Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to take note of the answer given by Senator Evans to my question on the Northern Territory intervention. I again thank the minister for sort of offering us a briefing, and we will certainly be taking that up. I also note he implied that, in cases of extreme hardship, Minister Macklin may be able to look at those issues. I will certainly be raising with the minister a number of the issues of extreme hardship that we are aware of. Yesterday senators and members of the House of Representatives were invited to attend a briefing in the Main Committee room by representatives of Aboriginal communities from the Northern Territory. Unfortunately, only about eight out of all of the senators and members of the House of Representatives turned up. If more had turned up, they would have heard the stories of extreme distress and hardship that the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory are suffering under the new so-called Northern Territory intervention, which, apparently, is supposed to be about radical measures that will break the cycle of drug abuse and show a new way forward.

People are being provided with a ration card. By the way, this is a copy of the card people are given by Coles. This is how big it is—it is small. It says ‘Coles gift card’. What an insult to the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory. Mothers at the meeting yesterday were outlining the extreme shame that they feel when they are standing in a queue at Coles or Woolies—they are the two main places you can get a card for. Standing there with no cash in their hands they are told that they have to take some of the things back because they cannot buy them on the card. They are standing there with people who have cash, and they do not. They described the deep shame they feel. It takes them back to the ration days, when they can remember that their parents, in some cases, were given rations in old sugar bags. That is how these people in the Northern Territory feel. It is outrageous.

They are given these cards and apparently the people working on the checkouts at Coles are supposed to put little stickers on the back to tell them how much they have left on the cards. Unfortunately, that does not help when the stickers come off. People are throwing the cards away thinking that they are empty and they are not. So they are actually throwing away money because they do not understand the process. As I outlined in my question, in addition to all these other issues, people are not being given financial training or counselling on how to handle their money. So I do not see how this is turning out to be a learning process.

We heard stories yesterday—and I have heard other stories, because I have been talking to as many people as I can about this—of community stores closing down because they are not being supported by the quarantining process. We heard stories of people queuing all day to get their food ‘gift cards’ and not getting them, having not eaten all day and having no money and no way of getting home. We also heard stories of people queuing all day to get their cards and then going back to their remote community only to find out that they cannot use their card at that community and therefore do not have any money. We also heard stories of people who are living in, for example, Rapid Creek up there, where they do not have any storage facilities. They are being encouraged to spend the whole of their card at once, so they go and get a trolley load of shopping which they cannot keep anywhere. Other people are spending their card on a trolley load of shopping and then having no money left to get home. They have no money left for a taxi to get home, so they are left on the footpath with a trolley load of shopping. We heard another story of a lady who is unable to send food money to her son who is studying at a college in Townsville. She does not have any available cash to send him.

As I touched on briefly in my question, I heard another story about a lady who worked for 48 years. She has been retired for 10 years and she has raised 10 kids. She went into Centrelink and had a young lady explain budgeting matters to her. I would have thought, if you had worked that long, you have been retired that long and you have raised 10 kids, that you would have an idea about how to budget your money. Imagine how she feels. I can only barely imagine the shame that she is feeling because, after all this time, she has been told she cannot manage her money. She also told of relatives who have been affected by the same shame and subjected to the same quarantine rules with absolutely no justification. This process needs to be revised now. If the government were committed to evidence based policy, it would be listening to these examples of the failure of the system. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.