Senate debates

Tuesday, 11 February 2020

Questions without Notice

Welfare

2:20 pm

Photo of Anne RustonAnne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Siewert for her ongoing interest in the cashless debit card and income management more generally. The issue which Senator Siewert raises is in relation to the exit provisions that have newly been put into place for people to be able to exit for a different reason than the harm that potentially could happen to people—the psychological harm for people in distress. This is a different exit mechanism for the cashless debit card. It came about through some legislation last year, and we started the process of enabling people to contact the Department of Social Services to seek to exit the card last year. Subsequent to a number of people having put forward the request to be able to exit the card, there were a number of quite complex pieces of information that were required, some of which were actually under the purview of the state and territory governments. Currently, we are undertaking the review of the requests from those people who have requested to come off the card, and we will continue to work with the state and territory governments, in the areas where the cashless debit card currently exists, to make sure that we have fully examined all of the criteria necessary to determine whether the aspects that we require—that the government and the legislation require—for people to exit the card have been able to be met.

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