Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. What policy changes is the government making to ensure that seniors are not going to be forced to use the cruel cashless debit card to access their pension?

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I give the call to the Minister for Social Services.

Honourable members i nterjecting—

Order! The minister will be heard in silence.

Member for Longman, I just asked the House if the minister could be heard in silence and you interjected straightaway. Can we cease interjections at least until the minister starts talking? The Minister for Social Services.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you I think, Mr Speaker. I would like to thank the member for Bruce for this question. I know how passionate he has been. He has been listening to the concerns of people on the cashless debit card and of course the concerns right around this country about this unfair policy. Labor wants welfare and social security to be a strong safety net that supports vulnerable Australians when they need it, and to not stigmatise them, like the former government did. That is why Labor has decisively acted to deliver on its election commitment to abolish the cashless debit card.

Earlier today I introduced legislation to start the task of dismantling the coalition's cashless debit card experiment. I want to reassure the member for Bruce that seniors will no longer have to worry that their pension might get linked with the card. No-one in this country will have to worry about it, because we are getting rid of it. We are ending the experiment of privatised welfare in this country. Of course, the cashless debit card was an ideological obsession by the former coalition government. It was imposed on communities and kept rolling out, rolling out and rolling out. Of course, it was completely—

I have, Member for Aston.

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's not true, Amanda. You know that.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll get to that. Of course, they imposed it on communities that did not want it and did not like it, and when the evidence came out that it wasn't working—there was no evidence to support it; there were pleas from communities to end it—what did they do? They just kept rolling it out. They put ideology before evidence. They chose arrogance over consultation. This was the defining feature of the former Morrison government.

Well, that is not what will happen under this government. The Prime Minister, during the election campaign, said that this would be a priority, if we were elected—to get rid of the cashless debit card—and we are getting on with the job. I have visited Ceduna and the East Kimberley, and the Assistant Minister for Social Services has visited Bundaberg and Hervey Bay, and we will be visiting other communities in coming weeks. We are going to listen to First Nations communities, we are going to listen to service providers and we are going to chart a way forward on what are complex, difficult social problems with real evidence based solutions, not ideology gone wrong.