Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Just to put on the record the Greens' position here: the cashless welfare card must be stopped. It is punitive, it is racist and it's got to go. The Greens have said that since day one. We've been the only party in this place to oppose it from the beginning, and oppose it consistently all the way through, because you don't lift people out of disadvantage by taking away their rights. You don't improve people's situations by taking away their rights. That's why there has been no evidence that the government can bring forward to suggest that this card works.

It is purely ideologically driven. The ideology that drives it from the government is a hypocritical one, because they come in here and say, 'We need to give tax cuts to everyone because it's people's money and they're better placed to decide how to spend it rather than the government.' Yet when it comes to poor people, when it comes to First Nations people, the government has the opposite approach. The government comes in and says, 'You don't even deserve the dignity, the right and the autonomy of deciding how to spend your own money. We're going to come in and control you.' That is going to entrench poverty and entrench disadvantage. We need a different approach, which is what the Greens have argued for from the beginning, which is an approach of self-determination and self-empowerment where government's role is to empower people, rather than take away their rights and take away the control that they have to run and manage their own lives.

Whenever the government says, 'We want tax cuts because people deserve the right to manage their own money,' don't believe them for a second. If they really believed that they wouldn't be pushing ahead with this punitive, racist, draconian legislation that they are. But that's what the government is doing. The government's motivation for tax cuts is just to help out its billionaire mates and help out the rich. And the government's motivation for this bill is to punish the poor, the disadvantaged and First Nations communities. It started with First Nations communities, but, as the previous speaker said, many members of the government have belled the cat. They want to roll it out right across the board. They want anyone who's doing it tough in this country to be under the thumb of the government and be controlled by the government. That is this government's approach to people who are doing it tough. That's why from the beginning we have stood firm against this, and we are going to continue to stand firm.

Last night in the Senate this legislation came within a whisker of being defeated. It came out of the Senate in a different form, where it is not being made permanent and is only going to continue as a trial. That is a step forward from where we were before, and it should be the signal to this government that this card is on its last legs and it's time to end it. We're going to keep fighting until it is in the bin. The reason that the bill was not defeated in the Senate, when it could have been, is that, instead of holding the government to account, Centre Alliance held hands with the government. After telling their constituents in South Australia that they were going to oppose this bill, they didn't. Because Centre Alliance senators from South Australia didn't oppose the bill, it got through. Because they didn't do what they said to people they were going to do, it got through. What's crystal clear from this is that Centre Alliance senators will say one thing in South Australia and then vote differently in Canberra. The Greens will be consistent. The Greens oppose this card.

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