Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this important bill, the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill. I want to add my voice to the support for the amendment that my esteemed colleague the member for Barton has circulated. It's worth noting once again, in the middle of this debate, what the amendment is. It calls on the House to note:

(a) thirteen years after the Howard Government's so-called Intervention in the Northern Territory, there is no evidence that compulsory, broad-based income management works;

(b) the Minister decided to make the Cashless Debit Card trial permanent before reading the independent review by Adelaide University; and

(c) this proposal is racially discriminatory, as approximately 68 per cent of the people impacted are First Nations Australians …

And it calls on the government to:

(a) not roll out the Cashless Debit Card nationally; and

(b) invest in evidence-based policies, job creation and services, rather than ideological policies like the Cashless Debit Card.

The member for Bass outlined a number of such policies that could be used in her own electorate instead of the cashless debit card, and we've heard from many previous speakers on the problems with this card.

Labor does not support this bill. In essence it is a racist bill, an ideological bill, a bill developed without an evidential base and a bill that impinges upon human rights and freedoms under the guise of fixing serious social issues. In fact, it is a bill that creates more problems than it purports to fix. It's a typical Liberal Party response; it is punitive and taps into negative populism, entrenching bias and disadvantage. We on this side of the House were profoundly disappointed to see that the government brought this bill forward for debate in NAIDOC Week, a week when we celebrate the achievements of First Nations peoples, appreciate their resilience and recognise their struggle.

As a non-Indigenous woman, I take my cues and I learn from my esteemed colleagues—the member for Barton, and Senators Dodson and McCarthy—when it comes to First Nations policy and legislation in this place. I listen to the people in the First Nations communities in my electorate, and there are many. And I hear the voices of First Nations people nationally, particularly through that seminal communique, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, a statement that Labor is committed to enacting. What they've taught me is that listening and talking is important but that, in truth, it is only part of what must be done. What is equally important, and harder to do, is taking action—actually doing the hard work of reconciliation. The Liberals talk a big game when it comes to reconciliation, but when push comes to shove they are not there to do the hard work. It's just like what we saw last month in the Senate, where the Liberal Party voted against a motion to hang the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. Again, they voted against that during NAIDOC Week.

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