Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I'll get to that. Of course, they imposed it on communities that did not want it and did not like it, and when the evidence came out that it wasn't working—there was no evidence to support it; there were pleas from communities to end it—what did they do? They just kept rolling it out. They put ideology before evidence. They chose arrogance over consultation. This was the defining feature of the former Morrison government.

Well, that is not what will happen under this government. The Prime Minister, during the election campaign, said that this would be a priority, if we were elected—to get rid of the cashless debit card—and we are getting on with the job. I have visited Ceduna and the East Kimberley, and the Assistant Minister for Social Services has visited Bundaberg and Hervey Bay, and we will be visiting other communities in coming weeks. We are going to listen to First Nations communities, we are going to listen to service providers and we are going to chart a way forward on what are complex, difficult social problems with real evidence based solutions, not ideology gone wrong.

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