social governance. An alternative approach to policy making is suggested based on addressing lived social contexts instead of problematising dysfunction resulting from individual deficits.

Key words: debit cards; wages; wage management; stigma (social psychology); punishment; paternalism; social policy; Australia.