Claims that a new AIHW report on income quarantining in the Northern Territory provide strong support for the effectiveness of conditional welfare are astounding, say the Australian Greens.

"The Minister is clutching at straws to try and justify the national rollout of compulsory income quarantining," Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said today.

The findings of this report on the validity and reliability of the evidence collected by FaHCSIA and supplied to AIWH were damning - with AIHW analysts concluding the data 'would all sit towards the bottom of an evidence hierarchy' and 'the overall evidence about the effectiveness of income management was not strong'.

"Jenny Macklin appears to have over-extended herself on this occasion. The report provides no basis whatsoever for her claims that income quarantining in NT Aboriginal communities has delivered significant health outcomes."

"The report does not provide any quantitative data on actual health outcomes, and relies on a client survey and a small number of focus group interviews in four selected communities. AIHW did not devise the study or collect the data, they simply analysed the results.

"The Minister is clearly skewing flimsy evidence to try and slip fundamental welfare reform under the radar."

"There is no justification for jumping to such massive conclusions on the basis of 76 client interviews from only four locations - when neither the locations not the interviewees were randomly selected and the respondents gave their opinion not actual data."

"The Minister is claiming that because 30 out of the 15,125 people on income management said their kids were eating more (with no actual data) that this justifies these most fundamental changes to our national welfare system."

"Researchers and social scientists should be up in arms about this. If the Government gets away with this abuse of the science it will set evidence-based policy back decades."

"The Minister is clearly using the reputation of AIHW as one of Australia's leading social science research institutions. We do not believe that the report justifies the Minister's claims," concluded Senator Siewert.

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