The Australian income support system was originally designed to provide a substitute for income from paid work, rather than a complement to such income. In recent decades, however, there have been significant changes in the Australian labour market and in the distribution of employment. Although there is now a higher proportion of people of working age in employment than at the start of the 1980s, fewer people are employed full time and more jobs are casual and/or low paid. In this article the authors discuss how the income support system has adapted to these changes.