Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015 and the introduction of the cashless credit card trial—nominally in the first instance in one of my towns, Ceduna. Every now and then we find a problem where all the participants know that we need a solution. The problem is so bad and compelling that we must be prepared to go the extra yard and find a solution. So it is with Ceduna, in the far west of my electorate, 880 kilometres from Adelaide by road. It takes a little less in an aeroplane, but most people travel by road. Its regional population, including the outlying Indigenous centres included in this legislation, it is about 4,500, of which in total about 25 per cent is Indigenous. So it is not an Indigenous community as such, even though some of the outliers are. The wider community, from the Indigenous communities to the mainstream community in Ceduna, have had enough. They have had enough of the alcohol addiction and abuse, enough of family violence, enough of wilful community damage, enough of harmful antisocial behaviour and how that impacts on community teachings, enough of the health ramifications—the people drinking themselves to death—and enough of the impacts that behaviour has on families, both immediate and in the intergenerational manner.

So Ceduna has been incredibly proactive over the years, over a long period. It already has significant alcohol restrictions. The council introduced some years ago, at ratepayers' expense, funded security patrols. This is called the canine patrol. They have dogs, which immediately met with great resistance from the human rights groups around Australia. But in fact those people have become the best friends of many of the Indigenous people visiting the town. They are the people that pick them up and take them back to their accommodation if there is accommodation available. The day engagement centre has a transient camp, training programs and all the normal things you expect in towns with a high Indigenous population. There is an arts centre which is funded. There are youth programs. More recently, we had the introduction of income management, including in a voluntary sense, which has proved quite popular. This is one of the things that help women in particular to deal with humbugging. They could say, 'Well, I don’t have any cash; I've only got my BasicsCard.' Then there have been a small number of people—it has been quite slow to get moving—that have been directed onto income management as a result of police and court orders that have happened around them.

Each time the community in Ceduna has moved to further address this problem we have initially seen a good result but, because alcoholics are enormously resourceful and find their way around almost any obstacle, eventually the effects erode. While you get some people off alcohol permanently with the programs that go with it, there is a core group who are committed to their drug, if you like. Sadly, in many cases these people come from outlying communities, they are bush people. Some come hundreds of kilometres. When they get in town you cannot get them home. They are disengaged from their individual health programs so sickness is a close companion.

Finally, a further option presented itself when Twiggy Forrest's report Creating parity into finding success for Indigenous training and employment came into being. I will come to the effects of that in a moment. It is worthwhile looking at some of the points in that report. It says, quite rightly, that the early years are critical for brain development. It says that Indigenous children are more than twice as likely to be developmentally delayed. There are lower birth weights and higher incidences of perinatal death and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Indeed, I am a member of the House Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs that recently tabled a report into the harmful use of alcohol in Indigenous communities that highlights so many of these points. The tragedy of FASD is alive and well, particularly in some of the remote communities, but of course it strikes closer to home for many of us.

I know these figures have been raised before in this debate, but in Ceduna in the 2013-14 there were 4,667 admissions to the sobering up unit and the hospitalisation rate for assault was 68 times the national average. That is particularly bad but from my point of view it is typical. It is not a figure particular to Ceduna—that is just the place we have the figures for. That is why this trial could well have national ramifications in the longer term.

The larger Ceduna community encompasses the Indigenous communities of Yalata, Oak Valley, Koonibba and the Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation, the local council and the Scotdesco Indigenous community. They broadly represent the homeland communities around Ceduna. They have had enough of the violence, enough of the premature deaths, enough of the FASD and enough of the generational disadvantage and are prepared to do whatever it takes. They have tried everything else that has been on offer before and they are willing to do whatever it takes.

It was in this space that Andrew Forrest's report was lodged. I would like to thank Parliamentary Secretary Alan Tudge, who had already spent a long time developing a relationship with Ceduna. I accompany him on most visits and I visit Ceduna on a more regular basis. When we were introducing the BasicsCard we needed everybody on board to make that happen. The more visits you have the better you get to know people. Familiarity breeds trust. Alan Tudge in that space was able to suggest that we could take another step and they were receptive. Over months there were more meetings building more trust. Importantly, we asked the communities to contribute to the design of the project. As the first cab off the rank they got to help write the rules on how this might roll out around other communities around Australia. This outcome has been negotiated. It is about give and take. We all own it and we all approve of it.

It is important to note that Ceduna has a mixed population. It is not an Indigenous town as such. This trial affects everyone. It is blind to race. I think that is a very important message for this government to be able to hang its hat on—that we are not chasing Aboriginal people, we are not chasing Indigenous people; we are chasing the problem of alcoholism that is completely out of control in the community. We have alcoholics who will turn their back on every other service and will spend every dollar they can lay their hands on on alcohol. They are intent on destroying themselves. Unfortunately, they destroy not only themselves but their families as well.

I pay special tribute to the Mayor of Ceduna, Allan Suter. He is a very brave local mayor—and I mean that in the best possible way. He is brave enough to call it as he sees it. He is respected in his community on that basis, so he is able to provide the leadership needed in this case. It is so important that the Ceduna district council representing the wider, if you like, non-Indigenous community was able to make a call on that community's behalf.

I remember saying on the day we signed the document: 'Maybe this is the day that the world of welfare has changed. Maybe we will look back on this as a seminal moment in our history as saying, "Welfare is provided to you to provide for your family and yourself in an appropriate way. It is there so you buy the important things in life. It is not there to destroy you and your family. It must be managed in that way."'

Maybe this trial will fail. I do not know—that is the point of having a trial. Maybe we will sit down in 12 months time and say: 'Nothing has changed. We just made a lot of extra work for ourselves.' Well we will not know until we try. I reckon there is enough meat around the subject to say that this could work not only a bit but really well. It will not be a silver bullet. It will not fix every single problem because, as I said, the alcoholics are committed and ingenious. They will find ways to get alcohol, but it will be much harder and they will need the compliance of friends and family if they want to get there, and friends, families and community leaders are saying, 'We have had enough.'

What is it? It is a 12-month trial. Twenty per cent of welfare income will go into a normal account—and this trial does not affect aged pensions—and 80 per cent will go on a debit card. You cannot withdraw cash from that debit card, but you can buy anything with it except alcohol, gambling services and, because you cannot withdraw cash, it is virtually impossible to buy drugs. Most drug dealers do not actually run an EFTPOS machine—well, I have not come across one that does! So you can buy food, housing, clothing, household tools and devices, phone accounts and pay medical bills. You can buy anything, but you cannot buy alcohol, you cannot buy drugs and you cannot buy gambling services.

The 20 per cent allowance is quite significant. On most welfare payments, 20 per cent is a sizeable amount. It could be spent on things like tickets to the football perhaps, treats for kids that are less than a dollar or two, or on raffle tickets. Importantly, the debit card looks like every other debit card that we all have in our wallets. There is some stigma attached to the BasicsCard. It is quite distinctive. When you go into the supermarket and you handover your BasicsCard, you think: 'Everybody knows I am on welfare. Everybody knows that I have my income managed.' With this cashless debit card, no-one will know. It will look exactly the same as all others, for all intents and purposes.

Electronically, it will be different because it will not work at certain cash registers. It will not work at the bottle shop. It will not work on online gambling services. It will not work in the pokies room. For instance, the Ceduna hotel has a number of different tills and, depending on what the local committee decide, it may work in the restaurant. So people may be able to take their family there and perhaps even buy a beer with their restaurant meal. As yet, that is undecided. The point is that an alcoholic is unlikely to buy much alcohol at dining room prices, so there is a regulatory thing in there. We are looking for this to not impact on people who are doing the right thing; we are trying to get people who are doing the wrong thing on the road.

I would like to particularly mention the community heads who signed up to the agreement on the day: Mayor Allan Suter and CEO Geoff Moffatt from the Ceduna council; Michael Haynes, a long-term advocate of the Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation, and Peter Miller—both fine gentlemen; Corey McLennan and Kevina Ware from Koonibba, which is about 30 kilometres down the road and the home of the Koonibba football club—and I might get to that if I have time left at the end of my speech; from the Scotdesco Aboriginal corporation, Robert Larking and Bronwyn Stott; from the Yalata community, Greg Franks and the remarkable Mima Smart—a wonderful leader of that community, strong and forthright; from Oak Valley, Sharon Yendall and Roger Williams—Oak Valley is a fair way up the track, not very far from Maralinga.

I cannot tell you how proud I am of those communities and how pleased I was that those leaders were prepared to step up to the plate, and perhaps get some community ire, and say: 'This is what we need to do to stop our people dying. This is what we need to do to protect our children. We will do whatever it takes.' I was so proud of them. I am proud of Ceduna for taking this on for Australia, for taking this on for all people around Australia, black and white, to see whether we can beat this scourge.

To celebrate the day, it was my 59th birthday, in fact—

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