The Tactical Payment Scheme: Configurations of Life and Death in the Context of War

Abstract

In 2009, the Australian Parliament passed legislation introducing the ‘Tactical Payment Scheme’. In its most serious application, this Scheme authorises Australian soldiers to provide cash payments to the families of those who are killed or injured as a result of Australian military operations overseas. The introduction of this Scheme, therefore, raises many questions about the significance and implications of civilian injury in wartime. This article analyses parliamentary and print media reactions to the Scheme, in order to document and critique how such difficult questions were socially and politically negotiated. It finds that the Scheme was generally framed as a positive initiative — an enlightened recognition of non-Western values and an effective tactic in the broader ‘War on Terror’. This article, however, draws attention to the culturally discriminatory images and identities that underpin these rationales for the Scheme, which serve to distance the Australian Government and people from both the nature of the Scheme and the suffering that it seeks to address.