Indigenous Australians continue to be breached under Welfare to Work at unacceptably high levels. 1644 Indigenous Australians received 8 week non-payment periods for breaching the welfare to work laws in the year ending 30 June 2007. This is an increase of around 250% from last year.

These massive increases should be ringing alarm bells within Government. It is completely unacceptable to implement a regime which is having such a detrimental effect on such a vulnerable group in our community. These figures are even more disturbing when the NT Intervention measures are taken into account. There was considerable evidence before the Senate Inquiry into the NT Bills that the Government's abolition of CDEP in the Northern Territory and the movement of people onto Welfare to Work will see these figures soar.

Of further concern is the anecdotal evidence from the NT of an increase in "rolling breaches", that is, of people continuing to receive additional 8 week non-payment periods one after the other, leading them to drop out of the system altogether.

Indigenous people continue to be overrepresented in these statistics, making up over 10% of the 15, 509 breaches Australia-wide. What kind of welfare system do we have if these numbers of people are going without basic income support for at least 8 weeks?