Evaluating New Income Management in the Northern Territory: First Evaluation Report, by J Rob Bray, Matthew Gray, Kelly Hand, Bruce Bradbury, Christine Eastman and Ilan Katz is now available for download.

Income management (IM) was first introduced in 2007 as part of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER). The program involves ‘quarantining’ a portion of a person’s income support payment and restricting how this can be spent. Income management under the NTER applied to people who lived in 73 prescribed Indigenous communities, their associated outstations and the 10 town camp regions of the Northern Territory. In August 2010 NTER IM was replaced with a new form of income management – New Income Management (NIM).

In May 2010, FaHCSIA commissioned a consortium consisting of the Social Policy Research Centre (University of New South Wales), the Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Family Studies to evaluate the impact of NIM. This is the first evaluation report and considers how effectively the measure was rolled out; how the transition from the NTER IM to NIM was managed; and initial data on the impacts of NIM.