The Australian-English phrase sit-down money is used by Aborigines to depreciatively designate unemployment or welfare benefits.

The following explanations are from Self-Determination key to Aboriginal development, by Russell Rollason, Information Officer, Australian Council of Churches, published in Woroni * (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia) of Wednesday 22^nd July 1981:

Contrary to the widely held white view, Aborigines in outback Australia despise unemployment benefits, calling it ‘sit-down money’. They would prefer to maintain their dignity and work, but there are no jobs.

* Woroni is the student newspaper of the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra.

In the phrase sit-down money, the adjective sit-down means: performed or obtained while sitting down, with the implication that no or few efforts are required for performing or obtaining what the noun following this adjective designates—as in the phrase sit-down job, which occurred as follows in A Place on the Corner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), by the U.S. sociologist Elijah Anderson (born 1943):

People working in “sit-down” or white-collar jobs are viewed as “having it made.” Group members regard them as “not working hard,” especially in comparison with the “hardworking men” they know who work in the steel mills, on construction, and in other laboring occupations. Yet though sit-down jobs are believed to be easy, they are thought to be high-paying and are esteemed.

—Cf. also the phrase rocking-chair job, which denotes a sinecure, i.e., an office or position providing an income or other advantage but requiring little or no work.

The earliest occurrences of the Australian-English phrase sit-down money that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:

1-: From The Canberra Times (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia) of Wednesday 17^th March 1976:

Aborigines ‘driven from school’

Senator Kilgariff (NCP, NT) blamed government grants yesterday for driving Aboriginal children away from schools.
He said that in recent years he had seen a falloff in school attendances by Aboriginal children and said this was because communities were no longer “happy”.
A few years ago, he said, adults in communities were working and children were attending school. Now, because of government living allowances—what the Aborigines called “sit-down money”—the adults were drinking instead of working and children were no longer going to school.

2-: From The Canberra Times (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia) of Saturday 1^st May 1976:

‘Sit-down money’

The Aboriginal people receiving unemployment payments call these handouts, “sit-down money”.
Senator Kilgariff (NCP, NT), speaking during Question Time, said many Aborigines believed the Government made this payment because it did not wish these people to work.
He asked if the Government had considered removing this type of payment and instead making payments to allow employment on Aboriginal community projects for the benefit of the community.
[…]
Perhaps if the community projects proposal is to be good enough for the Aborigines, it could be equally relevant for the so-called “dole bludgers”.

3-: From The Canberra Times (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia) of Thursday 12^th August 1976:

Benefit pool sought

Darwin, Wednesday. Aborigines on Bathurst Island, off the Northern Territory, say they want unemployment benefits due to them to be pooled and paid by the Government directly to the local council for work projects.
At a meting of the Local Government Association of the Northern Territory in Darwin yesterday, the president of the Bathurst Island Council, Mr Walter Kerinaiua, said benefits of about $3,000 to $4,000 a week had been refused by the Bathurst Island Aborigines because many had seen it merely as “sit-down money”.

The phrase sit-down money had been used earlier in American English to depreciatively designate a welfare allowance paid to unemployed military veterans returning to civilian life after the Second World War.

The earliest occurrence of this use of the phrase sit-down money that I have found is from a United-Press article published in many U.S. newspapers on Friday 17^th June 1949—for example in The Daily Notes (Canonsburg, Pennsylvania):

Washington, June 17—(U.P.)—Chairman John E. Rankin said today his House Veterans Committee probably will take up soon of a multi-billion-dollar bonus bill for veterans of World War II.
The Mississippi Democrat said the “adjusted compensation” plan would solve many veteran problems and should quiet demands for an extension of unemployment provisions of the GI Bill of Rights. The provisions expire for most veterans on July 25.
Rankin indicated—but did not state flatly—that his committee will not consider bills to keep alive the “readjustment allowance” under which ex-GI’s without jobs can draw $20 a week for up to 52 weeks.
“There is a lot of opposition to any continuation of this sit-down money,” he told a reporter.
“Some people think we ought to be thinking about doing something for that big majority of veterans who settled down to work when they got out of service and never have drawn a nickel in benefits of any kind.”