Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

This is one of the more serious motions that we will debate in this chamber, and soon we'll debate it in the House of Representatives when the repeal legislation is before us. I was the architect of the cashless debit card, designing it and implementing it in concert with Indigenous leaders in Ceduna, the east Kimberley and Goldfields. But that is not the reason I am so passionately against the card's repeal. Rather, my passion comes from having worked in and around Indigenous issues for over 20 years now, including as Noel Pearson's deputy director, and seeing firsthand how much damage alcohol abuse paid with welfare cash has on remote communities. My passion comes from seeing how little impact the hundreds of other programs and services have had on addressing this damage. And it comes from seeing that the cashless debit card, while not a panacea, was making an impact like few other initiatives ever have.

Alcohol paid for by the taxpayer through welfare payments is the poison that runs through remote communities, causing devastation that is almost incomprehensible. People have told me that in some of these communities almost every girl has been sexually abused. It is known in some places that a quarter of all children are born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, effectively brain-damaged for life. The assault rate against women is simply off the charts and would never be tolerated in our cities. Some years ago, for example, the Northern Territory government released figures showing that 11 in 100 women were bashed every year and that two thirds of that was related to alcohol consumption.

We've all been complicit in this carnage, because for too long we've stood by and handed over the welfare cash, knowing how it is spent and the damage it does. The cashless debit card changed this. It was deliberately designed to stop the flow of welfare cash being spent on alcohol, on drugs and on gambling. It did this through quite clever technology. In essence, we issued a Visa debit card to each working age welfare recipient and placed 80 per cent of their welfare payments onto this card. This card looked and operated like any other Visa debit card, such as the one you might have in your pocket, with the exception of two things. You couldn't use it to purchase alcohol at the bottle shops, you couldn't use it to gamble at the gambling houses and you couldn't take cash out with it. We were getting results with this.

There are few initiatives which make a difference in Indigenous communities, but this was one. Consider the evaluation from the University of Adelaide. Forty-five per cent of cardholders said it had improved things for themselves and their family. They stated that there was clear evidence that alcohol consumption had reduced. There was evidence that it had been helping to reduce gambling. They found that safety had been improved in these communities. Anecdotally, people reported that people were now buying trolley loads full of groceries at Coles rather than just shopping bags full. The Ceduna mayor said that it had been the best the community had ever been, following the introduction of the card. I challenge the Labor Party to name a single initiative that has ever had such an impact in these remote communities, which we know are so challenged. Soon this will be gone, if Labor gets its way, not because it wasn't having a practical impact—it clearly was—but for ideological reasons.

To say that I am disappointed is an understatement. I am angry about Labor's decision, and so should every reasonable citizen of this country be, because not only are they removing an initiative that is working but, worse, when the card comes off it will lead to a flood of welfare cash entering those communities, which will result in only one thing: more violence against women, more children being neglected. That will be on the Labor Party. If they don't know that it will have this impact then they are being wilfully blind. The additional shame is that Labor has not consulted the brave Indigenous leaders who pushed so strongly to institute the card—people like Corey McClellan in Ceduna, Ian Trust in the east Kimberley and Betty Logan in Goldfields. So much for listening to Indigenous voices.

Labor Party MPs know that, tonight, their own children will sleep soundly, secure in their nice suburban homes. Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres away, they are about to unleash hell on innocent children and women in remote communities. Shame on the Labor Party.

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