Urban Rampage is a retailer operating in remote Australia, ASIC is Australia’s financial regulator and Centrepay is a mechanism whereby a portion of one’s social security payment can be earmarked at source and paid to a third party to cover regular expenditures.

Urban Rampage configured Centrepay to allow its customers to purchase allowed basic household goods on an interest-free credit basis. This credit facility was approved by Services Australia in 2016 but then cancelled in 2024 after highly publicised complaints from financial counsellors, parliamentarians and some Indigenous users. On 3 November 2025 Centrepay reforms removed ‘basic household items’ as an eligible service reason so that Centrepay could no longer be used to purchase ‘basic household goods’.

In July 2024 I was commissioned as an expert in the proposed appeal by Urban Rampage against ASIC in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (renamed the Administrative Review Tribunal from 14 October 2024). I failed to see a problem with the credit facility being offered. Carol Bacchi’s approach for analysing policy problems, ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ (the WPR approach) framed much of my thinking and expert report. The appeal was never heard, neither Urban Rampage’s legal team nor I had our day in court.

In this seminar I seek to demonstrate the practical usefulness of Bacchi’s theoretical approach and then critique the elimination of Centrepay as a credit facility to purchase basic household goods in remote Indigenous Australia; and to consider the intended and unintended consequences of what I term ‘paternalistic regulation’. The seminar gives seminar participants an unusual opportunity to deliver a mock cross-examination of my position in legal proceedings that never eventuated. 

About the speaker

Jon Altman is an emeritus professor of the ANU affiliated with the School of Regulation and Global Governance since 2015. His academic background is in economics and anthropology and his research over decades now has focused on Indigenous economic and public policy issues mainly in remote and very remote Australia.

This seminar presentation is a dual-delivery event. Registration is not required for in-person attendance as neither the ANU nor ACT Health conduct contact tracing.

Light lunch will be provided. 

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: JCA