Policy Mobilities of Exclusion: Implications of Australian Disability Pension Retraction for Indigenous Australians

Abstract

There is growing concern surrounding the retraction of disability social provisioning measures across the western world, with state fiscal policy trends foregrounding austerity as a central principle of welfare provisioning. This is occurring within many of the nation-states that have ratified and legislated rights enshrined by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This article undertakes a critical analysis of disability income retraction in Australia since the early 2000s and examines these changes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living with disability by focusing on Article 20 of the CRPD, the right to personal mobility, a core right for people with disabilities and Indigenous peoples. Beyond economic inequality, the article illustrates that the various administrative processes attached to welfare retraction have implications for the realisation of mobility practices that are critical for individual cultural identity and wellbeing. Disability austerity has resulted in a new form of Indigenous containment, fixing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with disabilities in a cyclical motion of poverty management.