Lisa Darmanin (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I think has been made pretty clear by my colleagues tonight, the government will be opposing this disallowance motion. Frankly, it's not a very complicated debate, but I thought, perhaps by way of example, I would make an illustration of the point.

Imagine, as maybe has happened in my household from time to time, it's a school day. You've had a very busy week at work, and you may have slept in because your phone may have gone flat, and the alarm didn't go off. You wake up with not long before the kids have to get to school, and you rush to the fridge to make breakfast for them and to get their lunches ready, and you find there is no milk in the fridge, and there is no bread in the pantry. So you throw your thongs on, you get into the car and you drive down to the servo to get bread to make the kids lunch to take to school. But the servo doesn't take cash, so the kids have to go to school without a sandwich. That is what this motion seeks to do—to have kids go to school hungry, with no bread, no sandwiches, no time to go to another shop before getting them to school. This is what this motion seeks to do, which is just outrageous.

We're talking about whether Australians can use cash to pay for the essentials that they need, like bread to make a sandwich to go to school and milk for before you go to school. What is being proposed does not protect that right; it gets rid of it. While Australia is undoubtedly becoming an increasingly digital economy, if your phone runs out of battery and you can't use tap and pay, and if the petrol station doesn't have the ability to take your cash, then the kids go hungry. That's the reality that the Albanese government understands. It doesn't just matter to families and busy mums and dads and carers with kids, who've got to get their kids to school on time with food in their tummies; it matters to the people in regional and rural communities, it matters to older Australians, and it matters to people experiencing financial vulnerability.

Debate interrupted.