Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015. This bill will amend the social security law to enable a trial phase of new welfare arrangements. This is in response to the 'healthy welfare card' recommendation from Mr Andrew Forrest's review of Indigenous jobs and training.

The intent of the trial is to test whether significantly reducing access to discriminatory cash can reduce the habitual abuse and associated harm from alcohol, gambling and illegal drugs by placing a large proportion of a person's welfare payment into a restricted bank account.

The bill will also enable a community body to be involved in determining welfare arrangements within a trial location. The bill enables the trial to be conducted in up to three locations, for up to 10,000 people. The locations for the trial are to be selected on the basis of high levels of welfare dependence and where gambling, alcohol and/or drug abuse are causing unacceptable levels of harm within the community. Within the trial locations 80 per cent of payments received by people on a working-age welfare payment will be placed in a restricted bank account. The remaining 20 per cent of payments will be available for use at the person's discretion. A trial participant will not be able to use the debit card linked to the restricted account to access cash or purchase gambling products and services, alcohol or illegal drugs.

Trial participants will include people in receipt of Newstart allowance, parenting payment, disability support pension and carer payment. The new debit card arrangements are very different from income management. Unlike income management, participants on the new debit card will not receive assistance from Centrelink workers to assist in budgeting or to ensure that income support payments are directed at life's essentials, such as rent, food and clothing.

The new debit card will only ensure that the majority of income support payments cannot be spent on alcohol and gambling products. As such, this card should not be seen as a panacea for all the problems in these communities. It must come accompanied by appropriated wrap-around support services if it is to be successful in tackling complex, multidimensional and intergenerational social problems. I will return to these issues in a moment.

But before I do I want to make it very clear that Labor does support the quarantining of income support payments to ensure that money is spent in the best interests of children and families, and the most vulnerable people in the community. It means that more money will go to providing food, clothes, rent and that less money will go to alcohol and gambling. Labor also believes that quarantining of income support payments can be a useful tool to help stabilise people's circumstances and ease immediate financial stress.

In government Labor did make a number of reforms to income management to ensure it was more targeted and to bring its benefits to more vulnerable people across Australia. In 2008, in Perth and in the east and west Kimberley, Labor trialled child protection income management, making income management available to child protection workers, to help assist families at risk of child abuse and neglect. In 2010, following widespread consultation, the Labor government introduced a new, non-discriminatory model of income management in the Northern Territory. In 2012 Labor introduced income management in five disadvantaged locations across Australia as part of its Building Australia's Future Workforce reforms: Playford, in South Australia; Greater Shepparton in Victoria; Bankstown in New South Wales; and Rockhampton and Logan in Queensland.

Following calls for income management and, after consultation with families, the Labor government agreed to implement income management in the APY Lands in South Australia, to help families on the lands ensure that less money was spent on alcohol and gambling and that more money was available for food, clothing and other life essentials.

In 2013 Labor introduced income management in the Laverton and NPY Lands in Western Australia. Labor also worked closely with the Northern Territory government to provide income management to help deal with people who came before the Northern Territory Alcohol Mandatory Treatment Tribunal, making less money available to spend on alcohol. And now, right across Australia, it is possible for child protection workers to use income management as a tool to support families where their children are at risk of neglect.

Labor does believe that income management can be effective but should be targeted at those who will benefit. We do not believe that everyone on income support should be subject to or would benefit from income quarantining. We do note that the majority of people in receipt of income support payments can manage their money carefully and do not spend it excessively on alcohol or gambling. They use it, like all Australians, to help them live a decent life and provide a decent life for their children.

We work very hard in the Northern Territory to take income management from a blanket discriminatory program, put in place by the Howard government, to a tailored program applying it to at-risk and vulnerable income-support recipients. We want to support people with a high risk of social isolation, poor money management skills and those likely to participate in risky behaviours.

Labor continue to believe that income quarantining should be targeted towards vulnerable people.

However, we will also support community driven initiatives to tackle local issues and deliver long-term positive change—because we do understand just how serious alcohol abuse can be, and is, in some locations across our country. We know that tackling alcohol and drug abuse is critical to building safer, stronger communities. We have a proud history of supporting those communities to develop and drive their own solutions to community specific problems.

In government, Labor created the Breaking the Cycle initiative aimed at assisting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to work with government and non-government organisations to develop and implement alcohol and other drug management plans. Through community led solutions, the Breaking the Cycle initiative helped address the harm caused by substance abuse. Over $20 million was provided to work with the communities of Bourke and Brewarrina in the Murdi Paaki region, Condobolin in New South Wales, Doomadgee and Mornington Island in Queensland, Ceduna and surrounds in South Australia, and Laverton and the surrounding Goldfields region in Western Australia.

Funding was provided to support prevention activities in health education for young people, linking these people with support services; to provide assistance to pregnant women and new mothers; and to work with local businesses about alcohol supply issues. We worked with local service providers to improve the delivery of support services such as education and skills training, prevention programs, referral services and harm minimisation measures. We also supported the Cape York Welfare Reform trials in Far North Queensland, increasing funding for a program aimed at rebuilding social norms in Cape York communities by linking the receipt of welfare payments to the fulfilment of socially responsible behaviours and providing a range of support services. In 29 remote locations across Australia, Labor worked in partnership with communities and state governments to deliver a place based approach to service design and delivery as part of our remote service delivery national partnership agreement. This included harm prevention strategies to tackle community alcohol and gambling abuse.

Labor also provided unprecedented funding to the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory package, which included support for early education, parenting and community safety programs. Stronger Futures also facilitated the development of local alcohol management plans—comprehensive road maps to help communities tackle alcohol abuse and the problems it causes. These were community driven solutions to the issues of alcohol and drug abuse. They were examples of governments getting behind local communities to help them tackle the issues that matter to them in a way that was tailored to those individual communities. We did this because we believe that communities are in the best position to determine local solutions to bring about real and lasting change. We remain committed to working alongside individuals, groups and communities to make sure that they have the skills and supports to bring about positive local change. Consistent with Labor's history, we will take this approach to the proposed debit card trials.

I do know how alcohol abuse is wreaking harm on the community of Ceduna. Labor acknowledges the memorandum of understanding with the Australian government to trial the debit card arrangements that was signed by representatives of the Ceduna community and the surrounding communities. This MOU is a clear sign that community leaders in Ceduna and surrounds want and need to do more to tackle the harmful effects of alcohol abuse. I have spoken recently with signatories to the MOU and they told me very clearly that it is 'destroying their community'. They understand and have made it very plain to me that something more needs to be done.

Labor have of course supported Ceduna—it was one of the Breaking the Cycle communities—in its efforts to curb alcohol abuse and we provided additional supports and services. We committed significant funding to support Ceduna's alcohol management planning and community driven efforts. This included funding to refurbish and increase the capacity of local sobering-up centres; to employ additional youth workers in a bid to divert them from drugs and alcohol; to local Aboriginal community corporations for their healthy living hubs; for the employment of community engagement officers; for service coordination; to improve night patrols, especially for rough sleepers; and for local community awareness and education. We also introduced voluntary and targeted income management following extensive consultation in those communities. So we did a lot to help the community of Ceduna and the surrounding Aboriginal communities.

Despite these efforts, we know—and the community leaders have made it very clear to me—that alcohol abuse is continuing to devastate the lives of too many people and their families. I know the community is desperate. We cannot now turn our back on what they are telling us. We cannot tell them that they are on their own. Rather, all of us need to listen to their calls for help and do what we can to support them, to make sure that the change they so desperately need and want is delivered.

Addressing alcohol abuse and community dysfunction in places like Ceduna does require a comprehensive approach to reducing harm, to dealing with the supply of alcohol and drugs, and to working with the community to find local solutions. That is why Labor's efforts so far have been all about supporting communities to tackle alcohol abuse and about making sure we have a comprehensive range of responses and support services. We also know how very vulnerable people and families need much more assistance than the quarantining of income support payments.

It is why, in the past, we have provided financial-literacy support to people on income management. It is why we have strengthened the relationship between money-management services and Centrelink; to make sure that people receive help to build their financial literacy, including budgeting, banking, savings and an awareness of the risks of payday loans. It is why we provided additional family-support services in regions where income management applied and in other disadvantaged locations. We made sure that people on income management met regularly with Centrelink social workers to help them budget, to make sure that their priority needs were met and to address other issues in their lives impacting on their wellbeing. I am very strongly of the view that these services must form part of a comprehensive package to support individuals and the communities where the debit card is being introduced. New income-quarantining arrangements will not achieve change on their own.

Labor is firm in its commitment to help communities tackle alcohol and drug abuse and the harm it causes. We are unwavering in our commitment to protect and provide for children and for vulnerable people, and our commitment continues today. Of course, in principle we will not oppose this trial where there is very clear community support. However, Labor is concerned that the proposed trial is still lacking in details and requires further work to be done. Today we cannot see from this legislation exactly how it is going to operate in practice. We cannot see exactly what additional supports and services will be provided to truly address the problems of alcohol and drug abuse. Labor pushed for a Senate inquiry into the bill so the people who will be effected would have an opportunity to have a proper say and to understand, fully, how the trial will operate.

We are still concerned that representatives from the Department of Social Services have been, so far, unable to provide the detail needed to understand what the trial will look like in practice. The parliamentary secretary has not been able to provide any further clarity about the details of who will actually provide the card and where participants will get assistance—these matters are still unknown. The possible operation of a community panel in determining the amount of quarantined payments for certain participants is not settled. There is no commitment to the necessary additional support services. There has been no mention of increased rehabilitation services, no mention of financial-literacy support services, no mention of support for young people, no formal agreement with the state government on their involvement and no details on a robust evaluation that will help affected communities, participants, service providers and governments determine the trial's effectiveness and what the future steps should be. I do know that communities want this too.

I have heard, very clearly from people in Ceduna, that strong action is needed and that part of this action must include additional supports, not just a debit card. We will stand with the people of Ceduna and the surrounding communities, and stand with those other parts of Australia who are talking to the government about a possible trial of a new debit card. We will stand with those communities to make sure that they get the supports they need and to make sure that the government delivers in a comprehensive way.

Labor will not oppose this bill in the House. This is to make sure that negotiation with communities can continue and to allow for the details of the operation of the new card to be determined. However, before Labor supports the bill in the Senate, we expect the government to make clear the package of supports that will accompany the introduction of the card. Labor expects to see a comprehensive and funded package, tailored to local circumstances, for each location that is participating in the trial. We expect to see the detail on how the trial will operate, in practice, including how local communities may be involved, and we expect to see a commitment to a proper evaluation. Labor expects this information to be made public so that participating communities have the information and financial commitment to these services that they need. Labor will always work with communities to support those locally driven initiatives to tackle alcohol and drug abuse and work with those communities to make sure the government is held accountable.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for Boothby, noting that he has announced his retirement and I wish him all the very best.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I could just add my best wishes to those of the deputy speaker; thank you.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, member for Jagajaga, that is very kind. I would like to speak on the debit card. This is an exciting trial, which looks at a different way of managing alcohol, drug and gambling problems. I want to recognise the very significant contribution to the development of this trial by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, the member for Aston, who has been working on this relentlessly and has worked very hard with the communities. The proposal in the legislation is to allow up to three trial sites. It is looking at a cashless debit card for Centrelink recipients in communities where there is significant alcohol, drug and/or gambling problems. The government is planning to introduce this card trial for up to three discrete communities.

One of my roles is to chair the government members' Indigenous affairs committee, and the member for Aston has been very diligent in keeping us up to date on his consultations with those communities.

The trial locations will be chosen on the basis of high welfare dependence and high social harm indicators and also an openness from community leaders to participating in the trial. It needs local support. Ceduna in South Australia has been selected as the first community, and there is strong support locally for the trial. The government is also in advanced discussions with the East Kimberley region in Western Australia for the trial, and there is capacity in the legislation for a third site as well. The trial will operate for 12 months and will be assessed to see if it works before any further decisions are made.

The cashless debit card is not income management. Participants in the trial can use the card anywhere to purchase anything except alcohol and gambling products, and they will not be able to withdraw cash with the card. The card will look and feel like a mainstream debit card product and will be connected to the Visa, MasterCard or EFTPOS platform. Participants in the trial will receive a cashless debit card for the cashless aspect of their welfare, and their existing bank account and card will be used for the cash component of their welfare. In working with the government, community leaders have nominated 80 per cent as a sensible cashless figure. This figure has support in Ceduna, and leaders in the East Kimberley agree it is a sensible figure. The remaining 20 per cent—cash—will be placed into a recipient's bank account. The card would work at every store except those store categories which have been switched off. These would be liquor stores and gambling outlets. In a small number of mixed stores there would be a compliance element. Further, because cash will not be available from the card, illicit substances will not be able to be purchased.

As I said, this is a trial. There is a lot of activity going on now in the area of social services looking at increased participation and reforming welfare, and this is an important part of it as well. The objective of the trial is to reduce the social harm, particularly violence against women and child neglect, caused by welfare fuelled alcohol and drug abuse. When the trial is complete, there will be an independent evaluation. Community leaders in Ceduna have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Australian government agreeing to be the first trial site. The government has been working closely with local Ceduna leaders over the last few months, listening to their concerns and jointly designing and agreeing on a trial. As I said earlier, the government is in advanced discussions with the East Kimberly community as to it being a potential trial site and is consulting with the broader community before a decision to proceed is made.

Just looking at Ceduna, it has a population of about 4,500 and is located 800 kilometres west of Adelaide. There is very strong support in the community of Ceduna for this trial. Alcohol related harm in this community is very significant. In one year, presentations to the hospital emergency department due to alcohol or drug use exceeded 500—more than one per day. The Ceduna sobering-up facility had 4,666 admissions in 2013-14, and hospitalisations in the region due to assault are 68 times the national average. The Ceduna community heads leadership group, who led consultations in the community and worked with the government, said this of the trial:

We want to build a future for our younger generation to aspire to and believe we cannot do this if our families are caught up in the destructive cycle of alcohol or drugs that destroys our culture, our lands and our communities.

At the heart of this reform is a change that is being shaped specifically to meet our local needs. It has been a true collaboration to ensure that we can give our mob and our Communities every chance to create real and genuine change in their lives.

We have grasped this initiative; we have helped shape this initiative; and we are confident that this initiative is for the betterment of all people within our region.

In the East Kimberley there have been advanced discussions. As recently as July, leaders in the East Kimberley region wrote to the government saying this:

We acknowledge that agreeing to the East Kimberley being a trial site for the restricted debit card may seem to some a rather drastic step. However, it is our view that continuing to deliver the same programs we have delivered for the past forty years will do nothing for our people and, besides wasting more time and money, will condemn our children and future generations to a life of poverty and despair. As leaders in the East Kimberley, we cannot accept this.

In the East Kimberley region, similar to Ceduna, hospitalisations due to assault are 68 times the national average. It is encouraging that the opposition appear to be giving some support for this trial. Hopefully the trial will help inform a new way of delivering welfare without seeing so many problems with alcohol, drugs and gambling. As I said earlier, the member for Aston has been amazing in his work on the debit card. I look forward to seeing the results of the trial.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to the Social Security Legislation Amendment (Debit Card Trial) Bill 2015. We recognise that alcohol abuse is a significant problem in many Australian communities, including some Indigenous communities. We have seen the harm that this abuse inflicts on those communities, particularly on the most vulnerable—women and children. The problems are complex and the solutions are not simple. If they were, we would have resolved them by now.

Breaking the cycle of alcohol abuse in any community, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, requires a range of targeted responses and support. Additional support services are always needed and, crucially, these responses and support services have to be implemented in close consultation with local communities. One size does not fit all. Communities must be listened to and their concerns must be heard. One of the responses that we undertook when we were in government was on income management.

The bill before the chamber is the government's response to the recommendations of the Forrest review for a healthy welfare card. When Mr Forrest published his report he suggested placing 2.4 million Australians on an income management card without any trigger point. In response, I said in numerous interviews that there was some quiet dignity in someone having some cash to take their family out for a meal, to pay for school excursions or to buy Christmas and birthday presents. None of this was contemplated in that review.

The government have extended what they call a trial of 'cashless welfare arrangements' to up to 10,000 people in three locations, instead of to 2.4 million Australians. The government said the locations would be selected 'on the basis of high levels of welfare dependence and where gambling, alcohol and/or drug abuse are causing unacceptable levels of harm within the community', and where there is a level of community support.

The government has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ceduna community. That was done on 4 August this year. I note from my observation of the memorandum that has been signed that it has the support of the local council, the Ceduna Aboriginal Corporation, the Ceduna Aboriginal health service, other traditional elders in the area and traditional owners in the area as well. From my visit to Ceduna, which took place on 5 May this year, and from follow-up conversations I have had by telephone with people I have met in the Ceduna community, I—along with the shadow minister, the member for Jagajaga—have come to the conclusion that the Ceduna community and others are in support of this change, or this reform, as the Abbott government proposes.

It is proposed to commence a trial of these cashless welfare arrangements next year as provided in this legislation. What it proposes is that people who will participate in this trial are those living in, for example, the Ceduna area who receive payments from Centrelink like Newstart, the disability support pension, parenting payments or carers payments. Those people in aged care can take part voluntarily if they wish. The trial will not change the amount of money a person receives from Centrelink; it will only change the way in which that person can spend it. Eighty per cent of fortnightly payments will be paid onto the card; 20 per cent will be paid into a person's regular bank account. I have no doubt from my investigations that in the local Ceduna community there is support because of the terrible scourge of alcoholism and the problems that gambling and drug abuse are also causing in that local community.

The trial is due to start in 2016, but it is actually a lot longer than 12 months, as the government's propaganda points out. I think it is due to expire in about July 2018, so it is a lot longer than the one year that was proposed. But it is going to cover not just Ceduna but the Yalata and Oak Valley communities and those communities in and around the Ceduna area.

Participants will receive this so-called cashless debit card, and it will be delivered by an organisation that provides, we think, the current income management BasicsCard. The debit card can be used to purchase household necessities but not gambling or alcohol products. The government has said that the goal of the trial is to ensure that the card works seamlessly at existing retailers in much the same way as any other bank card, the only difference being that, as I said before, the customer is prevented from purchasing alcohol or gambling products. One of the things that are absolutely critical in this process is that under the trial a community panel will be established to work with participants who request that less of their payments be quarantined.

We on this side would be happier if there were a trigger mechanism for people to get onto this card rather than it covering absolutely everyone. We relied on a range of triggers to identify income management participants, and we did not take a blanket approach when we were in government. We relied on information from child protection authorities. We considered young people at risk or the length of time that a person had been unemployed. We permitted people who met certain criteria to apply to Centrelink for an exemption. None of this seems to have been contemplated by the government, and none of this seems to have been provided for in the legislation, which I have read. The debit card trial contemplates no such triggers or exemptions. Every person on working-age payments living in the trial location will receive a debit card for the length of the trial. That is what causes us some concern in relation to it.

It is different from income management, as I have said. This debit card will quarantine 80 per cent of the working-age payments and includes no requirement for the funds to be directed to life essentials, which is what income management does provide. So that money can be dealt with in any way, shape or form but not for gambling and not for alcohol. Income management participants are prevented from spending quarantined funds on alcohol, gambling, tobacco or pornographic products, as I say, whereas this debit card trial restricts the spending only on alcohol and gambling products. In this way it is different. As I say, we targeted income management to vulnerable people identified by particular triggers, and that is why we were so concerned about this particular aspect of what the government is doing.

We need additional supports in this area. We recognise that the government has identified that there are real problems in the area of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. That is why the government requested the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs to undertake an inquiry, which the Indigenous affairs committee reported on. It handed down that report in June 2015. The report is titled Alcohol, hurting people and harming communities. It is a bipartisan report. The committee was chaired by the member for Murray, and the deputy chair was the member for Lingiari. It dealt with the changes and the challenges that Indigenous communities around the country were facing. We travelled widely and, hopefully, wisely around the country as we talked to Indigenous communities from Groote Eylandt to Coober Pedy to Ceduna and elsewhere, including taking evidence in capital cities—because, of course, many Indigenous people live in the urban areas as well. It is a challenge not just for remote and regional communities but also for urban areas. The government requested that we do this. We handed down a bipartisan report, and I commend it to those people who might be listening to this speech. Those recommendations, I think, form the basis of a very good response to the challenges that Indigenous communities face with respect to alcohol, poverty, drug abuse and the like.

The concerns we have about the 'healthy welfare' card, or the debit card, as it is called, are that there does not seem to have been any additional support provided by the Abbott government—now the Turnbull government, as they might like to be called—to these local communities. I know the South Australian government, for Ceduna, and the Western Australian government, for the East Kimberley, are calling for that kind of support. We call on the government to provide that support, because it is necessary. We are going to need financial literacy support, wraparound support and counselling. If people are going to come off alcohol—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order No. 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour at which time the member will have leave to continue his remarks.