Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

You're not listening to me, comrade, are you?

This bill disregards our view and lived experiences and fundamentally undermines the collaborative spirit of the next phase of Closing the Gap. It symbolises why so many policies have failed our people and why things aren't getting better.

I was conscious of the Intervention. I also have here a statement from the community of Milingimbi, who were very strong in expressing their collective disapproval and disdain at the prospect of having the cashless debit card imposed upon them and, in their words, 'taking away their rights'. It should be a matter of choice, not something which is imposed—the way that this bill is wanting impose it on the people of the Northern Territory.

The member for Grey can talk about the people of Ceduna. But don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. I've been in this place for over 30 years. Forty-two per cent of my electors are Aboriginal people. I am their voice in this parliament, and I know what they tell me. They are disgusted by the way they are being treated by this government—the lack of consultation, the lack of any right to be properly heard.

As the member for Barton has said, if we had some evidence that this was all working, we might have a different view. The fact is that it's not working. Until we've seen this University of Adelaide mystery report, we don't know what it says. But what we do know is that there's been no good-quality or sufficient measurement of the effectiveness of the cashless debit card, either before it started or at its various trials.

A report in 2011 by the Equality Rights Alliance cast doubt on the government's claim of broad support for income management among Aboriginal women. It collated the views of more than 180 Aboriginal women affected by income management. The findings were as follows. Habits didn't change—85 per cent of the women surveyed said they had not changed what they bought because of the BasicsCard. We were talking about the BasicsCard then, which we still have in the Northern Territory now. There were no savings—75 per cent of the women said it made no difference to their spending, 22 per cent of the women saved money with the card and two per cent said it cost them more to use it. Seventy four per cent said the card wasn't helpful and 85 per cent said income management 'showed no respect'—and that is what they still say. It was not safer—70 per cent of the women said they didn't feel safer as a result of the introduction of the card. In 2012, an independent evaluation of income management in the Northern Territory found no clear evidence of the value of the program, and there have been other reports subsequently.

Last week at the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry we heard from a number of academics providing advice to the committee on their views and the studies they have done. Professor Tony Dreise said that the evidence does not stack up and does not show that the cashless debit card has had a positive effect. A very large amount of evidence shows that 13 years of new income management in the Northern Territory has had almost no positive impact. It's worth contemplating the views of these people who know a damn sight more about it than most people in this chamber. Dr Francis Markham said:

The cashless debit card and related types of programs are the sorts of programs that you try and introduce when you're not willing to change those structural features of remote economies.

There's a lot more that needs to be done in remote Australia. There's a lot more that needs to be done in my electorate of Lingiari to address disadvantage and expend the resources of this government to make people better off. I'd rather see the moneys that have been appropriated for this spent on housing, for example, on health services or roads and other infrastructure. It's very clear that there's no appetite on behalf of the government benches to actually sit and listen to the people I'm referring to, because, if they did sit and listen to the people I'm referring to, they would not be introducing this legislation today and making it apply uniformly across the Northern Territory as they want to do. Nevertheless, they go ahead. They say, 'Oh, yes, we sit and we listen and we talk to Aboriginal people.' It's very, very clear that they have no intention of doing that at all.

When we contemplate this, we need to see it as a part of a pattern where over many years now—certainly since 2007—the coalition has made it their business to make life harder for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory, because that's what has happened. They haven't listened. The outcomes which they would have hoped to achieve have not been achieved. School attendance has fallen. Health outcomes have got worse in many cases. Housing has got worse. And, of course, when we start to talk to people about what we really need to address disadvantage, when we start talking about employment services, they've got no appetite for listening. If they started to look at a comprehensive plan to bring people together and alleviate their poverty and disadvantage, they would do so in a holistic way, but they are not doing that. They pin their hopes on compulsorily quarantining people's income.

As the member for Barton said, we're more than happy to support these proposals when people voluntarily submit to them. We are not happy to support and we will not support the compulsory and involuntary imposition of these schemes on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I certainly won't support it in my electorate. I never have and never will. When I go back to the Northern Territory and talk to the communities that I work for and have the responsibility of representing in this chamber—proudly—I am confident that I represent their views here accurately. I'm confident that, when I stand up here and say that people do not want to have this involuntarily imposed upon them, that is what they want. It is very clear that we've got a long way to go to convince this government about how to deal sensibly and properly with Aboriginal people, certainly in my electorate. I know that, in terms of the reviews which have been done, there's no evidence for the extension of this card permanently across the four sites. There are no evaluations that we've seen. Show us the evaluations. The minister says she's got this University of Adelaide report, and she had not even read it prior to introducing this legislation. Why would that be? Surely we should be brought into the confidence of the government who are so confident about what they're saying. They should show us the report. Have it peer reviewed. Let us see what it says. Let's understand what their arguments are based on. The fact is that there is no validity—or very little—to the arguments that they're putting. I absolutely respect the members opposite who talk about their communities and how people voluntarily submit to the card. But, unless they voluntarily submit to it, it shouldn't be imposed upon them. (Time expired)

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