Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I would encourage the members of the government to stop using this as an opportunity for pointscoring and start showing some respect and concern for the genuine concerns of the members of their community. It's not about pointscoring. It's not about genuflecting at the altar of their ideology. It's about members of the community who are genuinely feeling demonised, genuinely feeling rattled and genuinely feeling scared, and we should have respect for and acknowledge those issues.

I would also raise the fact that the cashless debit card doesn't address the underlying issues that are causing disadvantage for these unfortunate souls in the first place. Sure, we've heard some interesting stories there from the Goldfields—and I'm interested to hear those—but nowhere in those examples that have been mentioned is there any talk about programs to address alcoholism, to address drug addiction, to address gambling addiction, to address domestic financial abuse or to address financial illiteracy. At the end of the day, they are the problems. Giving someone on a government pension or payment a cashless debit card does not solve their alcoholism. It does not solve their drug addiction. It does not solve their gambling addiction. It does not solve the domestic financial abuse situation they find themselves in. It does not make them financially literate. It doesn't solve their problems. If someone is an alcoholic or a drug addict and they are given a cashless debit card, they will still find alcohol. They will still find drugs. Who knows how they are going to obtain it and who knows how they are going to afford it? It doesn't work. It just doesn't work.

We can't dismiss the fact that, since 2014, the cost of the cashless debit card trials has reached some $18 million. That has been approximately $10,000 per card. The result? As the Australian National Audit Office has found, it is 'difficult to conclude whether it has delivered a reduction in social harm and more efficient welfare.' No wonder the government, with this increased trial, is not going to allow an external evaluation in the future of the expanded trial. I can understand why the government wants to shut down any outsiders coming in and having a look at it: the government is fearful of the result. The government is fearful that their genuflection at their ideological altar will be shown again to be something that is ineffective, very expensive, demonises people on government pensions and payments, and doesn't achieve anything like what the government is claiming it is going to do.

We should be talking about measures and reforms that are actually going to address the underlying issues, the underlying problems. We should not be in here talking about a cashless debit card; we should be in here talking about how to rein in alcohol abuse in this country. What changes can we make to the price, the availability, the advertising or the accessibility of alcohol in our communities? What support services can we provide for alcoholics to help them deal with their addiction to alcohol? We should be in here talking about the illicit drug crisis in this country and what the federal parliament and the federal government can do to deal with that. How do we crack down on the supply of illicit drugs? More boldly, what about taking a health approach—a harm-minimisation approach—to drug abuse? Just about every health expert in this country knows that the way to deal with drug abuse is not a law-and-order response based on ideology but, rather, a harm-minimisation approach that treats drug addiction as a health problem, not a criminal problem in the first place.

I've been very disappointed that there is such a negative response in this place and in my own state of Tasmania to really innovative and effective responses like pill testing in the community. The response from the federal Minister for Health a couple of months ago when I asked a question of him about pill testing—and the response from the Premier of Tasmania when I have spoken publicly about pill testing—is to bite my head off even though all of the evidence is that measures like pill testing are the way to save lives and particularly the lives of our children.

Instead of kowtowing to the gambling industry, we should be talking about how we minimise the harm of gambling and how we reduce the rate of gambling addiction in our community. There will continue to be about 120,000 gambling addicts in Australia unless people like us, in a place like this, do something about it. But of course we don't talk about royal commissions for casinos in here. We don't talk about harm minimisation on poker machines here. We don't talk about better and more effective safeguards on sports betting or online gambling in here. That's because all the parties are on the take. It's because of the millions of dollars that the main political parties—the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party—and some of the small parties get from the gambling industry. So instead of talking about cracking down or doing something about gambling addiction in the community, we ignore that and we say we'll give a gambling addict a cashless debit card and that'll fix the problem. It won't, because they're addicts. They will find ways to get money and continue their addiction.

We should be in here talking about domestic abuse and domestic financial abuse, because that's one of the reasons people are in financial strife—they are in an abusive situation with their partner abusing them, using money and not giving them access to money. We should be in here talking about programs for financial literacy so people who are unable to, or who struggle to, manage their finances can be taught how to manage their finances, can be mentored, can be assisted, but instead what do we do? We give them a cashless debit card and say, 'That will fix all your problems.' That's what we should be doing in here. We should be talking about measures like a sugar tax to make people in these communities healthier. They're the sorts of things we should be doing, not demonising people on government pensions and payments, not scaring the daylights out of them and forcing them to take a cashless debit card.

I would concede one point though: in the most exceptional circumstances there would be a small number of people in this country for whom a cashless debit card would have some value, but that should be the decision of a court or a judge, not for a bureaucrat and not for a minister. The number of people I'm talking about here is a very, very small number in the most exceptional circumstances, circumstances that are vetted and checked by a court or a judge.

You know what we should be doing here if we want to solve the financial strife of many Australians? How about we start having a serious conversation about lifting government pensions and payments to amounts these people can live on? Frankly, the No. 1 reason why people on government pensions and payments are struggling financially is the paltry amount of the government pension or payment. A single person with no children on Newstart gets $559 a fortnight. I'll say that again: a single person on Newstart with no children, and with no supplement like rent assistance, gets $559 a fortnight. I contrast that with the story in The Mercury newspaper this morning that average rents in Hobart have gone up by 10 per cent in the last 12 months. And these days when you compare average rents against average local incomes, Hobart is now the most expensive capital city in the country to rent. To rent a modest three bedroom cottage in an outer suburb in Hobart at the moment is $450 a week—$450 a week! That's the sort of reason why people on government pensions and payments are in financial strife, not because they're all drug addicts, alcos and gamblers, as some members of the government would want you to believe. It's because of the paltry amount of money they're trying to live on at a time of steeply rising costs of living, and in particularly in Hobart the steeply rising cost of rents.

We should be in here talking about a lift to all government pensions of payments, including allowances like rent assistance. There is no shortage of important community spokespeople saying that all government pensions and payments really need to be lifted by about $75 a fortnight, as a start. That would be a minimum. Of course, the government might sit there and say: 'Well, that independent over there, it's all very easy for him, he will never sit on the Treasury benches. He doesn't need to work out how we we're going to pay for this.' I'll tell you how we pay for it: we take advantage of the fabulous wealth in this country. This government will spend about half a trillion dollars this year. They will spend about $500 billion on all sorts of things, including down payments on doubling our submarine fleet even though we can't find crews for the six we've got already. It's all about priorities. Our country can afford to pay pensions and payments that people can live on with dignity, and the only reason they don't is that our priorities are all out of whack in this place. We think we have more important priorities to spend our money on than important measures like increasing rent assistance, increasing Newstart, increasing the DSP, increasing the parenting payment or increasing the age pension.

I've made this point repeatedly in this place, and no-one's listened to me. I've met people who live on dog food. I've met people who go to bed in Hobart at five o'clock in the afternoon in winter and climb under a doona because they can't afford to turn the heater on. That is commonplace in this country. It's not just commonplace in the places you might expect; it's commonplace right around this country, with stagnant wages, rising cost of living and paltry government pensions and payments. And what are we doing about it? The government is giving them a cashless debit card and saying 'That'll fix your problem; we assume you're all alcoholics, drug addicts and gambling addicts, so this is the way we're going to solve your problem.'

I make the point again that I was fascinated to hear the stories about the Goldfields. But I didn't hear one word from the government about the programs in the Goldfields to deal with alcohol abuse or drug abuse or gambling addiction or domestic financial abuse or financial illiteracy. That's where we should be spending our money. Imagine if we'd taken the $18 million we've spent since 2014 on the trials of the cashless debit card and spent that money elsewhere. I will not support this bill and I urge my colleagues not to support it as well.

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