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

by leave—I'm very pleased to continue my contribution to the Social Security (Administrations) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill of 2020. While much of the conversation around this card has focused on First Nations people, this makes sense, given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up more than two-thirds of those most impacted, and I addressed many of those matters in my earlier contribution. However, we know that the government's ultimate plan is to roll this out nationally and, indeed, we learnt in Senate estimates that the government's already set up a formal working group with the big banks and Australia Post to work on making the cashless debit card part of mainstream accounts and point of sale. This is despite the fact that the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Anne Ruston, admitted at Senate estimates that she hasn't read the review of the rollout. So let's not sugar-coat this: it is going to impact a lot of disadvantaged and marginalised people in Australia, and yet we've got a government who hasn't actually looked at the review.

The cashless debit card will capture all those marginalised and disadvantaged people and tie them up into an income management regime where there is no apparent pathway for escape, no means of breaking the cycle of poverty and no way to regain agency. It will take away their capacity to make decisions about very fundamental aspects of our lives such as how you choose to spend your money. And, in doing so, it will remove autonomy, it will disempower people and instil in them fear, shame and stigma—the very things that so many people are already experiencing in these situations and shocking levers for any government to be taking advantage of. In return, the cashless debit card offers nothing—no education, no training, no support to help stabilise people's lives to enable them to move away from income management. We know that's not how you go about changing behaviours or dealing with deep systemic and structural disadvantage in this nation. This is not how you remedy poverty. Indeed, it's how you entrench disadvantage even further.

People are being punished for their disadvantage in a cruel and ongoing way, and this is the laziest form of public policymaking. It won't provide any of the necessary wraparound services that are required in order to meet the very real challenges people face and to break that cycle of poverty. It's no remedy at all. If the government were serious about helping people on income support, they would be making sure that they properly fund Aboriginal controlled organisations and services that are working in communities to address those challenges, to provide mental health support and to give assistance to find stable housing. A government would be seeking to fund training and support that might lead to employment. You might even consider creating meaningful jobs on country and in communities. But we are not actually dealing with any of those matters in this bill. We're not even able to meet the very basic fundamentals of people's lives to ensure that they have nourishment, shelter and safety in their lives. Instead, the government prefers to control the way in which people spend their money, as if this was any type of panacea or, indeed, any type of reform that is genuinely required. Indeed, the only thing that people are likely to learn from this is what an inhumane and unthinking government we have. This is just plain cruel, punitive and ideological, not to mention ridiculously short sighted.

The government needs to abandon this plan and, instead, invest in evidence based policies, job creation and much-needed community services. So I'm very pleased to stand today with my Labor colleagues in opposing this bill. We plead with the government to rethink its support of this shocking plan.

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