Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister visited the Garma Festival in recent days in north-east Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, and I commend him for doing that and for the genuine work he is doing with Aboriginal people and with all Australians. I want to be bipartisan on that. But I wonder how many people who attended that festival—I wonder how many women in particular—looked the Prime Minister in the eye and said, 'You're making a mistake about this cashless debit card withdrawal.' I wonder how many children looked at the Prime Minister and thought, 'There's the leader of our country.' These are children who, perhaps, in recent years, being children in an area where the cashless debit card was operating as a trial, had, for the first time, lunch at school; had, for the first time, food on the table; had, for the first time, a mother who wasn't being bashed at night. I wonder how many children who were there at that festival were in that position.

The cashless debit card looks and operates like a regular bank card. It cannot be used to buy alcohol or gambling products—that's a good thing—or certain gift cards or to withdraw cash. The communities in which the card is operational include the Ceduna region of South Australia, the Goldfields and East Kimberley regions of WA, the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay regions—I appreciate that the member for Hinkler is here—and some Cape York communities, including Doomadgee, in Queensland, and the Northern Territory. I visited many of those electorates. I've talked to people affected and influenced by these trials, and they tell me it is a positive experience. I know that some women felt safer at night and, for the first time in a long time, rested easy at night, knowing that this trial was in place and that their partner wasn't going to bash them, that their partner was going to provide and that there was going to be money for the family to provide food for the children.

This decision shows that this government clearly doesn't understand the harsh realities of particularly regional and remote Australia, where some Aboriginal women are subjected to domestic violence every night of every week. How tragic is that? As the new senator for the Northern Territory, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, said in her first speech, just last Wednesday:

We see the news that grog bans will be lifted on dry communities, allowing the scourge of alcoholism and the violence that accompanies it free reign, despite warnings from elders of those communities about the coming damage. Coupled with this, we see the removal of the cashless debit card, which allowed countless families on welfare to feed their children rather than seeing the money claimed by kinship demand from alcoholics, substance abusers and gamblers in their own family group. I could not offer two more appalling examples of legislation pushed by left-wing elites and guaranteed to worsen the lives of Indigenous people. Yet at the same time we spend days and weeks each year recognising Aboriginal Australia in many ways—in symbolic gestures that fail to push the needle one micro millimetre toward improving the lives of the most marginalised in any genuine way.

Of course, she is so right. She knows. She understands. She has spoken to so many people across the Territory and elsewhere. And, more than that, so many Australians have listened to Senator Nampijinpa Price, have seen her wonderful, groundbreaking maiden speech and understand exactly what she is saying.

The member for Hinkler—we'll hear from him in a moment—has told me of the positive impact the cashless debit card has had in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay regions, where a trial has been placed. People have told him that it should continue. People have told him of their lived experience. It's all well and good for some city types of those opposite to talk about how dreadful this is. I heard the member for Bruce say 'cruel' and 'insidious'—it's Liberation Day; hallelujah! He described it as a cancer, a prejudice. That's totally wrong. It's totally out of touch. This trial is about ensuring that future generations in communities affected by alcoholics, sadly, gamblers, tragically, and substance abusers can eat a meal and can be supported in a way that can give them the best opportunity to break the cycle. I agree with the member for Bruce—it's insidious—because it is an insidious cycle. The cashless welfare debit card was doing just that to break this insidious cycle. I recommend it as a program. I know a lot of thought was put into it. Yes, perhaps on the edges there could have been some improvements—that certainly would have been the case—but I commend it.

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