Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today in proud support of the member for Bruce's statements regarding the cashless debit card for welfare. For the information of those opposite, it really is getting a bit tiresome to hear the division that they continue to peddle about cities versus regions. I represent the biggest regional electorate in Tasmania and one of the bigger ones in the country, and I tell you what: the people in my electorate did not want this card being rolled out across Lyons and across Tasmania. So this is not about this false distinction between inner-city elites and regional electorates. Regional people did not want this card rolled out into their communities either.

The member for Hinkler just said he got big support for this card in his electorate. I don't know what questions he asked, but people find it easy to say, 'Yes, I want that card rolled out for other people.' But what happens if it's for them? This is why those opposite are so big now in saying that age pensioners were never in their plans. The fact is that the legislation that they had in place before the last election would have made it possible for age pensioners to be put on this card. Their own minister, Anne Ruston, said she wanted this to be a universal platform for welfare payments. All the evidence lined up. They wanted this rolled out as part of a national rollout. That's what the truth is. They ran scared when we told the truth: that their long-term plans were to get pensioners onto this. That's when they ran scared, because they knew that old-age pensioners don't want to be put on this card.

If it's such a wonderful, fantastic card, as members of the coalition have lined up to tell us—including the member for Riverina, the member for Hinkler and, I'm sure, the member for Grey—why don't they want old-age pensioners on it? I'll tell you why they are saying pensioners are not part of their plans: because they're worried about the politics, because they know that it's easy for people to say, 'Yes, I want that card to be for other people, for people in remote communities, for people of a certain colour—I want them on it—but I don't want to be on it.' What the Labor Party says is, 'Nobody should be on this card who doesn't want to be on it.' I spoke last year about this awful card, its impact on thousands of Australians and its potential impact on people in my electorate if the former government's ambitions for the national rollout were realised. I've been a fierce advocate for scrapping it, and I'm very pleased doing so is one of the first acts of this government.

I can't list everything wrong with this card in the allocated five minutes, but I'll just speak for the next couple on one thing, and that's the coalition's ideological obsession with the privatisation of Australian social security. Good government improves lives—that's a simple fact. We have more than a century of evidence to back this up. Health, education, housing, prosperity—nearly every advance in the lives of everyday Australians has been the result of deliberate government policy and intervention where required. Those opposite, the political equivalent of the flat earth society, ignore the evidence and always stick to their ideological opposition. They believe the private market is better at everything, and they refuse to allow facts to get in the way of that stubborn belief. The cashless debit card was privatised welfare, in practice, and the coalition wanted it rolled out as a universal platform for all welfare payments. If they'd been returned to office, the card would not have been scrapped; it would have been expanded.

The Australian National Audit Office reported there was a lack of evidence about the card's effectiveness, despite the fact those opposite signed a multimillion-dollar contract with a private company to run it. That's $1,200 per participant, at least—ching-ching!—easy money, straight from the taxpayer into the pockets of company directors. That's money that could have been spent on health services, mental health services, addiction clinics, housing, education and training, or employment assistance.

More than 16,000 Australians were on this card when Labor scrapped it. That's 16,000 Australians having to answer to a private company, having to beg for access to payments for items like specialised brassieres. A woman was told she couldn't have a brassiere that she needed; she had to phone up. It's humiliating. She was told to provide photographic evidence for her needs—outrageous. You don't treat human beings like that. And that 16,000 would have grown to millions if the Liberals had been re-elected to government, with hundreds of millions of dollars more in fees. I'm pleased this card is gone. May it rot in hell.

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