Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon I also take note of the additional documents that have been tabled for the Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry into the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management and Cashless Welfare) Bill. I know these tabled documents will be part of the submissions that this committee has undertaken. I think it's worth highlighting that, overwhelmingly, the majority of the submissions made to the inquiry condemn this legislation. They're not supportive of the legislation for a number of very, very solid reasons. There has been no solid or rigorous evaluation of the cashless debit card in the trial sites that shows in any way at all that the scheme is effective in reducing social harms, particularly in reducing the harmful use of alcohol and other substances. That's certainly been borne out in large part by some of the evidence that's come through from the East Kimberley, when you look at things like domestic violence statistics.

This bill, which these submissions relate to, has given the minister extraordinary power to determine the level of restricted payments. There are flaws in the operation of the cashless debit card. As Senator McCarthy highlighted, it's not worth all the administration behind it, because people are able to get around it. It doesn't do what it purports to do, but what it does do is subject people to a great deal of inconvenience, in many cases, when trying to meet their basic living needs and costs. As submissions to the inquiry highlighted, there has been no real consultation with Northern Territory stakeholders and affected communities regarding the planned rollout of the CDC, and those communities have been wise to be suspicious about its implementation, based on the experiences in the East Kimberley.

In my own state of WA, I have extreme concern about its rollout. Just this week, we've been in touch with a constituent who has a serious issue with getting by on the card. She was put on the scheme before she moved to a country town in WA. It's a small country town, and it's without the shops that accept the management scheme card. She has been in touch with Centrelink to ask if she can be taken off the scheme until it's rolled out in the new town, but she was told by the Centrelink operator that it would take 13 weeks to process. This means she has to drive some 30 kilometres to the nearest store which accepts the card. There's a reason that she's on the cashless debit card. She's suffering from serious health issues and she has a three-year-old daughter to care for. This commute is very difficult for her, and it's completely unnecessary. Because she can't go to the local shop, she's forced to make a 30 kilometre commute to buy the necessities and basics for her family. It is, indeed, already hard enough to get by on income support without being subjected to the extra cost of the high cost of petrol and travelling that 30 kilometres to buy things as basic as bread and milk.

The inquiry uncovered major flaws in the CDC. It's of no surprise to me there are further submissions that continue to come into the committee that have had to be tabled outside the official committee process in this chamber. The Northern Territory government said:

Our understanding is that this process would be delivered outside the current Centrelink process, with cards delivered by mail, which is of extreme concern to us. People would be required to utilise websites, emails and call centres to receive the card, make balance inquiries, manage loss of cards and make other inquiries.

I know the bureaucrats have been asked to implement the card by the government, but if you've ever been to the places that it's is being rolled out to, you would understand how extraordinarily impractical what you're asking for is. People have to line up outside their local community centre to use a computer. There may be no telephone or mobile reception. The only phone call, in many cases, that can be made in remote locations is often via the community phone. Do you know what happens there? The phone rings, someone answers it, you call around the community to see who it's for and the person on the line will wait ten minutes for someone to walk out to that person's house and back again in order to answer that call. You cannot possibly expect that people who have issues with this card are able to resolve them using the internet. Even if you had the internet in many of these locations, the simple fact that these communities have been without decent internet communications forever simply means that, culturally, people aren't equipped to navigate their life using that kind of technology.

It is little wonder to me that the Northern Territory government is up in arms about this legislation and also made submissions to the inquiry. They said:

This will be difficult for people living in remote locations with limited phone and web access and very poor postal services—and impossible for people living more remotely in one of the Territory's 500 homelands or outstations. It is our strong view that a significant body of work needs to be undertaken to examine how these arrangements can work in remote areas. We do not see this working and remain highly concerned about the impact on existing social crisis services when a number of people will be unable to access their funds.

If we are serious in our nation about valuing Indigenous culture then people have a right to live on country, but this government seems determined by whatever means to make it impossible for people to do so. Living out on country, there are no grog shops. They're very culturally and lifestyle oriented places, and yet this government is determined to denigrate those communities by saying, 'Well, you can't manage your own finances. We don't trust you to go and do your own shopping.' The simple fact is: this government does not understand the economies of these places where people absolutely have to trade goods with each other, whether it's the fish they've caught, the wild game that they might have caught or a lift into town that you have to exchange for a little bit of cash to cover petrol money. It is absolutely outrageous the way this government wants to interfere with Indigenous economies in our country.

Evidence from the Central Land Council was that a meeting of delegates was the first time they'd heard about the government's proposed rollout of this card. They said:

As with the intervention, the cashless debit card is being rolled forward without consultation or consideration of what might work best for people on the ground … more than 35,000 Territorians have had direct experience of income management over the 12 years, the majority of them being Aboriginal and living in remote communities where life is already very tough.

Why would you not talk to these people about the rollout of the card? Everyone in these communities already has lived experience and are much more qualified than bureaucrats in Canberra or this government to decide what's good for them. So I think it's high time this government woke up to the reality of life for Australians living in these locations, and I really commend people for making submissions to the inquiry.