Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

As we debate today the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill, I want to say at the outset that Labor's approach to this is to look to community-driven initiatives to tackle chronic alcohol abuse. The key word here should be 'community', not engaging in top-down approaches. Labor has significant concerns with regard to the existing rollout, notwithstanding the fact that we have agreed for the trials to continue.

As we heard this morning at the Close the Gap breakfast, what we need to do to be successful in engaging with the prevention of alcohol abuse and other forms of community disadvantage is to listen directly to affected communities. We have to empower them and resource their own solutions, particularly through Indigenous-controlled organisations. We should not be engaging in approaches that take the power away from local communities. We in this place mustn't fool ourselves into believing that income management is in and of itself the solution to entrenched disadvantage, and, most importantly, we mustn't forget that the vast majority of people on income support are perfectly capable of managing their own finances. I can't help but also reflect on the fact that, for many people on income support, their finances are manifestly inadequate, which is a significant driver behind poverty, not poor financial management or alcohol or drug abuse.

Labor is not supporting this bill in its current form. I want to take issue with some of the allegations put by the government in this debate yesterday—that somehow Labor had done a backflip because of the Batman by-election. Nothing could be further from the truth. Labor was very clear in its position last year, while parliament was still sitting—long before we looked to a by-election in Batman.

We support the continuation of the existing cashless debit card trial in both Ceduna and the Kimberley, and that's not without reservation. But we do understand that the existing trials need to be properly evaluated, so we've looked to amendments to extend the dates of the trial to ensure that proper evaluation can take place to judge the success or otherwise of the trial. On that note, we don't support the further rollout of the card to new sites in Bundaberg and the Goldfields. We certainly don't support the nationwide rollout of a cashless debit card. We also believe that it is of the utmost importance that wraparound services are in place to ensure that families receive the much needed support when participating in this trial. And, as highlighted already in this debate, these frankly are services that these communities should have a right to expect, irrespective of the existence of the card.

Our commitment in Labor is to consult with local communities about programs like this. We are committed to listening when they raise concerns. We're not interested in a top-down approach. We can see in the recommendations of the Senate inquiry, and indeed from our own consultations with local communities, that we simply cannot support the bill before us as it stands.

The recent Senate inquiry heard that there are huge gaps in the consultation process. For example, witnesses in Kalgoorlie expressed deep concern and dissatisfaction with the consultation process. I was very alarmed to see that consultation seemed to have taken place with local government only and not with people who work with those affected or people who are affected by this card. I was particularly alarmed during the course of the hearings in Kalgoorlie that first nations people were not adequately consulted in this process at all. Equally concerning was the feedback in Bundaberg. What we heard in Bundaberg was that the process was selective and secretive. It was difficult to access and not representative of the community.

It's not surprising to me that it was hard for people affected by this card to come forward and participate because, in many of the consultations, people felt stigmatised and unable to express their very real concerns about its rollout. My very dear friend and Labor colleague in the state parliament, Josie Farrer MP, the member for the Kimberley, has raised significant concerns about the trial based on the experience of her community. She has called for proper dialogue with her communities around implementation of the trial. I've spoken to Josie firsthand about how residents in her community have been adversely affected, particularly in the East Kimberley, and I've spoken to some of those residents myself.

It isn't worth the cost—some $25.5 million—nor is it worth the potential harm to the community to continue the rollout without being sure that it is delivering meaningful results. The best way to do this is, of course, to have a rigorous evaluation so we can be sure that, before proceeding with further rollouts, it is working. And I have to say, I have been very unsatisfied with the existing evaluations that have taken place. For one, the trials haven't been going long enough to enable a rigorous evaluation, and indeed they highlight the fact that the government is absolutely, doggedly, pursuing the implementation of this, irrespective of the outcomes for communities.

There is no evidence base to support their further rollout. The ORIMA evaluation, conducted in both Ceduna and East Kimberley, was flawed and inconclusive, and I support the concerns of the WA Council of Social Services, who raised significant concerns about the representativeness of the evaluations. In their submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, they point out that the extension of the trial has ignored the findings in wave 1 and wave 2 of the reports that the majority of participants indicated that their lives are worse since the implementation of the trials.

If the government wants to continue with these trials, it needs to amend and change what's going on within them, because the simple fact is that many people have reported increased hardship as a result of being on the card. We know that 52 per cent reported running out of money to buy food and 26 per cent reported doing so fortnightly. Despite claims that crime has reduced, independent research by Monash shows the opposite. The Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia also said:

Since the introduction of the cashless card in Kununurra there has been an increase in crime, an increase around elder abuse, an increase around soliciting and black market trades happening with service providers that can trade off the card for cash. So it hasn't dealt with the contentious issues that were identified; it has actually caused a major influx around other issues.

So, I am deeply concerned about the effectiveness of the existing trials and am increasingly concerned about the impact they are having in my home communities in Western Australia. We've seen problem after problem and criticism after criticism, which the government has simply glossed over.

Only last week we saw residents of the Tiwi Islands off the coast of Darwin left without power for five days due to storms. This meant residents reliant on the cashless debit card were unable to pay for basics like food and fuel, and were left with no access to buy essential goods. This kind of situation is inevitable when you restrict access to cash. I could see on the television the obvious distress that people on the Tiwi Islands were feeling from not being able to feed their families or buy fuel and other essential items. And what was really apparent—and even worse, when you've restricted people's access to cash in this way—was that the minister and the department couldn't even agree on what to do about it at the time.

The simple fact is cash is what gives communities and individuals flexibility. If you look out to the Goldfields, where you want to roll this trial out, you have to look at the microeconomies inside remote locations in places like the Ngaanyatjarra lands, where they have their own internal economies. I admit that I've seen gambling out there, but people also trade and use their cash for other essential items, be that bush tucker or anything else. The rollout is going to have a grave, grave impact on those economies that are very internal and inward-looking and have their own trade that goes on for the community's wellbeing. What we can see is terrible mismanagement, a lack of rigorous evaluation and a lack of understanding of the real situation of these communities from the current Liberal government.

I have to say there are significant concerns about the impact of the cashless debit card on family violence. Police data in the East Kimberley shows that, far from being prevented, family and domestic violence rates have risen since the introduction of the debit card trial. There is similar data from Ceduna. This is police data from the state jurisdictions on the increase in domestic violence rates in those locations. Ideologically, the government might like to assume that this card is going to bring domestic violence rates down, but what we know is that financial control is used as a tool by perpetrators of domestic violence. We know that extra financial stress can lead to problems in the home and we know that women are most often the victims of domestic and family violence. We must be sure that no government contributes to this.

I'm very concerned that the social and economic harm of the debit card has not been given the consideration that it should have been. The trials have an impact on children. We know that some of our most vulnerable children are growing up in these regional and remote communities. Poverty and disadvantage make life far more challenging for children. I certainly know of situations where women with children were in danger of being evicted from their housing because of difficulties with the cashless debit card. Josie Farrer MLA spoke to me about those concerns.

We have a situation here where income support should be about ensuring that everyone, especially children, are able to live life with the basics that we all take for granted. All children, all people, have the right to food, shelter, medical care and education. We're not helping vulnerable families by simply giving them a card and taking away control of their finances. We don't fix disadvantage by stigmatising people who are on welfare. We know factors that contribute to disadvantage are complex. They are often intergenerational, deep and entrenched, so our approach should be about helping and supporting families, not about stigmatising them. It should be one of understanding, empowerment and building resilience in communities, such as we heard in the Closing the Gap approach this morning.

We want to see wraparound services and support for people on the trial, but currently they are inadequate to truly address the challenges that the people in these communities are feeling. The government must look to funding for rehabilitation and mental health services and support to accompany its agenda of rolling out this card further, but I sincerely hope that we can stop that from happening. I want to say that, if we are successful in stopping that from happening, the government should put its money where its mouth is and roll out those wraparound services anyway.

In addition, I want to see the government be more forward thinking in their approach to these trials. The government should find ways to transition people off using the cashless debit card. They should work with them proactively to lower the proportion of their payments that are on the card, rather than people having to apply to committees. We know that at the core of this we want financial literacy and independence. There should be a plan for people within these communities right now to transition off the trials.

There is a long and seemingly ever-growing list of concerns with the cashless debit card. Until these concerns are addressed, we cannot be sure that this very expensive trial is seeing results. We cannot solve entrenched social issues without taking a holistic approach to helping families, and that is manifestly missing from the government's approach.

We're moving amendments in the Senate to address some of these concerns. We want to create a new trial end date of 30 June 2019, limit it to two discrete trial areas and guarantee funding for the services in the trial sites. I call on the government and the crossbench to support these amendments. We will consider the introduction of new trials only if the government can demonstrate, in formal consultation with communities, robust and credible evaluation, and sound wraparound services to address the many factors that contribute to disadvantage. It's simply not possible for us to support the expansion of a program without the evidence that it works, and there has not been adequate evidence to show that. You talk about your support from communities but the simple fact is: this is selective; it is coming only from some voices within communities, and you need—