Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, I would like to begin by thanking you for making your time available this morning to answer our questions. I very much appreciate the opportunity to do that. Minister, my question today relates to the cashless debit card. To put some context around this question: the cashless debit card legislation was passed in 2015 with bipartisan support, so I acknowledge that support from the opposition, thank them for that support and hope that it is ongoing. Minister, as you know, after that legislation was passed, you instituted two trials, one in Ceduna and one in the East Kimberley.

My personal interest in this came from a series of suicides amongst young people in the town of Leonora, in my electorate, and a plea for help from that particular community. To your great credit, you responded almost immediately to my request for you to visit, meet with the community and perhaps discuss the possibility of a cashless debit card trial in that community. That meeting took place in Leonora in late 2015, and the community was very, very supportive of that process. There were some hiccups along the way in implementing that particular trial, and then we had an election, and you quite rightly pointed out that we were out of sync with the other trial sites and that perhaps we should wait and see how things develop.

I guess the important point to make here, Minister, is that you have always maintained that there will be no trial imposed on a community that does not want and welcome a trial site. To update you, Minister, on where we are at: the regional councils on the Goldfields of Western Australia, in my electorate of O'Connor, requested some more information on a cashless debit card trial, and once again you responded very quickly to that call, visited Kalgoorlie a month or so ago and met with those stakeholders. I am very pleased to report that the consultation and the extra information that those communities requested have been rolled out. I have certainly been meeting with stakeholders as often as I possibly can to provide any further information that they require.

Minister, the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder has organised a trip for local community leaders to go to Ceduna, meet with the stakeholders in Ceduna and get an update firsthand on how the trial site is working in their community. I also can report that people from the shires of Menzies and Coolgardie and the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder will be coming here to Canberra next week as part of Local Government Week, but they are also very interested in meeting with you and giving you an update on how the consultations are going in their communities.

So, Minister, my question is: can you update the Chamber on the progress of the cashless debit card trial at the two existing sites, and can you comment and give any further information on any additional sites?

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