Anne Aly (Cowan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill, and in doing so I'd like to start by reiterating something that I've said in this House before, and that is that this bill is just another example of this government's ideological pursuit of people on welfare. It's an unrelenting ideological pursuit of some of the most vulnerable people in Australia.

This bill changes the card technology used for income management in the Northern Territory and Cape York without changing who is placed on income management or the quarantined portion of payments. It replaces the BasicsCard with the cashless debit card across the Northern Territory and Cape York, with rollouts scheduled to be completed by 2020. It maintains the current 50 per cent quarantine rate for most people subject to income management in the Northern Territory. It extends the existing cashless debit card trial areas—Ceduna, East Kimberley, the Goldfields, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg—by one year to 30 June 2021. It removes the current cap on the number of the trial participants. It sets an end date of 31 December 2021 for the Cape York cashless debit card trial. It allows people in the Northern Territory to come off the cashless debit card if they can demonstrate that they are effectively managing their finances. And, importantly, it allows the minister to make a non-disallowable rule and increase the proportion of a person's payment quarantined on the cashless debit card to 100 per cent. The minister currently has this power in relation to the BasicsCard. But it is significant in the context of the 80 per cent quarantine rates in the existing cashless debit card locations.

Labor has said that it does not support this bill. We simply cannot support this bill in its current form, for a number of reasons. First of all—and in my mind one of the most important reasons why we cannot support this bill—is that it is simply discriminatory. It is a discriminatory bill that applies predominantly, 80 per cent of the time, to First Nations people. Eighty per cent of those on income management in the Northern Territory are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. That's a really important reason not to support this bill. But an equally important reason is that there is actually no clear evidence. Twelve years after the intervention there is absolutely no clear empirical evidence that broad based mandatory income management has worked.

I'd like to take a few minutes to go through some of the results of evaluations on the income management system that the government has been using that demonstrate that this has not worked. An evaluation of the income management in the Northern Territory, that was completed by the University of New South Wales in 2014, found little evidence that broad based compulsory income management is resulting in widespread behavioural change. That's with respect to either building an ability to effectively manage money or building socially responsible behaviour beyond the direct impact of limiting the amount that an individual can spend on certain items. That evaluation suggested that there was some evidence to support targeted income management, but certainly not the kind of income management that this government is seeking to put in place with this bill, which is, effectively, a deliberate attempt to precursor a national rollout of the cashless debit card.

It's not hard to understand why it is that such broad-based compulsory income management does not result in behavioural change or in building capacity. If this government were indeed serious about behavioural change or building capacity, they would certainly employ some of those proven techniques in social behavioural change that have been developed over many years and that have resulted in things like, for example, a reduction in smoking rates among teens and young people or a reduction in alcoholic consumption for young people and teens. These are proven and effective means of changing behaviour, using theories of behavioural change that have stood the test of time and that have a very strong empirical and research base over many years. But that's not what this government are doing. Instead, they are insisting on using an income management scheme: a compulsory, broad-based income management scheme that we know—from this evidence, from this review that was undertaken, and from these evaluations—does not result in behavioural change. So the argument that I've been hearing from the government that the introduction of the cashless debit card and their income management program has resulted in behavioural change holds very little weight when you hold it up against the actual research and actual evaluation by people who know about behavioural change models.

Last year, in a document presented to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the Australian government itself wrote that there are more positive results associated with people who volunteer, as they have made a choice to change their behaviour and receive assistance. Positive findings have been found for people who have been referred for income management by a social worker or a child protection officer. Again, by the government's own admission, mandatory, broad-based compulsory income management, such as that being proposed by this bill, does not work, because it does not change behaviours. It does not take an expert in this field to tell you that; social change and behavioural change models exist across many fields, as I've mentioned before.

The government's own most recent review of the cashless debit card indicated some reduction in certain behaviours, such as drinking and drug use. Again, these changes were based on a self-reported survey of participants. As a researcher myself, I would hardly call self-reporting on behaviours a valid and scientifically reliable way of collecting data. It's certainly not replicable, and I think that it would not hold up to a test of reliability and scientific vigour. The Auditor-General has also found that there is no evidence that the cashless debit card is working and recommended better baseline data collection and monitoring. So we have flawed data collection, flawed monitoring from the government itself, an admission by the government that those who volunteer for income management are much more likely to change their behaviours than those who are forced onto it, and we have an evaluation undertaken by experts in the field who say it is very ineffective in building the kind of socially responsible behaviour that this government is trying to argue the cashless debit card builds.

Alongside all of that evidence, we also have the fact that there are significant weaknesses in the cashless debit card technology, including being able to wash money through a credit card because the cashless debit card can be used to pay off a credit card. I recall in the Senate inquiry Senator Jacqui Lambie stating that you could still buy alcohol using the card, if you used your credit card and then used your cashless debit card to pay off your credit card. So there are ways around it. Particularly given the fact that the cashless debit card and this program do not change behaviour, it would seem quite logical to come to the conclusion that people will find ways of continuing their behaviours using these weaknesses in the cashless debit card technology.

It also has inaccurate automatic classification of retailers using merchant codes and it cannot be used to purchase goods in the cash economy, such as second-hand items, or at roadside stalls and markets, like the local growers' markets. That means that people with limited income lose access to some of the cheaper alternatives, not to mention the possible contributions that can be made to a circular economy if people use recycled goods and purchase things second hand.

So we've got no clear evidence that mandatory income and management works, and we've got evaluations that have been taken and we know that it doesn't really change behaviour. We know that there are significant weaknesses in the cashless debit card technology and, importantly, we also know that this bill presents very much as a deliberate precursor to the national rollout of the cashless debit card, which is what several members of the government have indicated they would like to see.

Labor is pleased to see that the government has extended some of the amendments that Labor moved earlier this year. Those amendments allow people to come off the cashless debit card if they are effectively managing their finances. But even those amendments do not fix the fundamental problems with the cashless debit card and, indeed, with the entire approach of mandatory income management. It should not be discriminately imposed on people without a reason relating to their individual circumstances. And unless a person volunteers to use the card, or a community makes an informed local decision that they want the card in their area, the forced, mandatory use of the card will continue to prove ineffective because it simply will not change any behaviours and will not achieve that which the government says it will achieve.

The Senate inquiry into this bill had 108 submissions, and the overwhelming majority of those submissions opposed this bill. We know that evidence of the card's effectiveness in reducing social harm is not only showing that it's been ineffective but, in some cases, that it's actually exacerbated the social harms it was designed to reduce or prevent. As an example, the inquiry heard evidence from MoneyMob Talkabout of people in cashless card communities on the disability support pension and the aged pension, who get higher payments, how those people—those on disability support and aged pensions—are being targeted and pressured by people on the cashless debit card who have already expended their income. Of course, if this program is not changing behaviours, as I mentioned earlier, one would expect that people will then adopt other behaviours to circumvent and take advantage of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the system. These are weaknesses to do with the technical capabilities of the cashless debit card itself, but there are also other kinds of vulnerabilities, such as vulnerable people on disability support and aged pensions being put under pressure.

The Menzies School of Health Research found that the birth weight of Indigenous babies actually declined after compulsory income management. We've also seen that there are impacts on the government's own Closing the Gap strategy. The card is also being managed outside the Centrelink process—these are all things that came out in the Senate inquiry into this bill—which means it will be managed by post, or via telephone or online. When you consider that many of the participants in this program live in remote communities and that there's a digital divide between those in the city and those in remote communities, many of them don't have adequate access to telecommunications services, making it particularly difficult for them to manage their participation in this scheme. Professor Matthew Gray and Dr Rob Bray from the ANU said:

Our view is that the evidence strongly shows that the simplistic conceptualisation of income management and the Cashless Debit Card, and the purported benefits of these policies, are false.

…   …   …

… the evidence is clear that when they are applied to broad populations based on some generic criteria they are an ineffective and costly policy …

Labor will continue to advocate for measures to address inequality and the substantive issues for our First Nations peoples that are based on evidence and that do not perpetuate this government's ideological pursuit of some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

(Quorum formed)

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