David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management Reform) Bill 2023. There is a lot of history behind this bill. It is bordering on a bit bizarre, actually, and quite hypocritical. The fact of the matter is the bill has the intent of getting people onto a rebadged version of the cashless debit card. It will be an enhanced income management program. But the bizarre side of the thing is that, at the last election and for two years beforehand, the current government was arguing against what they are now installing. It is incredibly hypocritical.

The cashless debit card came into being following the Andrew Forrest review of 2014 that pointed out quite presciently and accurately that income management or BasicsCard which was in effect across all of the Northern Territory and in Cape York. It came in after the Northern Territory emergency response to try and get a collar on the income management for people who are delinquent in their responsibilities to the Crown and to their family, or who had drug and alcohol programs, and so on and so forth. We on this side set up the cashless debit card and it worked very well. It was set up with all the required functionality, including the ability to purchase things online. It was set up by the Indue Corporation and badged as a Visa card, and it allowed down to the merchant level the inability to buy smoking, alcohol, gambling products or withdraw huge amounts of cash, depending on where the trial was. In Bundaberg and Hervey Bay, it was limited. You could get 20 per cent of your welfare payments in cash from your debit bank account but you couldn't use the card to buy those things I mentioned—alcohol, smokes, gambling products.

I actually went to Kalgoorlie, Bundaberg and Hervey Bay and saw it in action. It works remarkably well. It has exactly the same functionality. In fact, it is the same card that has been rebadged, recoloured and rereleased and is now called the SmartCard. So what those opposite have introduced, of course we're going to support it. It is exactly what we brought in ourselves. But those opposite resisted for two years and made false claims that it would be applied to all age pensioners, for goodness sake—what a load of hogwash. But there are some people who will be moved on to the enhanced income management and they will be using the old cashless debit card, and everyone will think, 'Hunky-dory. Isn't this wonderful,' but the other side is seeming to rewrite history.

The BasicsCard was an initiative or a plan that came out of the Northern Territory Emergency Response. It came in between 2008 and 2014 on an extended site basis by the Labor government. Former speakers on this issue, including the member for Scullin, have criticised us for not doing anything. They were objecting to it and raising all sorts of ridiculous assertions about it when we did try and expand it. The cashless debit card eventually got extended into the Northern Territory and into the Cape York sites. But when they were running the BasicsCard they not only had in the Northern Territory, the Cape York communities asked for their people to go on the BasicsCard. And the BasicsCard was expanded at Playford in South Australia, at greater Shepparton in Victoria, at Bankstown in New South Wales, at Rockhampton and Logan in Queensland. And subsequently, in 2012, it was expanded into the APY Lands and into other Indigenous lands, including Kurri Kurri in WA.

What we have now is a failure of policy where the substance has been ignored and the political argument has destroyed a really great initiative. We've had people from affected Western Australian local government bodies in this building briefing members on how the loss of the cashless debit card has destroyed all the benefits that they gained. The increased school attendance, the less alcohol and drug fuelled violence in these communities has been swept away. Crime rates in Ceduna, for instance, are now double what they were when the cashless debit card was present. The CDC was working very well there. We have got a mayor who briefed members of parliament in this building just yesterday. He comes from a family that's got five generations involved in this local government area and he knows it well. They have called it as it is, that abandoning the compulsory nature of the cashless debit card means that instead of having 17,400 people having their income support managed via this there are now only 30 in that local government area, and that's why you can see that there has been an increase in violence, alcoholism and all the bad things that they were getting control of.

The cashless debit card had total functionality across 900,000 EFTPOS outlets. It could be controlled right down to the merchant category code. The new so-called SmartCard, which is better described as a different coloured CDC, will have all those benefits too. There will be control at the merchant category code level. So it means in one establishment you can go and buy a steak and a meal but if you went to the bar and tried to buy alcohol it wouldn't work, if you wanted to go to a coffee shop you could buy a coffee and a snack but you couldn't buy cigarettes, and so on and so forth. Depending on where you were, you still had access to some cash but you had to do it through your bank, not just at a cash terminal. At least in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay area it was a 80 per cent, 20 per cent split. So 80 per cent was there to pay for things like food at home, schoolbooks, excursions, uniforms for school and the weekly groceries, rather than blowing it all on alcohol and other things that aren't good for family life.

So I support this bill, but I just want to put on the record that there's a dose of hypocrisy in retrospect coming from the other side because they argued against the CDC and have taken the exact same technology and are planning to merge all the people on the BasicsCard onto the new one. People are still uncertain whether the government will have all the capability in place. We have not been reassured that it will kick off on 1 July 2023, as planned. The 17,000 people, roughly, who were on the cashless debit card are now only on income management if they have volunteered to go on it, and those who have volunteered to stay on it are the ones who are actually functioning well in society and hardly need the guidance or the restrictions that the CDC puts on them. It doesn't restrict the amount of money but just restricts how they can spend it.

I would add that, if the same outcome were to happen and the new enhanced income management were on a voluntary-only basis, that would be a very bad outcome. The explanatory memorandum outlines that most of the criteria that existed in Cape York and the Northern Territory, like failure of parenting, failure of school, alcohol and drug dependency—all those things that either the community or the government saw as indicators to put someone on income management—will still be there in the enhanced income management scheme. I hope that doesn't happen, but future performance usually reflects past performance, and their past performance and ideological obsession to get rid of a scheme that actually was supported by former Labor Party governments is really quite hypocritical.

Overall, I commend this bill to the House, but now it's on the record that there has been a huge amount of hypocrisy and hubris exhibited by people who should be serious about this but who are using the old CDC as an attack point, rather than saying, 'Hey, this is actually working.' It worked well. You only had to hear the speeches from the member for Hinkler, the member for Grey, the member for O'Connor and the member for the other Western Australian electorate in the east Kimberley region to know that this is a good bit of policy. We just want to make sure that the appropriate people are on income management and are not given a leave pass to waste the financial support that the government and the taxpayer gives them so that their families and their communities are a lot safer.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think you were referring to the member for Durack in your contribution.

Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the second reading amendment, as circulated in my name, to the amendment moved by the member for Deakin:

That all words after "whilst" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the Government committed to abolish compulsory income management in opposition, the House is of the opinion that the bill should not proceed and calls on the Government to:

(1) provide a clear plan for an end to all compulsory income management, which disproportionately impacts First Nations peoples; and

(2) urgently and significantly increase the funding for community and support services through a jobs and services plan, including redirecting any savings from the abolition of compulsory income management to these services".

While in opposition, the Labor Party promised that they would end compulsory income management. Now, not even one year into their term of government, they've put forward a bill to reintroduce it and empower the minister to do so. In April 2022, the member for Barton, now the Minister for Indigenous Australians, was quoted in the Guardian as saying:

Our fundamental principle on the basics card and the cashless debit card, it should be on a voluntary basis.

A day later the ABC reported:

Federal Labor will make the controversial basics card optional within the first term of government if it wins the election next month, making a commitment that any broad-based income management should be voluntary.

Key stakeholders who were working with those who are directly impacted by compulsory income management welcomed this clear announcement from Labor. The Northern Territory Council of Social Service welcomed Labor's commitment to scrap compulsory income management, stating that it is 'a discriminatory and coercive policy, affecting more than 24,000 Territorians, the vast majority of whom are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples'. They went on to say that income management should only be ever offered on an opt-in basis. This bill breaks Labor's promise to abolish compulsory income management. It represents a complete reversal of the position that Labor took to the election. So either Labor has had a horrific case of institutional amnesia or there's been a deliberate decision to reverse a clear election commitment. My question to the Labor Party and to the members sitting on the government benches is: which is it? Did someone lose all the election commitments you made before the election, or are you just pretending that they don't exist?

I want to revisit why Labor's position in opposition was so warmly welcomed and why it is so disappointing and concerning to see this backflip from the government. Fundamentally, compulsory income management does not work. We have the submissions of experts and review after review to show that it doesn't. As the Australian Council of Social Service said:

There is no credible or conclusive evidence that these policies have delivered better outcomes for individuals or their communities. Instead, cashless debit and income management are paternalistic policies that restrict basic human rights.

Similarly, Associate Professor Elise Klein summarised the research on the impacts of compulsory income management, stating that peer reviewed research has also shown that compulsory income management 'causes more harm than good'. For example, research published by the ARC Centre of Excellence and the Life Course Centre examined compulsory income management in the Northern Territory and showed a correlation between it and negative impacts on children, including a reduction in birth weight and school attendance. In 2016 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights noted:

… evidence before the committee indicates that compulsory income management is not effective in achieving its stated objective of supporting vulnerable individuals and families.

Why is Labor choosing to ignore pages and pages of evidence from experts and impacted communities that shows that compulsory income management does not work and is actively harmful?

At the same time, the parliament has just debated the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill 2022 as part of the journey towards a referendum on the Voice. It is heartbreaking to see the government entrenching a framework that has disproportionately harmed First Nations communities. Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory doesn't support compulsory income management. They assert that 'compulsory income management is a vehicle for disempowerment' that perpetuates the stigmatisation of Aboriginal people. They went on to say:

… compulsory income management contradicts the Commonwealth and NT governments' commitments through Closing the Gap …

They also said:

… continued income management, in its current form, breaches the Australian Government's existing commitment to Priority Reform 3: to systemically and structurally transform mainstream government organisations to improve accountability, and to respond to the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

It should be noted that this fundamentally unjust, racist policy has its origins in Howard's Northern Territory intervention.

The Greens welcomed the steps by Labor to roll back the cashless debit card in locations across the country, but, at the time, we specifically called for action to support those people in the Northern Territory. Now, with this bill, the Labor Party is reversing its course in an incredibly concerning and harmful way. The bill specifically entrenches compulsory income management by taking the legislative framework for the income management regime—or the BasicsCard—and applying it to what Labor are calling 'enhanced income management'. Let's be clear: enhanced income management may have a different name and a different number to call, but, as my colleague Senator Rice uncovered in Senate estimates, it is still Indue that's running the card. It is basically the same technology, and people still have the same account numbers on the cards that Indue are issuing to them. But what the changes in the legislation do is give the minister power to expand compulsory income management in new areas, using the technology provided by Indue. So, whereas the cashless debit card had a sunset date and required changes to legislation, this bill will give the minister powers to expand compulsory income management without requiring legislation—without a sunset date, without geographic restraints in this act. And it's Indue's card, but with the minister now having the power to roll it out to new areas by legislative instrument.

This bill is the worst of both worlds. It is technology that enables Labor to roll out Indue's cards to new parts of the country and it is legislative powers that give the minister the power to do so at the stroke of a pen. It is appalling and incomprehensible that Labor ran on progressive change to abolish compulsory income management but, now they are in government, they're seeking to entrench it. Fundamentally, many of those members in this chamber who represent themselves as progressives are putting themselves in the position of supporting a failed policy that disproportionately impacts First Nations people. Before the election, the member for Bruce made a lot of public comments about the cashless debit card. He still has a page up on his website, actually, talking about the privatised cashless card. Now in government, he's going to vote for a bill that expands that program by Indue. The member for Lyons still has a page up on his website campaigning against the cashless debit card; now he's about to do the same, and vote for a card that is expanded by Indue. The member for Richmond seconded a bill, introduced by the member for Bruce, abolishing the cashless debit card; now, as an assistant minister, the member for Richmond is part of administration that is giving more money to Indue and giving the minister power—

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. Your speech was interrupted, so you will be granted leave. I remind you to make sure you have a seconder when you get back to resume your debate.