Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The matter of the cashless debit card is a complex one. Labor has consulted many communities and many stakeholders from around the country. We have received a wide diversity of opinions from both communities and individuals within those communities. We've heard from some communities and individuals who strongly oppose the cashless debit card and we've also heard from some communities and some individuals who support it. Labor understands that there are areas where there is a community that wishes to try something new to address drug and alcohol abuse, disadvantage and social dysfunction, but we also understand that not all communities want this.

Labor supports genuine community-driven initiatives to tackle drug and alcohol abuse. To be very clear, Labor does not support a national rollout of the cashless debit card. We know that the vast majority of income support recipients are more than capable of managing their own finances. Labor has consistently said that we will talk to individual communities and make decisions on a location-by-location basis. They are the principles that have guided Labor in determining our position on this issue.

The government announced in the 2017 budget that it will it establish trials of cashless debit cards in two further locations from 1 September 2017. This bill enables this by repealing one section of the Social Security (Administration) Act. The section repealed by this bill—section 124PF—contains the existing limitations on the cashless debit card trial, which require that: the trial ends on 30 June 2018; the limitation for trials to occur in up to three discreet trial areas; and that the trial areas include no more than 10,000 participants in total. These limitations mean that currently only one further trial site could be established and that all trials would need to end by 30 June 2018. The bill provides the frameworks for additional trials to be implemented but does not enable any specific trials. Specific trial sites need to be established by a legislative instrument.

Last year the government announced that it wants to establish trials in the Goldfields in Western Australia and Bundaberg-Hervey Bay in Queensland. Labor referred this bill to a Senate inquiry to allow for proper scrutiny of the changes and to allow for further consultation with the communities in existing and newly announced trial sites. From continued consultation with communities in the Bundaberg and Goldfields regions and the evidence presented to the Senate inquiry, it has become clear that there has been insufficient consultation with these communities and that there is no clear framework to establish whether they consent to trials being established in their areas. Labor believes that there is insufficient evidence at this stage to justify an expansion of the cashless debit cards to further sites.

The Senate inquiry heard that the ORIMA evaluations of the trial are unreliable and that no empirical judgements can be made on the basis of the information collected. Janet Hunt, Deputy Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, said:

… the evaluation showed that the government's cashless card trials had not actually improved safety and violence despite that being one of the trial's objectives.

Hunt's research paper on the evaluation is critical of the methodology used in the ORIMA evaluation. She points out:

People interviewed for the evaluation reported that they drank less than before the trial began. However, such recall over a year is not likely to be very reliable.

Hunt also makes the valid point that given that people had to give their identification to the interviewer, they may have said exactly what they thought the interviewer wanted to hear and certainly would not have incriminated themselves. This is particularly true of the Aboriginal population, who, for historical reasons, are likely to view authority figures with suspicion.

The previous Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, described the cashless debit card trials as 'a huge success', and the Prime Minister himself has said the card has led to:

… a massive reduction in alcohol abuse, in drug abuse, in domestic violence, in violence generally.

But Janet Hunt made clear that this wasn't the case, stating clearly:

Someone needs to tell them that the report does not say that.

The ORIMA report shows that, when participants were asked about the impact of the trial on their children's lives, only 17 per cent reported feeling their lives were better as a result. In fact, a bigger group of parents, around 24 per cent, felt their children's lives were actually worse.

So Labor does not believe that the government can justify the further rollout of this card on what is clearly a flawed evaluation. In addition to the poor quality of the evaluation, we believe that more time is needed before you could draw solid conclusions about the success of the existing trials in Ceduna and the East Kimberley. The evaluation and our own consultations with the communities have showed mixed results, with some groups in Ceduna and the East Kimberley maintaining support for the trials while others are critical of their impacts.

Labor's Jenny Macklin and Linda Burney visited the East Kimberley in April last year to conduct three days of consultations with locals and, in September last year, Jenny Macklin also spent a number of days talking with people on the ground in Ceduna and the surrounding communities. As I said, the feedback we received was mixed. Some people were supportive of the card. They said that the situation was so dire that they were willing to try anything they thought might make a difference. Many of these people supported the cashless card not out of hope but out of despair. Other people made clear that they thought the cashless card was disempowering and that it didn't address the underlying cause of disadvantage and social dysfunction.

St John Ambulance in Kununurra said that the call-outs for alcohol related violence had gone down since the card was introduced; however, at the women's refuge in Kununurra they did not have a positive view of the card. They told Ms Burney and Ms Macklin that life had gotten harder with the card, that there was more violence and more crime as cash became scarce. Other people indicated that if people really wanted to abuse alcohol or drugs they could find a way around the cashless card, typically through the sly-grog trade. Others expressed serious concern that there was no pathway for people to get off the cashless card even if they demonstrated that they could manage their money wisely.

In Ceduna, the local mayor, Allan Suter, is a strong supporter of the card, as is Corey McLennan from the Koonibba Aboriginal corporation. However, Ceduna Koonibba Aboriginal Health Service Aboriginal Corporation is opposed to the cashless card. Others expressed disappointment that the cashless card hadn't helped local Aboriginal people get into work. So the feedback on the ground in these communities was mixed.

The government is now proposing to roll out the cashless debit card in the Goldfields region of Western Australia, which includes Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Laverton, Leonora and Coolgardie. It has become clear to Labor that there was insufficient consultation with the communities in the Goldfields region of Western Australia. Witnesses at the Kalgoorlie Senate hearing, in particular, expressed serious dissatisfaction with the consultation process that was undertaken prior to the announcement of the Goldfields trial site, describing it as very lacklustre. The participants in the process often felt disempowered by the discussions. A local councillor, Linden Brownley, said:

I was involved in the initial discussion. However, I felt as though my presence at that meeting was irrelevant due to the fact that I work full time and run my own business. My comment was to actually engage the people of our community, not just Aboriginal but our community as a whole, to inform them of their intentions and what the cashless card is all about.

The other site where the government wants to roll out the cashless debit card is Bundaberg and Hervey Bay and would also include Howard and Childers. Unlike the other three sites, the government is proposing that this rollout of the card will be targeted at the specific age cohort of people aged 35 years and under who receive Newstart, youth allowance, parenting payment or parenting payment partnered.

It does not include disability support pensioners.

Under the government's proposal about 6,700 people in total would receive the card in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. We don't think there is sufficient community support for the rollout of the card in this area. Fraser Coast Deputy Mayor George Seymour has indicated that he does not support the rollout of the card in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. He indicated that what people need is jobs, not policies that humiliate and divide people in the community. In their submission to the Senate inquiry, the Say No to the Cashless Welfare Card Australia Hinkler group stated:

The human aspect of what will happen to people when they have their individual choices removed, their self control over their lives and how they manage their incomes and their bills. Rather than building a cohesive inclusive society, this card will being using exclusion …

Key groups from the Bundaberg region also felt ignored by the government's consultation process. Representatives from the Gidarjil Development Corporation explained:

Gidarjil is probably considered the largest Indigenous organisation in Bundaberg, and there hasn't been any approach from the federal minister in regard to this or in fact anything.

What an indictment of this government.

The cost of the rollout of the cashless debit card is also an important consideration in this debate. Given the significant cost of the trials—an accrued cost of around $25.5 million, or around $12,000 per participant—we must be sure that the cashless card can deliver its stated objectives. The government gave around $1.6 million to ORIMA Research to provide a frankly substandard evaluation. It is quite extraordinary that we are debating this bill today without any indication from the government about how much it will cost taxpayers to roll out the card at the two new proposed sites in the Goldfields and Bundaberg-Hervey Bay. There has been no indication about how much this will cost taxpayers. It really is quite extraordinary. The minister still won't reveal how much it will cost taxpayers to expand the rollout of the card to the Goldfields and Bundaberg-Hervey Bay. It's just not good enough.

Labor believes that there still exists sufficient community support for a continuation of the trials in Ceduna and the East Kimberley. We supported the original trials at these locations in 2015; we therefore support the continuation of the trial in Ceduna and the East Kimberley. As it currently stands, the legislated end date for the trials is 30 June 2018. Labor will move to amend the bill to extend the end date for trials to 30 June 2019 so that a proper evaluation can take place. Labor knows that entrenched social issues cannot and will not be solved by income management alone. That's why we continue to insist that the government provide additional community supports for participating communities. We are calling on the government to support our amendment that these critical wraparound services be specified to make clear what was agreed as part of the trials and to ensure that these services are delivered. We also want to make sure that existing trial participants understand the rules around how they can have their proportion of income support payments on the card altered or can exit the trial. Labor will move amendments to ensure these rules are specified.

Labor will also move an amendment to ensure that no new trial sites can be introduced, by changing the allowance of three discrete trial sites to the existing two. In the future, Labor will only consider the introduction of a new trial site if the government can show that they have an agreed formal consultation process with the community as well as an agreed definition of consent and where there is sufficient evidence on a proposed model to warrant expansion.

I want to sum up by saying this: I believe that the government proposes the cashless debit card not because it genuinely is interested in improving the lives of our most vulnerable citizens, but because it seeks to spread a narrative that many people who rely on our social security system can't be trusted—that our most vulnerable Australians cannot be trusted with their own spending needs. It's the old conservative narrative about the undeserving poor.

I urge the government and the members of the crossbench, in particular, to give serious consideration to the amendments that Labor proposes for this bill. We aren't saying that there doesn't need to be government action in a very meaningful way in many of these communities. We are not for a moment saying there aren't chronic social problems in these communities. But we believe there should be genuine community-driven initiatives to tackle chronic alcohol abuse. We know that employment is important to changing the life choices and chances for many people who are currently welfare dependent. But the notion that a cashless debit card is some sort of silver bullet that is going to fix all these social ills is completely false. Labor has thought about this issue very deeply. We have consulted and discussed on this issue widely. It's not a position that we have come to quickly. I believe we have come to a position that is reasoned and balanced.