People in remote Aboriginal communities need incentives not punishments to motivate them to get their children to school, a senate committee has been told.
The secretary of the Uniting Church in Australia's northern synod, Peter Jones, told a committee looking at the federal government's stronger futures legislation that the proposed laws needed changes.
The laws build on the intervention strategy introduced by the Howard government and include things such as alcohol restrictions and quarantining welfare payments to parents whose children do not attend school enough.
"Punishing the most disadvantaged people in the land for not participating in a system that has not delivered the outcomes they desire is heaping punishment on punishment," Mr Jones said.
"Measures of this type (cutting income support) are unjust and a waste of time and effort," he said.
The Uniting Church helps in the running of two schools in the Northern Territory and has members in many of the disadvantaged Aboriginal communities affected by the government's intervention.
Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scullion, who was on the committee, questioned Mr Jones's comments.
Mr Schullion said at one school the committee had looked at only 50 per cent of primary-aged kids attended school.
"The positive support mechanisms are all terrific ... but also at what level do you think that we have to move to some other measure that is punitive?" he said.
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