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

I rise today to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017. The Australian Greens oppose this bill, which will remove the current limitations for the scheme of three trial sites and 10,000 participants as well as allow the scheme to continue past 30 June 2018. It does this by removing section 124PF of the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999. The Greens have opposed the cashless welfare card from the start, the same as we have opposed income management now for 10½ years. I can guarantee this place that we will continue to oppose income management. We will continue to campaign on this until income management is not used as a policy mechanism in this country. While I very strongly welcome the ALP's opposition to elements of this particular bill and I also welcome the NXT's opposition to this bill, I do have deep concerns that you think it's okay to allow the cashless welfare card to continue in the existing trial sites. In the separate debate that will happen this afternoon, I urge you to support my disallowance to end this farce of a policy.

If this bill passes, all that will be required for a future trial site to be established—and 'trial' is a misnomer—is the drafting and registering of a legislative instrument. There will be no need for it to be debated by the parliament prior to enactment. The government will be able to roll out the cashless debit card—I frequently call it the welfare card, so I'll use that too—far and wide, and this bill enables them to do it if they want to. This is particularly the case given the bill before us does not contain safeguards on how long trials can run for, how many participants they can include or any requirement to consult with the communities of future trial sites. There is also no way in which people can transition off the card now or in the future. The Greens have opposed this cashless welfare card since its inception. It's a continuation of compulsory income management, no matter how the government wants to disguise it and play with words.

We submitted a dissenting report to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015 expressing deep concerns regarding compulsory income management and recommending that that bill not be passed. The evaluations of the two existing trial sites, in the East Kimberley and Ceduna, have reinforced these concerns. The ORIMA reports, both the interim and final, are not reliable sources of evidence. These so-called independent evaluations have been widely criticised by numerous social scientists and academics for not adhering to academic standards, having major flaws in methodology and the way in which it was reported and relying on piecemeal and anecdotal evidence.

There are submissions and evidence to the bill's inquiry from social scientists and academics who outline the major flaws with the evaluation methodology and reporting, noting myriad concerns with the data presented and researched. The key concerns with regard to the way the research was conducted were the unreliability of self-reporting on behaviours, social desirability and recall bias problems, not to mention the fact that people were paid to be involved. The East Kimberley and Ceduna data weighting finding was not proportionate to the populations of income support recipients in the trial areas, meaning improvements were overstated at the very best. There was a lack of adequate baseline data on alcohol, drug use and gambling in trial areas prior to trial commencement to compare to so-called improvements. There was a lack of differentiation between large numbers of people who reported not drinking at all. The evaluation reports did not make clear that additional services were provided to help people deal with the addictive behaviours or when those were up and running, but it seems that what there were came late in the trial period and, as I said, there was payment for involvement in the assessment process.

Dr Elise Klein, who has just completed a 13-month research project on the cashless debit card in the East Kimberley, expressed to the inquiry deep concern with regard to the reports which are being used to justify these trials as a success. To the inquiry she said:

My concern as a researcher is how that has been allowed to be evidence and used as a proof of concept.

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All these other important issues around community disempowerment, around violence, around at what cost—it reports all these positive things that happen, but completely underplays the really large numbers of people reporting issues and hardships with the card too. It gives a very distorted idea of what the card is or is not doing. I do believe there needs to be a review of how that has been allowed into the public sphere and to be labelled by politicians as proof of concept. As a researcher and as an academic, I think it's a real problem the way that evidence has been used in this process to continue pushing the trial forward when there are some severe issues around what that research did or did not do.

In her very recent working paper with the former principal solicitor for the Kimberley Community Legal Services, 'The cashless debit card trial in the East Kimberley', the result of 13 months of research, the abstract says:

We find not only that the trial was chaotic, but that its logic is deeply flawed, and disconnected from the relational poverty experienced by people receiving state benefits. We also find that the card has become a symbol of government control and regulation in the study site.

Compulsory income management is a failed measure. It's been proven to be an ineffective policy that disempowers and harms those that need help the most. One of the most extensive evaluations of income management is Evaluation of new income management in the Northern Territory, commissioned by the Department of Social Services. The report was issued by experts from the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, the Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Family Studies over several years. One of the key findings of the final report was:

The evaluation could not find any substantive evidence of the program having significant changes relative to its key policy objectives, including changing people's behaviours … The evaluation data does not provide evidence of income management having improved the outcomes that it was intending to have an impact upon. Indeed, rather than promoting independence and the building of skills and capabilities, New Income Management in the Northern Territory appears to have encouraged increasing dependence upon the welfare system, and the tools which were envisaged as providing them with the skills to manage have rather become instruments which relieve them of the burden of management.

It failed, and here is the government trying to increase the expansion of income management when the tool does not work.

Compulsory income management impacts negatively on individuals and the community and imposes significant costs on government. Evidence provided through submissions and at the hearing of the inquiry on this bill show the fundamental and deep flaws in this approach. In its submission to the inquiry the Australian Council of Social Service said:

CDC costs approximately $10,000 per person covered by the trial over a 12-month period. The actual cost of the program over the forward estimates is unknown as this information is commercial-in-confidence.

To put this expenditure into perspective, the individual cost of CDC is almost as much as the single rate of Newstart Allowance, which is $14,000 per annum.

How farcical! How farcical that the government is subjecting people to this card and it costs almost as much as their Newstart allowance in the first place, which is inadequate and which we know is below the poverty line.

Legitimate questions have been raised about the opportunity cost of the CDC, particularly when the trial sites have serious problems such as poverty, lack of employment opportunities, unaffordable housing and poor access to health services. The expenditure on the CDC might have far greater impact if it were directed to services and programs developed and led by the communities.

There are also clear flaws in how the government consulted with communities before, during and after they imposed this card. The inquiry into this bill, as well as the inquiry into the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015, highlighted significant gaps in the consultation process. It is also clear that the government have focused their consultation on some Aboriginal peak organisations and some individual members of Aboriginal communities but have not consulted broadly with community members, particularly those who are actually on income support and who will be directly affected by this legislation. This shows a fundamental lack of respect for people receiving income support.

Nor have the government consulted on this current bill. The Law Council of Australia told the inquiry that where consultation is also undertaken with local government and those responsible for law enforcement, that is inadequate. The Australian Human Rights Commission was of the view that it is not free, prior and informed consent if people affected are not consulted. Ms Hatfield, from Catholic Social Services, who spent time in both Ceduna and the East Kimberley, told the inquiry:

Many of the people that I spoke to felt that the government had consulted with a number of key leaders but hadn't consulted more broadly with the community, and that those key leaders didn't represent them and couldn't speak for them. So they felt this card had been imposed on them. It was suggested that if the consultation had been more inclusive and took into account people that were directly affected by the changes, it could have been done better and there would have been more a sense that the card was not imposed on people. Most of the people that I spoke to said that the card had just made their lives more difficult, and they were very frustrated that they didn't have an opportunity to be involved in the consultation beforehand.

The community consultation process across both trial sites and the intended trial sites has been opaque, fractured and secretive and is not a reliable indicator of community sentiment.

We are still concerned about the operation of the cashless debit card and its impact on participants. In fact, during the Senate inquiry, when I asked the Mayor of Ceduna if, after the trial had started, they had gone back to ask participants what they thought about it, I was told no, they hadn't—in fact, we had some cross words with each other about it.

During the bill's inquiry there have been many issues raised by people on the card, service providers in the community and business owners. Many people in the current trial sites face barriers in using the card to purchase necessities and to pay their bills. The following is a list of some of the scenarios raised during the inquiry that people subjected to the card have experienced: they are unable to buy second-hand goods; the card doesn't work at the supermarket, chemist or post office—and I have subsequently heard there are so many times when the card gets rejected, and that's from speaking directly to people who have to live on the white card—there are no joint accounts; there are difficulties for people with disability, carers and couples; and there are no direct debits.

Something that is very interesting on the card is that you can't use the card for BPAY—in other words, you can't use it to control your own finances. You have to use it as a credit card. You have to supply your credit card number. That means the people wanting to take your money are the people that are in charge of your bank account—in other words, it lessens your ability to manage your funds. There's no privacy and there is the feeling of being stigmatised, resulting in poor mental health outcomes.

I've heard directly from participants who, where their card hadn't worked, were asked to stand aside in a supermarket because the person running the till had to serve other customers, which, again, is stigmatising them. You might as well put a card on their head that says: 'I'm on the Indue card; I'm on the white card'. This flies in the face of what one of the architects of this whole debacle, Mr Forrest, said, when he said in the previous inquiry, 'There'll be no difference with this card; it will be just like any other credit card or bank card.' Well, I'm sorry; I said at the time that that wasn't true, and it simply is not true. Everybody in these communities knows what the white card is and who's on it as soon as you pull it out.

People on the card have also experienced restrictions from many dining venues and been unable to purchase from mixed merchants. This is particularly so, for example, if you go out to a restaurant. Again, I heard direct evidence from participants of their not being able to use their card when they go out for dinner—if the place doesn't have separate EFTPOS facilities, which many don't—and that they have not been able to pay their bill and have had to borrow funds. It's simply outrageous. They also experience isolation from their communities because they can't participate in activities where cash is required or at venues where alcohol is served. Landlords in some communities only accept cash as payment for rent. There are difficulties for individuals to visit country without access to cash. The card is making money management harder. If you have one of the early cards that doesn't have EFTPOS written on it, you can't use EFTPOS; if you have a later card with EFTPOS on it, you can. Have the government reissued the card so that everybody can have a card with EFTPOS? No, they haven't. They haven't even told those people that they can get one with EFTPOS on it, which is, again, making life hard for people.

During the inquiry the committee also heard evidence of how people are circumventing the system to get the cash they need—and I've talked about that before. There's also increased 'humbugging'. There were many reports from stakeholders that people have left communities to try and get away from the card. A number of us heard about the outrageous situation where women were reported to be selling their bodies for sex in order to get cash; reports of significant increase in family violence because of the increase in poverty and pressure on the household; deliberate overcharging for services in order to get cash back; people gambling to be able to afford alcohol sold on the black market; paying for other people's shopping with the card and receiving cash in exchange. Again, I've heard that directly from people who have been doing that.

We are also deeply concerned that this bill limits human rights, as outlined in many submissions to the inquiry. The circumstances and trial sites are not so extreme or exceptional as to warrant an approach that infringes on the human rights of income support recipients. In the Australian Human Rights Commission's submission to the inquiry, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner said:

The Commission considers that the measures are not proportionate to the benefits sought by the Bill because their purpose could be achieved through other, less restrictive means …

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… the Commission does not agree with the assessment that the Bill or existing cashless debit card measures are compatible with human rights standards.

The parliament's own Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, in Human rights scrutiny report: report 9 of 2017, made some comments about it as well:

In assessing whether a measure is proportionate, relevant factors to consider include whether the measure provides sufficient flexibility to treat different cases differently or whether it imposes a blanket policy without regard to the circumstances of individual cases.

As the cashless debit card trial applies to anyone residing in locations where the trial operates who is receiving a social security payment specified under the scheme, there are serious doubts as to whether the measures are the least rights restrictive way to achieve the stated objectives.

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The compulsory nature of the cashless debit card trial also raises questions as to the proportionality of the measures.

A number of submissions to the inquiry noted the trial sites' disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and, in the Human Rights Commission's submission, the social justice commissioner noted:

As at September 2016, 75% of trial participants in Ceduna and 82% of trial participants in the East Kimberley were Indigenous.

The Kimberley Land Council told the inquiry:

While we acknowledge the widespread negative impacts of alcohol and drugs in the Australian community, it is evident that it is Aboriginal people and communities who are most often penalised by punitive, experimental and top-down policies regarding an issue that impacts the whole of society.

The government has taken what the KLC would characterise as a ‘sledgehammer’ approach, which does little to address the root cause of the issues faced by Aboriginal people, particularly those in the East Kimberley.

The KLC is further concerned that for those people who need assistance to overcome alcohol and drug dependence, the CDC has very little proven ability to improve lives or create meaningful change.

That came through even in the flawed ORIMA evaluation.

The Australian Greens oppose compulsory income management. It is not the way to address these fundamental issues. It undermines people's ability to manage their money, it underlies Aboriginal disadvantage and it furthers Aboriginal disadvantage. The approach the government is taking to address Aboriginal disadvantage and issues around addiction is flawed. We need a health-based approach to the addiction matters that the government claims this card is there to address. This is a flawed policy. Compulsory income management is a flawed policy. I urge this chamber to vote no on this legislation.