Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can I particularly thank the member for Grey. He really has his heart in this issue. His community is well served to have him advocating on this issue. Mate, we need more people like you in this place.

If I could go to this issue in a very direct manner. One of the great tragedies of this country has been our inability to see significant progress in Closing the Gap. Despite the best of intentions from many people in government and in the community, we have not made the progress that we need to make as a country. Clearly, if we are realistic about this, simply accepting the status quo is not working. It is our obligation as policymakers to be prepared to try new things. If those things do not work, we can always try other policy measures. Simply having good intentions but saying, 'What's currently out there is not working, but we'll keep adding good intentions and no new policy objectives to this important initiative for our nation,' is not good enough.

It is a great honour to rise to talk about the new cashless welfare debit card and the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015. This is a very significant reform in a vital sector. This new cashless card will be trialled and the trial locations will be chosen on the basis of high-welfare dependence and high social harm indicators and openness from community leaders to participate in the trial. This will be a 12-month trial. I want to particularly commend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, Alan Tudge, a great mate of mine. This is a case study in effective policy development.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I am very glad to see the Assistant Treasurer also adding his praise to Alan Tudge. He has done a very effective job in bringing people together. The fact that in this trial we have the overwhelming support of the Ceduna community coming behind this is a real testament to the work that he has done.

This is not an easy area of reform. This is not an easy thing to pull off. It is indeed a very significant change in approach in the way that we deal with the delivery of welfare but it is our obligation to get this right. This new reform is guided by some very simple principles, some fundamental principles about how we deliver welfare as a nation. The first thing is that welfare is there to protect the most vulnerable people in our community, to give assistance to those people who are most in need. This reform does exactly that but it still provides freedom of choice for people because, as a cashless debit card, you can purchase whatever you like but you simply cannot purchase items which inflict harm not only on yourself the individual but on the collective. You cannot go out and buy drugs or alcohol and you cannot gamble your welfare payments away. This is money from the Australian taxpayers to the most vulnerable people in our community to say: we are here to help when you need that vital assistance but we are not going to allow you to use other people's money to purchase things that will harm you and harm the community that you live in.

For me, I think this is an incredibly important reform and one that is long overdue. The fact that we have the opportunity here as a country to give this an effective shot with a community right behind this change, I think, is a real opportunity to make real progress on those noble goals of Closing the Gap, which are so important. For me, I think this is a great opportunity, one that we must not let slip through our fingers. I hope that this bill has very significant support in the parliament in both houses because the reality is, if at the end of this 12-month trial it does not work, we can go back to the drawing board. We can try something else. But surely there is enough cause to give this a shot and, hopefully, change the lives of so many people for the better because that is the obligation of all people in this House. I commend this bill very strongly to House.

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