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Welfare Compliance and Domestic Violence: How Australia's Welfare Fraud Tip-Off Line is Used as a Tool of State
Lyndal Sleep1, Scarlet Wilcock2, Nan Seuffert3
1Central Queensland University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Abstract:
In this article, we contribute to the literature on state violence against women (VAW) by examining the intersection of domestic violence and welfare fraud tip-off lines. Tip-off lines enable anonymous reporting of suspected welfare fraud, forming part of the punitive welfare-to-work reforms within Western democratic nation states. Via examination of interviews with victims/survivors and community lawyers, alongside analysis of social security appeal decisions, we argue that Australia's welfare system, which claims to prioritize supporting women affected by domestic violence, may instead be complicit in, intensify, and perpetrate VAW through its administrative compliance procedures as a form of state systems abuse.
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