Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes:

(a) the importance of income management in keeping vulnerable communities safe, particularly women and children, and in protecting the integrity of our social security system;

(b) the Coalition's commitment to listening to affected communities;

(c) the Coalition's plan to reinstate the successful cashless debit card;

(d) that since the abolition of the cashless debit card, there have been reports of widespread abuse of alcohol and drugs, and other anti-social behaviour; and

(e) the Government's decision to spend over $217 million in taxpayers money to launch the so-called SmartCard; and

(2) calls on the Government to join with the Coalition in committing to re-establish the cashless debit card.

This motion today refers to what I consider to be one of the worst decisions taken by this Labor government—a decision to alter income management arrangements in vulnerable communities that we know were working, to abolish the cashless debit card. This has wrought dysfunction and violence in communities that can ill afford the sort of antisocial behaviour that we now see.

The history of the cashless debit card has been told many times before, but it's always good to reflect on it. Vulnerable communities consulted with the government and invited the government to put in place these arrangements, to ensure that there was less antisocial behaviour; that there were fewer drugs, there was less alcohol and less domestic violence; and that more welfare money was used on the essentials of life. There are many things in this place that we can disagree on. There are many things that there is confected disagreement on as well. But the one thing that surely everybody can agree on is that vulnerable communities with more drugs and more alcohol are worse places.

So what did the Labor government do when they were elected as one of their first measures? They abolished the cashless debit card, which quarantined a portion of welfare money for the essentials of life—food and groceries—rather than being used and frittered away on alcohol, drugs, gambling and a variety of other expenditure that did not assist communities. At the time, I was very forceful in my criticisms of the government and said: 'Surely you know the consequences of this decision. Surely you know that unleashing drugs and alcohol into vulnerable remote communities is going to make domestic violence worse. It will mean that fewer children go to school and will mean that fewer children go to school having had breakfast, because there won't be food in the house.' The Labor Party wantonly closed their eyes and ignored that. I know there were some people on the Labor side who shared my concerns but were not able to publicly state them.

So where are we now? Utterly predictably—you didn't need to have a PhD or be a Rhodes scholar or Nostradamus to know this—the antisocial behaviour we are now seeing in communities around our country who had the cashless debit card is getting worse and worse. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the Australian people will hear from speakers after me who will talk about their communities—whether those communities are in Western Australia; in Ceduna, in South Australia; or in other parts of the country—that are seeing the antisocial behaviour that was there before the cashless debit card re-emerge, the domestic violence rates skyrocket and the neglect of children skyrocket, all because the Labor Party, in an ideological pursuit, abolished the cashless debit card.

This motion calls on the government to re-establish the cashless debit card—we know it worked—and to swallow their pride, and to stand up to the hard ideological Left of their party that is opposed to any form of income management, and to say that, in the end, the interests of the children in those communities and those children's right not to be neglected and not to be abused are more important to the government than their ideological pursuit. That's what this motion is all about. The cashless debt card should be reintroduced. The Labor government should admit that they got it wrong. They will be applauded not just by me but by those vulnerable communities that are suffering under this very shameful decision.

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