Ice bludgers’ big stink

SEWAGE data helped motivate the Turnbull government to crack down on welfare-fuelled drug abuse.

The data, from a National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program assessment, identified “astonishingly high” rates of methamphetamine (ice) use across Australia. The figures prompted the government to act, Social Services Minister Christian Porter said. “We want to drive behavioural changes to some of those areas at that critical point where people are job searching,” he said yesterday.

The controversial drug testing trial, announced in Tuesday’s federal Budget, will apply only to new welfare entrants and consider compliance track records.