Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly—yet, as the member for Bruce says. But, on this side of the chamber—and so refreshingly from Tasmania—the member for Bass joins us in seeing what is happening in the north and questioning its validity and, most importantly, questioning the stigmatising aspects it has on the populations that it is put upon.

My story goes like this. As a single mother, paying a mortgage, working part-time, with three kids, teaching 0.6 and doing my load across four days—because I really wanted to teach year 12; I didn't want to work three, because that would have precluded me—I was a recipient of welfare. I distinctly remember that I was going to paint the inside of my house. A kindly neighbour who is a great friend said to me: 'I'll help you do that, Jo. I'll help you paint the house.' And he relayed to me that, in another conversation, another friend of a friend had said to him: 'Why are you helping Joanne paint the house? It's not her house. She's a single mum.' And when I spoke to that person and pushed him, he said, 'I think it's a bit rich that you're getting taxpayer dollars and you're paying a mortgage.'

Take it in, folks. The things we say in this place and the rhetoric we use has impacts in the suburbs and in our communities in terms of the assumptions and the things that we suggest about people. And this legislation is one of the worst examples of that that I have seen, not just in my seven years in this parliament but in my time on this planet. It makes me ashamed to be Australian that we're even discussing this—that we are prepared to have a discriminatory piece of legislation that discriminates in geography and discriminates in race. And there is no way around this. The communities where this is targeted know that. The rest of Australia knows it. You only need to talk to a pensioner who hears about the government's working group to understand that they know what it means, because they say to me, 'So we're going to be discriminated against, too.' They know who's being discriminated against, and they know what it means. So I stand here today thrilled that the member for Bass has the courage through her convictions and her life experience to stand up for her community and, in doing so, to stand up for every community across this nation to say that supporting someone and helping someone is not about taking their choices away.

We've all read the reports, we've all read the reviews and we've all read the assessment from the University of Adelaide. We know that this system is completely and utterly flawed. We know that it's rolled out with one hand to control someone's spending under the guise of saying, 'You shouldn't be spending money on alcohol, you shouldn't be spending money on cigarettes and you shouldn't be spending money on illicit drugs.'

An honourable member: Hear, hear!

There are laws to stop people spending money on illicit drugs, and the member just said 'Hear, hear!' Sorry, I drink, and so do most Australians. It's not illegal in this country. I'm sorry; I come from a community with lots of low-socioeconomic people who drink and smoke, perhaps too much. We in this place are not in a position to hold ourselves above the people we represent, and that's exactly what this piece of legislation does. It says, 'We are better than you.' It says: 'It's legal to drink alcohol and it's legal to smoke cigarettes, but not if you live in certain parts of the country and not if you're of a certain ethnicity. Then it's the wrong thing for you to do.'

I also want to say that what the member for Bass had to say was so refreshing, because I've been here for seven years in which I've listened to those opposite on speak on bills related to the cashless debit card on more than one occasion and have left this chamber disgusted. An absolute fundamental understanding of poverty and what it's like to live in chaos is lacking over there. We've got teachers all over this country. We are trained in this. It's a really simple thing. We go into classrooms to work with kids who may have come from a chaotic home that morning, and, right now, with the recession, some of those homes that have been stable will be, at this point in time, chaotic. People will put bills on top of the fridge hoping they'll fall down the back so they don't have to think about paying them and wonder about how they're going to pay to get the hole in the roof fixed. Sound familiar? Where does this come from? Where's the worst case for housing in this country? That'd be in remote communities. Where do we know that these things are happening intensely? In remote communities.

If you do not understand this lived experience of living in poverty, if you do not understand what it's like to not know where next week's income is going to come from and if you think that putting something in place to control someone's spending is going to fix that then you're mad. This is a government that cut funding for financial advice from people in my community. They could go and get a financial adviser to assist them to do their budget across the next six months so that they could get some relief from the stress of poverty and get their heads above water so that every night they weren't feeling so crushed, every night they weren't feeling so desperate and every night they weren't wondering how on earth their life was ever going to change. Putting the cashless debit card into these communities doesn't change that feeling; it entrenches that feeling. It entrenches a feeling of worthlessness.

This card does not support an addict getting off a drug. All of the studies have told you this, but you persist, and you leave me absolutely distraught. As my friend and as my other colleagues have pointed out, there are lots of ways that we can help and support people, but, when someone willingly comes to the table to seek that support, we know the outcomes are almost guaranteed to be effective. And in the communities that this is being rolled out into, this legislation suggests all you're going to do is increase stigma.

The member for Bass mentioned something that I hadn't read yet, and that was the notion that there were different queues happening at supermarkets for those with one card and another. We've all had that, haven't we? Haven't we all been in a supermarket where you've forgotten your PIN and you're standing there with a basket of groceries? What's the first thing you think? You don't think: oh, the whole supermarket will know I've forgotten my PIN. What you think is: the whole supermarket thinks I've got no money. That's what you're fearful of. So, if the studies had supported this, you might have convinced some of us over here. But it hasn't. The minister conceded that he hadn't even read the report, hadn't even read the review, that cost millions of dollars.

We sat here earlier in the year on Close the Gap Day, and I was appalled listening to the Prime Minister, because I thought that he was very close—in fact, he was suggesting that we should reduce the targets, because we hadn't reached them. I'm from a place in education where we work on targets; we work on data. And the last thing you do is go, 'Oh, that looks a bit too hard; let's make it a bit easier on ourselves.' Imagine if our schools did that. Imagine if our schools did that, member for Bowman. You'd be in here yelling at them every day if they did that—if a school said, 'We've set these targets. They're way too high. We need to make them a bit easier.' But that's what the Prime Minister was suggesting in here on Close the Gap Day: 'It's all too hard. Let's reduce the target. Let's make it easier on ourselves.' Or, worse: 'Let's scrap them.'

Then there was a bit of a change of heart and a different tone. The Prime Minister came in here and made a speech about not doing 'to'—remember?—but about doing 'with'. Let me tell you, the communities that this is focused on, they tell me—here it is again—'It's about us, and it's done without us. It's going to be done to us.' It is, under no circumstances, something that should be happening in this country—in the country that we all love. It just shouldn't be happening. We shouldn't be in here debating this.

This program should not be being expanded. The trials, where they have evidence that they are working, should be reviewed again to see if they're still working. Because, fundamentally, this creates a system where some Australians are different to others—different in economic terms, different in social terms and seen differently by their government. There is no way around this, guys. There's only one way this is perceived anywhere in Australia. They see the discrimination in this. They are appalled by the discrimination in this. And even those who thought, 'Let's give it a go and see how it goes' are saying, 'Where's the evidence to say it's working?' Well, the evidence is not there to say it's working, but we're going to expand it. We're going to increase the number of people who are included and the number of people who are being seen as separate, different and other by the Australian government. So what's the point of any constitutional conversation about who's Australian; who isn't Australian? Why do we bother with Closing the Gap when, with the other hand, we bring in discriminatory legislation that clearly discriminates on geography and discriminates on race just purely on numbers?

I'd close my remarks to say that it's another situation where, on this side of the House, we continue to stand up for people. I'm pleased to see the member for Bass has come in here tonight and spoken from her conscience and stood up for Australians across the country. I'm disappointed that the member for Bass said that she wasn't actually going to vote against this bill, because I think it would have been symbolic—and I think there are others on that side who would have stood beside her, if she'd chosen to do it. I wonder—and I'm being very cynical—if this is not the moment that the pairing arrangements that we have in place for COVID do not shine a light on the fact that members opposite may be outside when we vote on this tonight because they've asked to vote on it tonight when the member for Bass is paired out of this room. Sorry, but you need to know that that's what's happening. Because if you didn't know in your party room, then you need to know now. We're going to vote on this tonight, and the member for Bass is going to be paired out of this chamber. For all of the people who think that the COVID regulations can't be used this way and that it's still representative, this shines a light on that as well.

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