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.
Keywords
Introduction
There is growing recognition that the availability of adequate and accessible social welfare payments can enhance the safety of women and children (see, e.g., Buller et al., 2018; Mosher et al., 2006). However, as domestic violence (DV) scholars and advocates have demonstrated, the enactment of punitive welfare-to-work reforms in Western democracies has deepened women's vulnerability to violence, jeopardizing the role that welfare states can play in promoting women's safety (see, e.g., Brush, 2000; Morrow et al., 2004; Raphael, 1996). One aspect of punitive welfare reform that has received less scholarly attention is the impacts of aggressive responses to welfare fraud for women experiencing gendered violence (but see, e.g., Mosher et al., 2004). In this article, we contribute to this literature by examining the intersection of DV and one specific welfare fraud detection measure, tip-off lines, also known as “snitch” lines, which enable anyone to anonymously report suspected welfare fraud.
Building on the concept of systems abuse (Douglas, 2018; Miller et al., 2011) and the literature on state violence, we examine how welfare fraud control measures can enable and perpetrate DV. Using the example of the Australian Government's welfare fraud tip-off regime, we argue that this anti-fraud measure facilitates DV between intimate partners both by creating opportunities for perpetrators 1 to exert power and control, representing a form of “systems abuse,” and by inviting administrative interventions that represent a form of state violence. Australia's welfare system, which promises to be a means to reduce violence against women (DSS, 2022, pp. 60–61), is instead often a vector for violence against women (VAW). We thus urge welfare officials and policy makers to be more cognizant of the relationship between welfare fraud controls and DV to ensure that welfare states enhance rather than undermine women's safety.
The article begins by situating this research in the literature on the intersection of welfare reform and DV. We then outline the operation and use of tip-off lines with a focus on the Australian context. Drawing on work on legal systems abuse and state violence, we consider how the complex social security compliance system may be complicit in and perpetrate DV. Next, through interviews with DV survivors, advocates, AAT decisions and case studies, we document ways that the Australian tip-off regime is a mechanism for gendered state violence.
Welfare Reform, Welfare Fraud Control and DV
There is increasing evidence that the availability of welfare payments, particularly cash transfers made to women, can enhance their safety (see, e.g., Buller et al., 2018). Welfare payments have proven particularly beneficial to poor and low-income women's strategies to escape violence and to their post-separation recovery (Anderson et al., 2003; Braaf et al., 2011; Brandwein, 1999). They also have the potential to minimize harms by providing support to women who decide that staying in the relationship is their safest option or are in the (often) long and risky process of leaving (Cameron et al., 2021; Sleep, 2016). Many scholars and advocates have thus argued for the inclusion of adequate and accessible welfare payments as a component of anti-violence strategies (see, e.g., Mosher et al., 2006; NSSRN, 2018; Weissman, 2015).
Since the 1990s, most Western democracies have implemented wide-ranging welfare reforms that seek to reduce “welfare dependency” by restricting access to welfare payments and imposing conditions on welfare receipt to encourage or compel recipients to take up paid employment, including low-paid, insecure work (Kingfisher, 2013; Marston, 2008; Mosher, 2011). In Australia, the reform agenda has followed the lead of the US toward a “work-first” welfare state (Marston et al., 2007). This includes the introduction of onerous reporting obligations and compulsory participation in approved welfare-to-work activities as well as new measures to regulate and scrutinize welfare recipients to guard against non-compliance and fraud (Grahame et al., 2012; Marston et al., 2007).
Feminist scholars have criticized these punitive welfare-to-work reforms for undermining women's economic well-being, ignoring women's unpaid domestic and care work, and deepening women's vulnerability to violence (Kingfisher, 2013; Mosher, 2011; Mosher et al., 2006; Raphael, 1996, 2002). This is not to suggest that earlier welfare policies, programs and institutions adequately supported women facing or escaping violence. Indeed, modern Western welfare states have always been deeply gendered institutions that perpetuate inequalities while purporting to alleviate them (Orloff, 1993; Purvin, 2007). The welfare state has long sought to control women's lives and bodies, particularly single mothers and women of color, in ways that often replicate the dynamics of DV (Kandaswamy, 2010). Nevertheless, there is widespread recognition that punitive and restrictive welfare reforms have exacerbated gendered inequality, including worsening the risks and harms associated with gendered violence (Purvin, 2007; Summers, 2022). These reforms have led women to remain in or return to violent relationships and plunged women into poverty if they do leave (Purvin, 2007; Scott et al., 2002). According to Scott et al. (2002), the gaps in welfare provision produced by restrictive welfare reforms lead many women to develop “dangerous dependencies” on abusive men. As Summers (2022) concludes, in Australia, the deeply inadequate rates of welfare payments leave many women living with violent partners an impossible “choice: violence or poverty.”
The impacts of DV can also hinder women's ability to comply with complex and onerous welfare rules and welfare-to-work obligations, which makes abused women more vulnerable to payment suspensions, debts, and other sanctions (Brush, 2000; Braaf et al., 2011; NSSRN, 2018; Winter, 2014). Failing to comply with the rules can also trigger additional regimes of surveillance and control that replicate the harms and experience of DV (Kandaswamy, 2010; Mosher, 2011; Mosher et al., 2004). While exemptions and special rules are ordinarily available for cases involving DV, such as the Family Violence Option in the United States, research generally suggests that these options are insufficient and underutilized (Busch et al., 2002; Gallagher, 2011; Winter, 2014). Ultimately, punitive and restrictive welfare reform programs have reduced the options and support available to women experiencing violence whilst giving rise to new burdens and risks for women (Purvin, 2007; Scott et al., 2002).
The consequences of aggressive responses to welfare fraud for women facing or escaping violence has received less attention in the literature. In recent decades, the US, Australian, and other governments have introduced new initiatives to detect and punish welfare fraud, such as dedicated fraud control units, data surveillance technologies, and tip-off lines (Gilliom, 2001; Gustafson, 2011). There is now a significant body of feminist scholarship that demonstrates how these welfare fraud controls disproportionately target and impact women, particularly single mothers and women of color (see Chunn et al., 2006; Gilliom, 2001; Gustafson, 2011). A small body of research has focused more specifically on the implications of welfare fraud controls for women experiencing DV. For example, as Hays’ (2004) research with mothers receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in the US suggests, welfare workers tend to be more skilled at and more likely to screen for fraud than for DV (see also Lindhorst et al., 2005). Women on welfare may therefore be more likely to be punished for non-compliance or subject to extra scrutiny than to receive support and assistance to survive or recover from violence. Mosher et al.’s (2004) examination of abused women's experiences of Ontarian welfare similarly found that aggressive policing of welfare fraud contributed to a culture of suspicion, mistrust and scrutiny of women on welfare, leading many women to draw parallels between abuse and being on welfare. The authors also highlight how the Ontarian system effectively shores up the power of abusive men who can manipulate welfare systems to harm women and reduce their options (Mosher et al., 2004). We seek to build on this research at the intersection of DV and welfare compliance by providing accounts of how Australia's welfare fraud tip-off regime can facilitate and extend DV.
Welfare Fraud Tip-Off Lines in Context
Welfare fraud tip-off lines enable members of the public to provide information or “tips” about a person or organization they suspect is engaging in fraud to welfare authorities. They are now used in the UK, Canada, the US and Australia. In Australia, the welfare fraud tip-off regime includes a toll-free phone number and an online webform enabling anonymous allegations of welfare fraud against welfare recipients (Services Australia, 2022). Disclosures can also be made via email and post. The regime is operated by Australia's national welfare delivery agency known as Services Australia. 2 It has been well utilized since its introduction with an average of 100,000 tips made annually (Wilcock, 2023, p. 124). 3
Few tip-offs actually identify cases of welfare fraud or debt. For example, in 2022–23, just 33 (0.07%) of the 50,044 welfare fraud tip-offs from the public were referred to prosecutors (Services Australia, 2024). In the 2019–20 financial year, 702 (0.79%) of the 89,200 tip-offs received by Services Australia resulted in a debt (Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, 2020; Services Australia, 2020, p. 170). Tip-offs have proven similarly ineffective in other jurisdictions. For example, in the years following the UK Department for Work and Pensions’ communications campaign promoting the welfare tip-off line, close to 90% of the inquiries were closed due to lack of evidence (Bloom, 2018). This suggests that welfare tip-off lines may not be as effective as often claimed by politicians and welfare officials.
Another pattern that has emerged across several jurisdictions is the high proportion of tips involving allegations that the recipient is in an undisclosed marriage-like relationship, which disproportionately impacts women (see, e.g., Little et al., 1999; Mosher et al., 2004) These rules are known as “member of a couple” (MOC) rules under Australian social security law and are akin to “spouse in the house” rules in other jurisdictions. In Australia, MOC rules provide that where a recipient is in a de facto relationship, the couple are assumed to be sharing financial resources and are treated as a couple for the purposes of determining eligibility for and the rate of welfare payments (see Sleep, 2019). In Australia, roughly half of all tip-offs involve an alleged breach of MOC rules. For example, in 2018–19, 43,889 (48.7%) of a total of 90,178 tip-offs related to MOC claims (Services Australia, 2024).
Feminist scholars have criticized the introduction of tip-off lines in combination with MOC rules for enabling and encouraging the public to scrutinize women's sexuality and relationships, particularly that of single mothers (Little et al., 2006; Mosher et al. 2004). Concerns have also been raised about the potential for tip-off lines to be misused by perpetrators of DV, particularly by making MOC allegations. Mosher et al. (2004, p. viii) identified instances in Ontario where perpetrators threatened to or did in fact call welfare agencies to make allegations of fraud against their current or former partners, which bolstered perpetrators’ power and control, and left women “feeling trapped with nowhere to turn.” Similar concerns about the misuse of tip-off lines have been raised in policy reports in Australia (Braaf et al., 2011; NSSRN, 2018). However, the nature of perpetrators’ misuse of tip-off regimes has yet to be examined in detail. We seek to fill this gap. We draw on the concept of “systems abuse” and the literature on state violence to theorize and detail instances of how perpetrators can commandeer this welfare compliance tool as a tactic of abuse and trigger a set of administrative responses that, we argue, represent a form of state-facilitated violence.
DV, Systems Abuse and the State
DV is a form of gendered violence that is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women in heterosexual relationships. One in four Australian women have reported experiencing violence by an intimate partner since the age of fifteen (ABS, 2023). Women with marginalized identities, including Indigenous women, immigrant women and women with disabilities are at higher risk. There is now widespread recognition, including by the Australian Government, that DV “almost always” involves a dynamic of “coercive control” involving the perpetrator engaging in a pattern of abusive behavior to gain power and control over the victim/survivor (AIHW, 2024; Dreyfus, 2023). Recently, feminist scholars have coined the term “systems abuse,” also known as “paper abuse,” “procedural stalking,” or “secondary abuse” to describe how perpetrators use legal and other government systems as a tactic of coercive control (see Douglas, 2018; Miller et al., 2011).
Typically, systems abuse involves abusive partners or ex-partners weaponizing specific and sometimes multiple legal and administrative systems as a tool to harass, intimidate, force contact, cause financial harm, seek revenge or otherwise control and harm the victim/survivor (Douglas, 2018; Miller et al., 2011). Evidence suggests that this form of abuse is particularly prevalent in the post-separation period when in-person tactics may be more limited (Douglas, 2018; Elizabeth, 2017). Common tactics include: making frivolous or vexatious claims or cross-claims against the victim/survivor, making false allegations to, for example, child protection authorities, and causing delays to processes and proceedings by, for example, seeking constant adjournments (Douglas et al., 2020; Elizabeth, 2017; Wangmann, 2020, pp. 114, 150, 152).
Systems abuse has most frequently been documented in the family law system, especially in child custody matters (Douglas, 2018; Elizabeth, 2015; Reeves, 2020). Scholars have also identified systems abuse in criminal law and civil law matters (Reeves et al., 2025), family court mediation (Rivera et al., 2012) and other administrative processes such as child support and child protection (Douglas et al., 2020; Elizabeth, 2017; Neilson, 2004). This concept is thus an appropriate conceptual vehicle for examining how perpetrators marshal the welfare fraud tip-off line as a tactic of abuse.
The structural nature of gendered violence as well as theories of state VAW, where state institutions and systems play a direct role in the infliction of gendered violence, is an essential consideration when investigating welfare compliance systems abuse. Natalier (2018), for example, employs a structural lens to examine how perpetrators manipulate Australia's child support system as a form of economic abuse and how the system enables and facilitates this abuse. The system “reproduces gendered power in ways that have the potential to structurally facilitate economic abuse” (Natalier, 2018, p. 122). Other feminist scholars draw on theories of state violence to understand how state systems harm victim-survivors more directly. For example, as Mills (1999) argues, the operation and impacts of mandatory DV interventions in the US frequently inflict emotional abuse on victim-survivors, representing a form of gendered state violence. From this perspective, these state interventions “replicate the very violence [they] seek to eradicate” (Mills, 1999, p. 585).
In this study, we combine insights about the structural nature of state violence with the literature on systems abuse to investigate how Australia's welfare fraud tip-off regime allows, perpetuates, and commits systems abuse. Our analysis in this study suggests that perpetrators and the state may work hand in hand, as well as side by side.
Methods
This study draws together interviews conducted with welfare recipients and welfare lawyers, Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) (now Administrative Review Tribunal) decisions 4 and publicly available case studies to document how Australia's welfare fraud tip-off regime is a mechanism of violence towards women. Specifically, this study brings together semi-structured interviews conducted with two welfare recipients with personal experience of perpetrators misusing the tip-off line as well as interviews with five welfare lawyers drawn from five Community Legal Centers (CLC) across three Australian states. This is complemented by an analysis of 19 AAT decisions that reviewed compliance enforcement based on a tip-off 5 and which involved indicators of DV. These decisions were identified through a search of all AAT decisions in the AUSTLII legal database between 2000 and 2020. 6 Finally, we draw on four published CLC case notes (Economic Justice Australia, 2020), all of which involved tip-offs in the context of DV. The interviews with victim survivors were part of a broader study on experiences of the impact of the MOC rule on welfare recipients (Griffith University Ethics Reference Number LAW 02/06/HRC) and the remainder of the data collection was conducted under the research ethics guidance of the University of Wollongong (Ethics Reference Number 2020/081).
This multi-source research design was pursued due to the challenges presented by collecting empirical data on the tip-off line. Notably, the tip-off line assures reporters’ anonymity, which means that information about the content of tip-offs and their sources is not available (Services Australia, 2020). Second, government statistics about welfare tip-offs where there are also issues of DV were not available to us. This is compounded by the difficulties associated with researching VAW, including the chronic under-reporting of intimate partner violence. Together these factors underscore the need for this multi-source research design, with each source of data providing a particular insight or point of access to the opaque practices of the state.
Uncovering the gendered nature of state harms is not always straightforward and can require significant sleuth work. It seems that patriarchal state harms do not always leave overt clues linking state apparatuses to the harms. For example, the legislation that animates welfare law in Australia was re-written to use gender neutral language (Social Security Act 1991 (Cth)), despite the legislation's negative impacts still disproportionately being borne by women. With careful collection of multiple data sources, however, it becomes clear that their impacts are deeply gendered. For example, in her study of the moral regulation of Canadian single mothers receiving social welfare, Little (1994, 1998; Little & Morrison, 1999) used surviving case files from early welfare policy periods and contemporary interviews with women recipients, welfare workers and advocates. In Australia, Sleep (2016) used policy documents, AAT decisions and interviews with recipients to show the gendered harms caused by MOC rule surveillance and welfare compliance law. A similar, qualitative, multi-source research design was employed in this study to help build a picture of how the fraud tip-off line is implicated in VAW.
For the current study, the interview recordings were transcribed and anonymized, then the four data sources were compiled and analyzed for thematic categories (Hsieh & Sharon 2005, pp. 1279–1280). We used a conventional approach to cross-case qualitative data analysis, starting with two of the researchers immersing themselves in the data, reading and re-reading the AAT decisions, case studies and interviews (Hsieh & Sharon, 2005, pp. 1279–1280). We independently identified themes that represented the issues for women survivors of DV that were shared across the data. Once the themes were developed, we compared notes with each other, and with the patchwork of existing studies in this area, as a way of strengthening the analysis. We also checked the themes arising from the interviews against the information in the AAT decisions. Further, to check our themes against “real-world” practice, we discussed them with research team members at the peak body for welfare CLCs in Australia. 7 The material was then interpreted according to the thematic categories.
Feminists in law have critiqued the use of rigidly bounded categories based, for example, on the experiences of white women (Harris, 1993). More specifically, in relation to DV, it has been argued that there is need for understanding the problems that are particular and unique, as well as those that are common (Schneider, 1992, p. 527). We were aware that using cross-case analysis to focus on common themes in the data might result in missing important complexities. We therefore adopted a dialogical approach to the analysis, reading for both the common themes, and the particularities (Seuffert, 1995). We also decided to use two short narratives to provide a richer, more contextualized picture of some of the central issues. These are presented as Sharon's story and Beverly's story.
Ultimately, the aim of this multi-source research design was to build a rich, nuanced and detailed picture of the relationship between DV and the welfare fraud tip-off regime. It is important to recognize the limitations of the study. The interview samples are small, particularly considering the size of the welfare recipient population. The data are also qualitative in nature. This means that we are unable to make broad claims about, for example, the frequency with which the tip-off line is misappropriated by perpetrators. Nevertheless, taken together, these data present a rich and multi-layered picture of the ways that this welfare fraud control is implicated in DV, even if we are unable to generalize about the experiences of harm that arise in the data.
As Tolmie et al. (2024, p. 64) explain, the responses that victims-survivors are met with, including from an array of state systems, will depend on their “positionality at the intersection of different oppressions and the realities of their life circumstances.” In relation to the welfare state, it is clear that particular groups of marginalized women, notably First Nations women and other women of color and sole mothers (and especially sole mothers of color), are already more likely to be treated as suspect or otherwise mistreated and maligned by welfare agencies and systems (see, e.g., Chunn et al., 2006; Gilliom, 2001; Gustafson, 2011). It follows that these groups of women may be more at risk of systems abuse. This is an important avenue for further research, but will be challenged by the difficulties in finding evidence linking these harms to state administrative mechanisms.
Findings and Discussion
Across the data sources, we identified 25 instances involving the use of Australia's welfare fraud tip-off line in the context of DV. 8 While not a statistically representative sample, each of these instances represents evidence that at that time, for that DV survivor, the tip-off line had been used. The point, then, becomes how the tip-line was used in these instances, what this means for victim survivors and what it tells us about gendered welfare state compliance mechanisms.
It is also important to note that, despite not intentionally limiting the scope of the study to women, almost all these instances involved a woman (Figure 1). This reveals that the tip-off line in Australia, a state mechanism, disproportionately targets and impacts women. This is not surprising and reflects the discussion of feminist welfare researchers (Hays, 2004; Kingfisher, 2013; Little et al., 1999; Swan et al., 2008; Tomlinson, 2001, Ch. 8).
Number of Men and Women Subjected to Tip-Offs in the Context of Domestic and/or Family Violence.
In our analysis, we focus on two overlapping themes that represent the primary ways the tip-off regime intersected with DV. These are:
The use, or threat to use, the tip-off line by perpetrators to gain control over women; we characterize this as systems abuse; and Where perpetrators (or another person) used the tip-off regime to set in train a series of administrative and/or criminal interventions into the life of the victim/survivor that render them more vulnerable to violence, effectively continuing the abuse.
These themes are considered in turn. We found that perpetrators were able to use the tip-off line as a form of control and a tool of abuse, as well as to trigger the administrative apparatus that supports the tip-off line as a form of state violence.
The Use, Or the Threat of Use, Of the Tip-Off Line by Perpetrators to Gain Control Over Women
The first theme identified was the use of the tip-off line by perpetrators as a tool of coercion and control, either as a threat to gain control or as a means of exercising it, representing a form of systems abuse. As mentioned, Services Australia policy and legislation provide that the identity of the source of the tip-off is kept confidential. 9 It was therefore difficult to ascertain whether the alleged perpetrator of DV was the source of the tip-off. However, occasionally, the identity of the tipper was revealed in AAT decisions, women reported that their perpetrators threatened to use the tip-off line, or they had other information that identified their perpetrators as the tippers. Practitioners were also aware of various means of identification, including mistakes by Services Australia in identifying the tipper. This information allowed the identification of perpetrators’ use of the tip-off line as a threat and/or means of control.
Case Narrative: Sharon's 10 Story
Sharon's story provides a vivid account of the use of the tip-off line as a threat and a means of control, as well as a tool for her abuser to trigger state violence. She reported that her abusive ex-husband, who refused to support her and their child financially, threatened to call the tip-off line after she left him in order to coerce her into returning. He followed through with the threat. When we spoke to Sharon, she was expecting a prison sentence for welfare fraud. The case illustrates common tactics of financial abuse including controlling family money, and using the children to control their mothers, as well as the mental toll of drawn-out legal procedures on survivors. It also highlights the effects of a tip-off and investigation in limiting future employment opportunities. The result is an increase in Sharon's insecurity about her and her child's future, rendering her more vulnerable to the perpetrator and in general.
Sharon described her relationship with her ex-husband as “very volatile and abusive.” She explained that her husband started gambling when she was pregnant with their child. After the child's birth, he refused to support them financially and gambled: every bit of money he had—every bit of money he earnt he would gamble or he would steal off clients. He would go and lay peoples’ house with the carpet and he would, um, get paid—like, cash on delivery and he would go and gamble it on the horses. While Sharon had a genuine need for financial support, the fact that the welfare system assumes that partners share finances meant that her application for payments was considered fraudulent under the MOC rule.
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Sharon eventually left her abuser five years before the interview “with four candy stripe bags, and I left [our child] with him for three months until I could get [her child] back off him”. Sharon described how the perpetrator used the tip-off line as a threat to coerce her to return to the marriage: Because it was like if you don’t come back to me after 14 years of marriage, if you do not come back to me I’m going to dob you into Centrelink [Welfare]. And I said, “Oh, yeah, okay, do it then.” But he did. …because I left him. He–he dobbed–he went to Centrelink and he dobbed me into Centrelink. He also convinced other people to write letters and things like that to Centrelink.
Three years after receiving the letter Sharon was still waiting for the outcome of her case. She reported that she was “living the sentence now here” every day while she waited. She said she had attended at least eight court hearings over the past year; each time she expected to be taken to prison: They, like, constantly are going, going, going, to Court, and it’s not like once or twice, it's ongoing. So we’re up to, what, if we go over Christmas, we’ll be up to a year in February, of Courts—of Court hearings … the psychological effects this has had on me and my son is just incredible, and I don't deserve to go to jail. I honestly don’t … It's hard on your mind.
Sharon was also concerned about the possibility of being excluded from her work in the disability sector due to having a criminal record: I've reapplied for all my [employment] suitability cards and everything now, because,…you know how you–if you go to jail you've got to go through a big process …. you know, this could come back at me, you know, like, “Oh, she's not [to be] trusted with money”, … even though I've never done anything wrong, … I don't know if I'll have a job. I don't know if I'll have anywhere to live. … My son–where is my son going to go? So all this stuff lives with me day to day, what they've put me through.
The male breadwinner assumption is compounded by the female primary caregiver assumption, and a gendered workforce in which women earn less than men, as well as a system in which men are not actually required to pay child support (Natalier, 2018). Combined, these gendered structures mean that women are likely to have less access to money, and to be dependent on men. These systems mean that a perpetrator can withhold financial support and when a woman applies for social security payments in “desperation,” hold the threat of “dobbing her in” over her as a tactic of control. This threat is backed by the threats of prosecution and conviction for fraud and separation from children, as well as the mental toll of the drawn-out Court proceedings. The charging and conviction may then impinge on her ability to secure employment, rendering her vulnerable in the long term. The perpetrator has, literally at his fingertips through a phone call, the whole welfare enforcement apparatus as a tactic of power and control. The system therefore becomes an integral part of his abuse, suggesting both how systems abuse can work through the welfare administrative mechanisms and how the state organizes these systems in gendered ways that give power to men. In Sharon's case, this abuse, a type of systems abuse, operated while the perpetrator was not held accountable for the abuse, further skewing the power towards the perpetrator and leaving him unconstrained in his behavior.
Legal practitioners who work in welfare rights organizations also commented on perpetrators’ use of the tip-off line to threaten and control: I've seen prosecution briefs [and] I think once or twice I've accidentally seen who tipped off and it's been the perpetrator … They'll threaten that “unless you comply with my wishes I will tip-off”. So they'll threaten their ex that “I can go back five years, you know, you were living with me, remember, when you're living with me for two years and then we separated then you came back and lived with me again. Well I can punch you with debts …
Another tactic of abuse is threatening and coercing women into claiming welfare payments to which they are not entitled, and then using threats of reporting them to maintain control. Perpetrators may use these threats for a range of ends: [The] perpetrator uses that fact to threaten them and say well you've committed fraud “I'm going to tell Centerlink unless you do x y and z”. Now that may be around care of the child, or staying in the relationship, or just as a revenge, also after the separation just a threat, a tactic used to distress the victim/survivor. In that scenario, it kind of it becomes a tool of coercion and control. It's always the woman who's getting the parenting payment or the family tax benefit. There's no liability of the partner if Centrelink decides that they’re a MOC. The other person has no liability whatsoever! They could be a Centrelink client as well receiving a different payment, but the survivor is settled with the liability!.
Further, the practitioner interviewees emphasized that welfare compliance rules are very complicated. Even lawyers who have long practiced in the area may not be able to state with certainty how the rules will be applied in a particular situation, or whether a tip-off will result in an investigation. It is therefore highly unlikely that recipients of benefits will know for sure whether they are compliant or not in many situations. The result may be that coercion by perpetrators works even when the threat is not credible or substantiated, or that women who resist the coercion are likely to be under significant mental stress. As one practitioner stated: I'm sure there's a large proportion [of tip-offs] that Centrelink never follow up … but that doesn't necessarily mean it hasn't had an impact on the person unless they're confident in their position. Even if you're practicing as a lawyer for a couple of years, I'm not sure you could be confident on the position of your client. You might over time, but I don't see how they're [the client, is] supposed to be confident in their position, it's impossible. Since women are unlikely to be able to know for sure that they're compliant, [a threat] always has the potential, or almost always will have the potential, to be a threat that could work.
Further, there is also the possibility that once Centrelink gets a tip-off they start fishing, for example through state motor vehicle registration and bank records, for joint assets upon which to base a reassessment of eligibility for payments (Tranter et al., 2008, pp. 279–230). Our research also highlights how difficult it is to find out the proportion of tip-offs that are investigated, so the likelihood of investigation will be unknown by the victim/survivor. The combination of the availability of the tip-off line, its anonymity so that women usually cannot know for sure that it was their abuser who reported them, and the complex indeterminacy of welfare rules places a state apparatus in the hands of perpetrators as a tool of abuse. For many women, the risk associated with losing their welfare payments, having large debts raised against them, or facing adverse decisions in family law proceedings, are high—homelessness, deportation, having children taken by the state or ordered to have contact with perpetrators—and this gives the perpetrators a lot of power over them.
The Administrative Reviews Resulting From Use of the Tip-Off Line Render the Victim/Survivors of DV More Vulnerable to Abuse
Our study also showed that tip-off lines used by anyone can render the victim/survivor more vulnerable to harm. When the tip-off line is used by those other than the perpetrator it can trigger, intensify and perpetuate the trauma of abuse by setting off a chain reaction of welfare administrative mechanisms. In all of the CLC case notes that were included in this study, a Centrelink debt was raised against the victim/survivor, and two out of four involved the cancellation of a payment. This may result in the victim/survivor becoming more financially dependent on the perpetrator, entrapping them in a violent relationship at the very time they are attempting to leave. For example, Irene was running from the perpetrator in fear for her safety, and she did not appeal the Centrelink debt because she was in crisis and more concerned about “finding a safe place to live” (Economic Justice Australia, 2020). Beverly's story elaborates these points.
Case Narrative: Beverly's Story
Beverly, who participated in a semi-structured interview, lived in a small rural town and suffered a history of abuse resulting in the perpetrator being charged with assault in a very public incident that was reported in the local press. Beverly was repeatedly “dobbed in” over a period of four years by neighbors and others. She moved to another town to try to avoid the repeated dob-ins. Her children were bullied at school for her alleged welfare compliance breaches, and she reported consistently being threatened with a prison sentence by the welfare officers who contacted her over the phone.
Beverly's history of abuse compounded the vulnerability she felt as a result of the tip-offs: I feel like I'm just being watched all the time, and you just never, ever lose that feeling. You just always–I don't know if you're kind of paranoid or–or whatever, but, because my relationship ended badly. That was in December last year. Like, I had to have my ex-partner charged with assault and whatever …. And, you know, people still, even though it's been in the paper and different things like that, you know, people still ring up and say “Oh, she's got back together with him.”, and, you know, they [welfare] just jump.
This experience is not unique to Beverly, there is a pervasive feeling among clients and practitioners that “the services that are presented as being there to help will also harm you”, as one practitioner put it. Practitioners, for example, spoke about invasive, stressful and triggering welfare compliance practices following a tip-off, including “dawn raids” by the Australian Federal Police when “a dozen people would turn up at someone's house at six in the morning” looking for evidence of welfare fraud. In addition, in a patriarchal double standard, victim/survivors’ full names, addresses and workplaces are routinely published in AAT decisions, placing them at increased risk of harm by the perpetrator, while the identity of individuals who make tip-offs are protected (see also Sleep et al., 2020).
The AAT 2006/956 decision also illustrates how debt recovery proceedings triggered by tip-offs can result in interference with friendships, leading to further isolation. Here, Andrew, a friend of the victim/survivor (Sarah) bought a portion of her property and lived in her garage. The tip-off, which Sarah alleged was made by her neighbors, very good friends of the perpetrator, alleged that they were in a relationship (and therefore that Sarah was a MOC). Andrew filed a statutory declaration stating that he had sent numerous letters clarifying that they were not in a relationship, stated at the Tribunal hearing that he had tried to tell Centrelink that he was gay but “They weren’t interested,” added that he had been involved with numerous men over the period in question and finished by saying that he resented the intrusion into his private life resulting from the proceedings. The AAT found that Andrew was gay and the relationship was in fact a friendship, after two and a half years of a complicated process of accusations and claims that Sarah owed over $12,000 in debt.
Side by Side and Hand in Hand: The Tip-Off Line, DV Systems Abuse and Gendered State Violence
This study has documented ways that the tip-off line is complicit in, perpetuates, and causes harm to DV survivors through its administrative processes. This has been characterized as a form of systems abuse through two main themes. The first detailed how perpetrators can, and have, weaponized the tip-off line to gain power and control over women, working hand in hand with the state through anonymity, threat, and action. The second focused on how, even when others made the tip-off, in the context of DV, the tip-off lines still caused harm to women, animating welfare compliance apparatuses. The state is revealed as a source of harm to women itself, working side by side with perpetrators.
As Reeves et al. (2025, p. 767) contend, the legal system is a gendered system, “designed to serve the interests of white, middle-class men and to oppress those sitting outside those parameters.” Sharon's perceived impending incarceration was an amplification of the power and control her abusive husband sought over her and her son, enabled by a system that did not recognize its own patriarchal bias by assuming her and her son would be sufficiently supported by marriage. Beverly was not “dobbed in” by her abusive ex-husband, but the way the welfare apparatus responded to reports that she had returned to the relationship caused further harm to her and her children. Within these explorations of systems abuse, it is clear that welfare compliance mechanisms are not merely the backdrop for the perpetrator's abuse; these systems, and the officials that they employ, can enable, authorize and perpetuate this violence, making the state a perpetrator of gendered violence. Many survivors themselves identify officials, including the perpetrator's lawyers, the police and judges, as well as the state system, as complicit in, or facilitating, the abuse rather than preventing it (Douglas, 2018, p. 95; Miller & Smolter, 2011; Wangmann, 2020, p. 145).
Our findings support arguments for an understanding of DV “as a form of social and systemic entrapment” (Tolmie et al., 2024, p. 54). This approach captures the “restrictions placed on a victim-survivors’ autonomy and agency by their partner's abusive and controlling behaviors and by broader systemic patterns of harm, which frequently continue even after a victim-survivor leaves their abusive partner” (Tolmie et al., 2024, p. 55. Emphasis in original). Our study has provided an examination of this concept of “entrapment,” not only of the abuse strategies employed by perpetrators, but also of the social context that the victim-survivor and perpetrator inhabit, including how the informal and institutional responses further men's violence.
The way the tip-off line works with DV perpetrators, hand in hand and side by side, mirrors Rose's (2022) characterization of DV as state crime, which is justified due to the “uncomfortable reality [that] DV is so prevalent because it has been and continues to be created, legitimated, perpetuated, and even endorsed by the very same state structures, institutions, and systems that purport to prevent and address it” (see also Caulfield et al., 1993). According to Rose's (2022) typology of gendered state crime, “agentic” state crime captures a variety of state harms to victims-survivors, including where state institutions “directly facilitate DV recidivism by creating new opportunities for offending” (Rose, 2022, pp. 139–140). The tip-off line provides a novel opportunity for control by perpetrators. For Beverly, the surveillance and control she was feeling through the administrative response to her being tipped off by multiple members of her small town community mirrors the power and control at the essence of the DV she and her children were trying to recover from. Rose (2022, p. 160) refers to this as the worst form of “agentic” state violence, where policy solutions actually replicate the experience of violence to, effectively, “constitute original experiences” of violence and should instead be understood as state violence. Our findings highlight the state nature of systemic abuse and the contribution and roles of state systems to enabling, perpetuating and doing DV.
Conclusion
This article examines the intersection of DV and welfare compliance mechanisms, with a focus on Australia's welfare fraud tip-off regime to argue that Australia's welfare system, which claims to prioritize supporting women affected by DV, may instead be complicit in, intensify, and perpetrate VAW through its administrative compliance procedures as a form of state systems abuse. Through the use of interviews with victim/survivors and welfare rights practitioners, case studies and analyses of AAT decisions, we have documented two main ways that tip-off lines have been a vector for violence towards women. On the one hand, this anti-fraud tool has been weaponized by men to exert power and control over women, representing a form of welfare state systems abuse. On the other hand, when perpetrators (or indeed anyone) carry through with threats and report victims-survivors to the welfare fraud tip-off line, this can set in train a series of administrative and even criminal interventions in the lives of victims/survivors that perpetuate the abuse and entrench women's vulnerability to further abuse. When this occurs, the state is directly implicated in VAW. Instead of offering support and safety to victims/survivors of DV, in these instances, the Australian welfare state is, in fact, a source of harm and violence. While it is impossible to make claims about how often perpetrators commandeer Australia's tip-off line, this paper has demonstrated that the state works hand in hand and side by side with DV perpetrators, weaponizing social security compliance mechanisms along gendered fault lines to harm women. This contrasts with Services Australia's “strategic commitment” to provide “simple and safe” processes and systems for victims of domestic and family violence as part of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 (DSS, 2022).
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the contribution and support of Economic Justice Australia, Australia's peak body for community legal centers that support welfare recipients.
Funding
The authors received funding from the University of Woolongong Community Engagement Grant Scheme for the research that contributed to this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.