Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's with pleasure that I rise to speak on this bill in the House tonight. It's a pleasure only in the sense that my comments come from a place of concern about the legislation being put before the House this evening, concern that is based upon both evidence that has come before respective committees of this parliament and the experiences of Indigenous men and women who have talked to me about the implications of this proposal in their communities and concerns about the expansion of such proposed trials into new communities.

The bill before us is the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017. In essence, this bill is seeking to remove section 124PF of the Social Security (Administration) Act, which is the one that currently provides for the trial sites for the cashless debit cards in three discrete locations, puts a cap on there being no more than 10,000 participants and in fact expires on 30 June this year. The bill seeks to make amendments to allow for both the continuation of the cashless debit card in existing sites and the potential expansion of the cashless debit card into new locations. Regrettably, it does so on, at best, very flimsy evidence, and that is a real problem for us as lawmakers and policymakers. We do not have substantive evidence before us to be able to say that these measures are meeting the deliverable outcomes—that there were clear purposes set down for the cashless debit card and there have been terrific measured outcomes and you can see the genuine social, cultural and economic advantages of the cashless debit card. We don't have any of that before us so, like my Labor colleagues speaking to this bill today, I have grave concerns about a number of aspects in this bill.

I am deeply concerned about the non-voluntary nature of the measures in this bill. I am also deeply concerned about the clearly disproportionate impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and those who don't have drug, alcohol or gambling concerns, and in these communities there are many. This approach of throwing a big wide net to capture everybody in a community with this very blunt instrument—the cashless debit card—sweeps up everybody and in doing so completely disempowers so many people in those communities.

I could not even begin to imagine what it would be like to have spent my life determining my future and that of my family and being an autonomous human being and a great contributor to my community and perhaps being a leader in that community and to now have to forgo all of that autonomy because the government prefers to cast the wide net and throw a very blunt instrument at what is a very deep, historical, social and economic challenge in many of our communities. To me that is the essence of lazy policymaking. That is an example of a government that has such short-term thinking and has such a narrow focus on the situation before it. It is indicative of a gross lack of vision. It's indicative of the complete lack of ambition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.

In a few days this House is going to have the Closing the Gap report before it again. Without pre-empting that report, I expect that, like the years beforehand, that report is going to gravely let down Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. Every one of us in this House should be deeply ashamed by the continued lack of progress. I am hopeful that we will see in the Closing the Gap report some progress around some of the education indicators and some movement towards both secondary and higher education achievements for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country, but I think we are all dreading that report in the sense that there will be continued failures of government policy to have the desired impact and outcomes.

You would think that the Australian parliament might learn from these mistakes that we face year after year after year. You might think those of us in this place might think, 'Well, we're not getting it right when we simply seek to impose policy solutions on these communities.' We've got any number of reports and examples to show that this is a pathway to failure. Yet, here we have before us another piece of legislation that I would argue does exactly that. It is exactly what we know doesn't work. Where is the plan for jobs in remote and regional Australia? Where are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people going to be getting their jobs, participating in mainstream economic activity, earning a livelihood to increase their quality of life and having a decent income? There aren't any plans for that on the table.

Where are the plans that are going to improve Indigenous health and wellbeing in Australia? For goodness sake, this government can't even commit to a housing agreement across the states and territories in Australia! Right now, there are communities everywhere screaming out for safe, affordable housing options in their communities. We know that housing is one of those social determinants for quality health and wellbeing in our communities. But, no, we've got no answer for jobs and employment for these communities that are crying out for some kind of support mechanism. We've got no investment in important infrastructure, like housing, in these communities. We've got no additional adequately funded and long-term wraparound services that would assist people seeking rehabilitation around alcohol, drugs, and gambling addictions. That's not part of the government's thinking. That's not part of the plan here. No! And that is why I call this policy out as lazy policy. We see it far too often in this House, and nowhere is it made more clear than policies directed at first nation peoples.

Each and every time this government says: 'Frankly, we don't know what to do. We're going to throw this one out there, and see how that goes. But don't worry. It'll just be a temporary measure. It's a bit of time-out for these communities who are facing challenges.' I don't underestimate for one moment the challenges that a number of these communities are facing. People absolutely are crying out for support and help around the drug, alcohol and gambling addictions that are troubling not just to those individuals but to entire families and networks within communities. I don't underestimate that for one moment. But, as I said, what is required in those situations is community-driven solutions—community-driven solutions that are then supported by us in this House. They are supported financially. Indeed, there are other sorts of support in terms of infrastructure and encouragement around being able to assist communities to implement great community-driven solutions.

We've seen this in places like Fitzroy Crossing, a place that I called home for many years in my life, with some of the most amazing people I have known—predominantly women. Very strong Bunuba women—and not just Bunuba women—have led really brave and courageous changes in their community to deal with the issue around alcohol and the impact that that was having for kids in their community in particular. They have managed to turn around a situation without blaming particular persons and without victimising or socially isolating parts of their communities. They have engendered great community buy-in to the solutions in their town that are going to work to help turn around that alcohol addiction in Fitzroy Crossing. There's much evidence, and that story is now well documented. I say this House should be supporting those kinds of community-driven approaches and pathways that assist communities to empower their own people. They, in fact, know much better than most in this House what will work in those communities.

Regrettably, what we have before us in this House is, as I said, a very narrowly focused piece of legislation that purports to be a temporary measure—but we've seen what temporary measures are like in this House. They have a terrible habit of becoming permanent impositions in communities as decades go by, chipping away slowly at any efforts at self-management and any efforts to restore autonomy to families and community lives. We do people no favours when we disempower them. We do communities no favours when we do not support their own community-driven solutions and approaches.

It is a great disappointment that we appear not to be learning from important lessons shown to us in the past. If there were terrific community support backing in these proposals, or if there were a body of strong evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of these proposals, that would be a different conversation for this House. There have been many alternative approaches put before the Senate inquiry. Regrettably, we're not exploring those in this House. We're not looking at different ways that you might look at increasing taxation on alcohol to assist with those. Again, a narrowly focused— (Time expired)

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