If this trial does show to make some positive changes to the participants' lives and prospects, then I'm all for widening the trial pool and seeing how it goes long term as well as short term.
I personally don't think it will make much of a positive impact. If anything, it'll drive already mentally unstable and often paranoid people to turn away from legitimate forms of financial help and start turning more to crime. These people need access to affordable mental health services that aren't overcrowded, they need access to affordable skills training, and our government needs to pull it's finger out and start working on increasing employment so the people caught up in a cycle of poverty can start building themselves up and feeling some kind of self-worth and accomplishment.
People I personally know who are addicted to hard substances are all depressed or have some form of mental illness, and they've lost hope in ever improving their situation. They turn to drugs out of either a need to escape or boredom. They can't find a job despite being hounded by Centrelink's job agencies, often having to apply for jobs 2 or 3 hours away to meet their job seeking requirements. Studying at TAFE is becoming more expensive and often inaccessible (funding cuts boiiiii), and often they have other people in a similar frame of mind surrounding them and influencing them. We need to focus more of giving them more accessible options to better themselves, rather than taking away what little legal income they do have.
The people this potential new policy will affect most often come from families where drug abuse, unemployment and little education is the norm, so it's become a generational cycle that's difficult to break out of. Why are we never surprised when the parents of a pregnant 14 year old turn out to be in their early 30s themselves? Or when the parents of a kid who gets arrested for a violent crime turn out to be either in prison or have been released from prison for similar crimes? They need education. They need hope that with hard work and patience will eventually lead them to a better life, something many of them haven't felt due to their circumstances.
I really hope we find something that helps people in poverty and suffering from drug addiction. Bad choices are made, and some are undoubtedly proud of their lifestyle, there's no way I'm denying that. We need to be addressing the issues causing people to become "dole bludgers" in the first place.
Just my two cents on the issue.