Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

I'm speaking today on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017. In the 2017 budget, the government announced that it would roll out the cashless debit card in two further locations from 1 September 2017. These proposed locations, according to the government, are the Goldfields in Western Australia, and Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland. This bill enables this by repealing one section of the Social Security (Administration) Act. The section repealed by the bill, section 124PF, contains the existing limitations on the cashless debit card trial, which require that the trials end on 30 June 2018, that there be the limitation for trials to occur in up to three discrete trial areas, and that the trial areas include no more than 10,000 participants.

This bill provides the framework for additional cashless debit card locations but does not enable the rollout of the card in any specific location. Any new locations for the rollout still require a legislative instrument to be tabled in the parliament. These instruments are disallowable, which means that the rollout of the card can be agreed or opposed in specific locations and not in others. This is an important point. It means that the potential passage of this bill does not automatically mean that the card will be rolled out in Bundaberg or the Goldfields, for example. It can still be disallowed through a disallowable instrument in the Senate.

Labor will not oppose this bill in the House today, but we do reserve our final position until the completion of the Senate inquiry into this bill that's currently underway. I must say, I'm very disappointed that this bill has come on for debate in the House of Representatives before the Senate inquiry has concluded. Rolling out this card is a very big decision for any community, and for this parliament, and it should not be rushed. This legislation requires greater scrutiny and deliberation than is being allowed for by the minister by bringing forward this bill for debate today. We certainly, on our side of the House, want to see the findings of the Senate inquiry before determining our final position.

Labor also want time to be able to conduct our own consultations with local community leaders in the newly proposed sites of Kalgoorlie and the surrounding communities, and Bundaberg and nearby Hervey Bay. The particular disallowable instruments to enable the card, of course, have yet to be introduced into the parliament, and the government has not said when they will be, so Labor reserves the right to support or oppose specific locations on a case-by-case basis.

I have received a lot of correspondence from people seeking Labor's position on the cashless debit card, so I do today want to take the time to spell out the principles that are guiding Labor's approach to this issue. We do support genuine, community-driven initiatives designed to tackle alcohol abuse. We do understand that many, many communities want assistance in addressing chronic alcohol related abuse. We also know that the cashless debit card alone cannot be a solution in addressing this problem. Labor have consistently said that we would take a community-by-community approach to the further rollout of the cashless card. We'll listen to each community's leaders and talk with them about the consequences of this card being rolled out in their community. Wraparound support services must also be community designed, agreed upon and resourced to address the challenges facing these communities, and, of course, they're different in different places. We understand—and this is a very important point—that the vast majority of social security recipients are more than capable of managing their own personal finances. That's why Labor does not support the cashless debit card being rolled out nationwide.

In 2015, Labor supported the cashless debit card trials in the east Kimberley and Ceduna and the surrounding communities. We did so after consulting with local community leaders. We also did so after securing additional funding for wraparound services, including drug and alcohol counselling and more mental health support services. It is important to recognise that, in the case of Ceduna, there was a formal memorandum of understanding that was signed with community leaders in 2015, and that included not only the Ceduna council and the community heads working group but also community leaders from the surrounding Aboriginal communities.

In assessing the best way to address alcohol related abuse and violence, all policy levers need to be considered. Just last week the Northern Territory government released a report by Trevor Riley proposing some of the biggest ever changes to the Northern Territory's alcohol management policies, and there are a range of recommendations that are relevant to this debate. I'm pleased to see that the Gunner government have said that they will accept, in principle, nearly all of the recommendations from the review—for example, they've indicated that they will enact a complete moratorium on all new takeaway alcohol licences—the point being that there's a suite of policy approaches that must be taken into consideration when trying to reduce alcohol consumption in an effort to deal with violence and abuse. I'd say to everyone that's been involved in this cashless debit card trial that it really was never going to be the case that an 18-month trial could meaningfully address multiple generations of disadvantage, poverty and social dysfunction. I think it was very misguided of those who thought that it could.

Income management, of course, is a very complex policy question, and one of the concerns that are often raised with me is: why should it apply to everyone in a community? What evidence is there that income management should apply to everyone in a community to effectively counter alcohol related abuse that only applies to some people? Why shouldn't people go on income management after certain trigger points—for instance, following the recommendations of the local department of child protection? These are some of the many questions that are being put that need answers.

Communities also want to know how consent by a location will actually be measured and what assessment is being undertaken by the government of the service gaps in each community where the cashless card is being proposed. What access is there to the alcohol and drug treatment services, mental health supports, family violence counselling, housing, health, education, jobs and strong cultural requirements that are, of course, essential for strong communities? All of these issues need to be assessed in deciding whether or not this card should be introduced in any particular place.

The intent of the trials of the cashless card in Ceduna and the east Kimberley was to test whether significantly reducing access to discretionary cash by placing a large proportion of a person's welfare payment into a restricted bank account can reduce the habitual abuse of and associated harm from alcohol, gambling and illegal drugs. The government has recently released the ORIMA evaluation of the trials, and this evaluation shows very mixed results.

I'm sorry to say that the evaluation has been widely criticised for being deeply flawed. I want to go particularly to one detailed analysis of the ORIMA evaluation. Janet Hunt is the deputy director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University and she says that the evaluation showed that the government's cashless card trials had not actually improved safety and violence despite that being one of the trial's objectives. Her research paper on the evaluation is critical of the methodology used in the ORIMA evaluation. She points out that the people interviewed for the evaluation may have told interviewers that they drank less than before the trial began but that such recall over a year 'is not likely to have been very reliable'. She also makes the valid point that, given that people had to give their identification to the interviewer, they may have said exactly what they thought the interviewer wanted to hear and they certainly would not have incriminated themselves by saying that they were taking illegal drugs. I think we can all understand that this would be particularly true for the Aboriginal population, who for historical reasons are likely to view authority figures with serious suspicion.

The Minister for Human Services described the cashless debit card trials as a huge success, and the Prime Minister himself said that the card has seen 'a massive reduction in alcohol abuse, in drug abuse, in domestic violence, in violence generally'. But Janet Hunt made clear that this wasn't the case, stating clearly:

Someone needs to tell them that the report does not say that.

When participants were asked about the impact of the trial on their children's lives, only 17 per cent reported feeing their lives were better as a result. In fact, a bigger group of parents—around 24 per cent—felt that their children's lives were actually worse. Asked to reflect on the trial's impact on their own lives, 32 per cent reported it had made their lives worse, compared with 23 per cent saying their lives had improved. One in three people responding to the survey reported struggling to transfer money to children who were away at boarding school or to pay for things at community fairs, swimming pools or school canteens. Crime statistics remained flat or worsened, the only improvement being lower rates of drunk driving and public intoxication in Ceduna. So we certainly don't believe that the government can justify the further rollout of this card on what is clearly a flawed evaluation.

The cost of the rollout of the cashless debit card is also an important consideration in this debate. According to documents released by the Department of Social Services to the opposition under freedom of information, the government has spent up to $18.9 million on implementing and managing the two existing trials between July 2015 and April 2017. The government has paid $7.9 million of that to the debit card provider, Indue, and almost $1.6 million to ORIMA Research to provide a frankly substandard evaluation. Wraparound services in the community such as drug and alcohol treatment and financial counselling cost a further $2.6 million. The $18.9 million equates to more than $10,000 per participant.

It's quite extraordinary that we're debating this bill today without any indication from the minister about how much it will cost taxpayers to roll out the card in the two new proposed sites in the Goldfields and Bundaberg-Hervey Bay. There is no indication whatsoever about what this will cost taxpayers.

In April this year the shadow minister for human services and I went to the east Kimberley to meet with community leaders in Kununurra and in Wyndham. We met with a range of different Aboriginal organisations and also the Kununurra Hospital, St John Ambulance, Kununurra police, the Sobering Up Shelter, Job Pathways, the Department for Child Protection and a number of other organisations in Wyndham. The feedback we received was mixed. I have an enormous amount of respect and regard for Ian Trust, the head of the Wunan Foundation. He is adamant that the card can be a circuit-breaker for his people. The St John Ambulance Brigade in Kununurra said that the call-outs for alcohol related violence had gone down. The police made it clear that, with respect to domestic violence rates within the Kimberley, 75 per cent of the incidents are influenced by alcohol, with either the victim or the perpetrator, and they're supportive of any policy attempts to tackle alcohol consumption in the community.

At the recent Senate inquiry, the Western Australia Police Force released data on domestic assaults. The 12 months to 30 June 2017 saw 508 domestic assaults in Kununurra. For the 12 months previous to that, 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016, there were 319 domestic assaults. So, unfortunately, the data says that domestic assaults in this area have gone up. It is the case, and the Western Australia Police Force noted this, that it's very difficult to fully assess the value of the card from a violence perspective because the Kimberley district revised their approach to domestic violence to include a more thorough first response to reports of domestic violence. So it is very, very difficult to make an assessment about whether things have become better or worse in relation to domestic violence. What the data does show, though, is that there has been a uniform increase in the reporting of domestic assaults across the Kimberley. Of course, I'm sure we would all agree that 508 domestic assaults in Kununurra, based on the figures from the Western Australia Police Force, are far too many.

The shadow minister for human services and I also visited the women's refuge in Kununurra and talked to some of the women who were staying there, and they did not have a positive view of the card. From their point of view, life had become harder with the card; there was more violence and more crime as cash had become scarce. More recently, others said that they felt let down by the Minister for Human Services, who promised a lot but, in their eyes, had failed to deliver. Mr Lawford Benning, the chairperson of MG Corporation, an original supporter of the card, told the recent Senate inquiry hearing:

… the Minister for Human Services, made various commitments to me prior to the introduction of the CDC—

the cashless debit card—

trial in Kununurra, none of which were delivered on time or as promised.

One of the issues that were raised in Kununurra with us was that the local Indigenous community thought that they would be given delegated authority to remove people from the cashless debit card without the process being intrusive. I have to say that it is still the case that the exact process of removing people or reducing the amount of money on the card is very, very opaque. This issue really needs to be cleared up. In Ceduna recently, I met with people who were on the cashless debit card. They then applied to be removed from the card through the community panel and ultimately got off the card, but the exact process by which this took place remains completely unclear. Who in the Department of Social Services ultimately makes the decision and on what basis? We really don't know. More importantly, local people in Kununurra, Wyndham, Ceduna and the surrounding communities also don't know.

We also met with people who were on the card and found it very difficult to manage their money because they didn't have money to send away to their children in boarding school and a whole range of other reasons. Others said that the sly-grog trade meant that there are, unfortunately, ways in which people get around the card if they want to buy alcohol. The policymakers would be better off restricting the sale of alcohol through tougher alcohol management rules and tougher policing of the sly-grog trade rather than introducing a cashless card on all social security recipients.

It is important to note that the current Takeaway Alcohol Management System in Kununurra allows for people to buy two cartons of full-strength beer, six bottles of wine, or one litre of wine or spirits with an alcohol content of 15 per cent or more per day. That's the amount of alcohol that the current Takeaway Alcohol Management System allows for every single day in Kununurra. Of course, this stands in marked contrast to the situation, for example, in Fitzroy Crossing, where only light-strength takeaway alcohol can be sold. The controls were introduced in Fitzroy Crossing, and in Halls Creek two years later, with a lot of community support, and the studies of the impact in those two communities have been very positive, showing a dramatic drop in assaults, a drop in domestic violence and a drop in presentations to hospital emergency departments. I must say, this point was made to me again by Ian Trust in Kununurra, where he indicated that he certainly wanted to see tighter alcohol takeaway limits in that community.

A common sentiment expressed to the member for Barton and me during our visit was that things are so bad in these communities that they're willing to give anything new a go. I would say that they support the cashless card not out of hope but out of despair. They certainly don't think that this card is a silver bullet. They emphasised just how important it is to help people into work and the need for better employment programs. They want to see young people especially finding meaningful work and also that we implement tougher alcohol management controls.

As I mentioned, in September I went to Ceduna and some of the surrounding communities and met with a range of people on the ground there about the rollout of the card. Once again, we received quite a mixed response. The Mayor of Ceduna is a very strong supporter. Corey McLennan, from one of the local Aboriginal corporations, is a compelling advocate for the card continuing. They really want to see the card continue. By contrast, the Aboriginal health service in Ceduna and their CEO have spoken powerfully against the card. At the recent Senate inquiry, their CEO, Zell Dodd, said:

… there is an urgent need for Aboriginal people to be at the centre of building their own capacity and purpose … growing local capacity and training opportunities so that Aboriginal people are equipped physically, mentally and spiritually to deal with the issues that confront them on a daily basis. For many it is on a 24/7 basis. Services have to be in place for a minimum of five years, not three.

It's also the case that Zell Dodd raised concerns about the funding certainty of the wraparound services in Ceduna. The health service indicated that the funding associated with the card rollout for an alcohol and drug worker actually only lasted for one year. They also noticed that the nearest alcohol and drug rehab centre was more than four to five hours away in Port Augusta—and, of course, this was not acceptable.

Other Aboriginal leaders I spoke to gave quite a nuanced perspective on the card. Some said that the card had resulted in some positive change but not as much as claimed by the government. It stopped some people drinking as much as they had before, but some people are still drinking. It hasn't encouraged people into work. Many, many people have said to me that the real solution has to be to help people into work, to encourage Indigenous businesses that employ people in their own communities. One thing everyone agreed to throughout my visit to Ceduna and the far west was that the Community Development Program needs to be fixed. Everyone, including those who support the card, said how important that is. Corey McLennan, for example, who is a supporter of the card, was scathing about the Community Development Program. Bob Larking, from Scotdesco Aboriginal Community, was the same. We simply cannot be talking about reducing alcohol consumption and violence without talking about jobs and the failure of the Community Development Program.

The government is now proposing to roll out this card in the Goldfields region, including a number of different communities. It wants that to happen from January 2018. I understand the government's proposal is that that be in place for 12 months. The Mayor of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, a supporter of the card, said at the recent Senate inquiry that the failure of the Community Development Program was the 'main reason that we're sitting here today'. By that he meant that they were considering the cashless debit card. The second site the government's proposing is Bundaberg-Hervey Bay. In quite a different approach, the government's proposing that this rollout of the card be targeted at those under 35 years of age and at those who receive Newstart, youth allowance, jobseeker, parenting payment single or parenting payment partnered. At this stage, the Senate inquiry hasn't heard from anyone in this area. Labor will reserve our final position until the completion of the Senate inquiry that's currently underway.

As I said, we won't oppose the bill today, but I am very, very disappointed that the government has brought this debate on before the Senate inquiry is finished. We need to have answered all of the questions that I have raised here today. This legislation really does require proper scrutiny. We of course will be conducting our own consultations with communities in the Goldfields and the Bundaberg-Hervey Bay area. We reserve our right to support or oppose specific locations on a case-by-case basis, depending on the views of local communities.

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