Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017. I'm going to begin today with Kalgoorlie, one of the proposed trial sites in my home state of Western Australia, and talk a little bit about the reason Kalgoorlie was selected and the origins of Kalgoorlie and the Goldfields coming up as a place where the cashless debit card may be something that the community would like. I am going to quote my good friend the member for O'Connor, Rick Wilson, in his speech on this bill in the House of Representatives. I think it gives a real insight into where it came from. The member for O'Connor said:

Today, I stand here to give voice to my community and the leaders who have so bravely stood up and fought for the introduction of this card. They are people like Leonora Indigenous leader Nana Gaye Harris, who started the ball rolling—

Who started the ball rolling—

when she first sought me out in Leonora in late 2015; people like Laverton Indigenous elders Bruce Smith and Janice Scott, who moved an entire room to tears with their powerful account of children living on the streets of Laverton, abandoned by parents on the grog; and people like Coolgardie community leader Betty Logan and her niece, Amanda Bennell, who in the presence of the Prime Minister challenged naysayers to look into the eyes of a child suffering the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome and not feel compassion. I give voice to people like Leonora police officer in charge Isaac Rinaudo, who has described children as young as five years of age breaking into houses just to steal food. And I give voices to civic leaders like Laverton's Patrick Hill; Leonora's Jim Epis and Peter Craig; Jill Dwyer and Ian Tucker from the Shire of Menzies; Mal Cullen and Betty Logan from the Coolgardie shire; and Mayor John Bowler of the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. They are fighting for what's best for the communities …

This is a community led endeavour. The people of the Goldfields widely want to see this trial go ahead. This is not something that the member for O'Connor, Rick Wilson, or the government plucked out of the air. This was something that was originally brought to Rick Wilson's attention by an Indigenous leader as something that was worth a try. This is a trial. Yes, there are currently two trial sites underway. This is two more trial sites, one in the Goldfields and one in Queensland in Hervey Bay-Bundaberg. We must remember that this is a trial.

The idea that there has not been consultation in this community is quite frankly a nonsense. The former minister has visited Kalgoorlie on at least four occasions. The member for O'Connor, Rick Wilson, has done literally hundreds of community consultations—direct meetings, face-to-faces with individuals, community groups, Indigenous leaders, Indigenous community groups, people on disability support pensions. This has been extraordinarily widely canvassed. I know this from my direct experience in Kalgoorlie. I've been lucky enough to have been to Kalgoorlie three times in the last four months since I've been a senator, and every time I was there every single person I spoke to, be they Indigenous, from the business community or the non-Indigenous community, said, 'It's worth a try—it's worth a try to do something different to try and break the cycle of welfare dependency, drug use and alcohol abuse that exists up there.'

I want to say from the start that the trial in Kalgoorlie is not targeted at Indigenous people. The welfare recipients in the Goldfields region are about 50-50, Indigenous to non-Indigenous. Obviously, part of the thinking behind the trial site in Queensland in the Bundaberg-Hervey Bay region is that it is a largely non-Indigenous cohort of people who will be under the trial.

This is a government that wants to try something new in a space that has been for an extraordinarily long period of time a wasteland of good policy. It's very difficult to see what gains we have made in this area over the last 30 years. It is time to try something different, and those communities are crying out for a new approach, a new way of thinking. Again, this is not a nationwide rollout; this is a trial currently in two areas, looking to expand into another two areas and it's a trial that the government is committed to. It's committed to it because we're trying to reduce the social harm caused by welfare-fuelled alcohol abuse, drug abuse and problem gambling in areas where there are high levels of welfare dependency.

This bill provides the underpinning legislative authority to enable the expansion of the cashless debit card into these new regions like the Goldfields. The bill will allow the legislative authority to enable the Goldfields region to be the third and, to date, the largest site for the cashless debit card. Welfare payments are provided to people in need to help with essential living costs such as food, clothing, shelter, transportation. From this, and in the longer term, we want to see communities that are safer. We want to see people using welfare to look after themselves, look after their families and get into a position where they can actually get off welfare, which is obviously much harder if you have a gambling, drug or alcohol problem. Welfare should be a safety net for those who need it, not a means of facilitating serious damage to health and serious damage to those communities.

Alcohol is a contributing factor to an estimated 65 per cent of all domestic violence incidents and 47 per cent of child abuse cases in some areas. Alcohol related harm and illicit drug use costs the Australian economy $22 billion a year. There was an independent report into the trial site—and, obviously, that has been criticised by some parties and we have heard a significant number of those criticisms from Senator Siewert. But this evaluation and all evaluations have to be read in the context of what they are. It found that 48 per cent of drug takers were using fewer drugs—and, yes, this is self-reporting and there are problems with that, but I'm quite sure if I looked back over the Hansard transcripts, I would find people all around this chamber quoting self-reported statistics. It found that 41 per cent of drinkers were drinking less; and 48 per cent of gamblers were gambling less. Nobody thinks that this is a silver bullet, but it may be a move in the right direction and it is certainly something that is worth trying.

As I said, I've been to Kalgoorlie three times in the last few months. This issue was raised with me by a number of people off their own bat but, obviously, in my role as Chair of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, I raised it with pretty much everyone I met. As I've said, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Rick Wilson, the member for O'Connor, has done extensive consultations in his community to gauge success and has been running a petition as part of that process. Over 1,200 people in the Goldfields have signed the petition in support of the cashless debit card. There is an online petition that is still collecting signatures, so that number is growing all the time.

There has been a postal survey to 18,000 Goldfields households. They are still coming back. There have been hundreds of responses—currently running at 85 per cent in favour. The idea that the Goldfields community in particular does not support this trial is not borne out by the facts.

We need to deliver hope to the people in these communities. We need a chance; we need something to break the cycle of antisocial behaviour. We've got to remember that these funds are provided by the taxpayers of Australia—welfare recipients receive their money from the taxpayers of Australia—and the taxpayers of Australia deserve to know that we are trying something to try to break the cycle of abuse, of welfare dependency, of alcohol abuse, of drug abuse, of gambling addiction and, as I said, of welfare dependency.

As Chair of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee, I did hear, and we have heard, from a number of community leaders who did stand up and voice their support for the introduction of this card. I read submissions and heard witness accounts from community members and I think that we need to recognise that we do have large numbers of people who do strongly support the trial. From the Community Affairs Committee hearing on 12 October last year, for example, the mayor of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, John Bowler, said:

Locals who live here complain to me about what's happening. They want a solution. I've been almost pulling my hair out—the little bit of hair I've got—asking: what is a solution? Then I heard about the cashless debit card, took an interest in it and thought this may be a way forward. A former friend of mine went through Ceduna last year and talked to the deputy mayor there, who was telling him how good it was and how Ceduna was so much better. So he got his number, and I rang the deputy mayor up—this was probably going back earlier this year or late last year—and spoke to the deputy mayor. He told me that court appearances had gone down by 38 per cent—you've seen the figures—hospital admissions were down by something similar, and that, generally, people in Ceduna thought life there had improved dramatically since the introduction of the trial.

He went on:

I then drove to Ceduna to experience it firsthand and make my own observations. I spoke to people. I was hoping to speak to the mayor this time—I heard him on ABC South Australian radio about the card—but he was out of town. So, once again, I spoke to the deputy mayor, I spoke to retailers in the town and townspeople and got the same picture: they were glad that it had been introduced. They said there were some complaints, but even some who initially had been opposed to the card had really come around to say that life generally was better, particularly for those living on the streets.

The mayor went on to say:

So I say this: the introduction of this card is a possible step in the right direction for not just my townspeople but these visitors and the lives they lead.

We also heard from Mr Patrick Hill, President of the Shire of Laverton. He said:

Everyone in town—the police, the hospital, the school, the Laverton Crisis Centre, the ambulance, the fire brigade, the resident group, the shire—has done everything possible to try and stem this abuse and the effects that alcohol, drugs and gambling have on our towns and the availability of cash. Council has formally adopted and supports the cashless welfare card because we see this as an opportunity to try and do something. We have had up to 50 agencies come into Laverton to try and address these social issues, and we do have our Laverton inter-agency group meetings to come up with solutions to try and stem this violence.

Again, Mr Hill went on talk about why the cashless debit card provided hope for their community, hope for their town and hope for an opportunity for those who are suffering under this cycle of welfare dependency, drug abuse and gambling abuse.

Mr Hill went on:

This will at least give us breathing space to do something and sit back and analyse where things can be done better and what we can do better as a community. We see it every single day. We have done everything we can as a community to try and solve some of these issues that we've got.

I invite any of you to come to Laverton over Christmas or when we have funerals so you can see it for yourself and understand the complex issues we have here. We know that the cashless card is not going to fix everything, but at least it will give us a chance to fix and address some of these really major issues we have in our communities, which a lot of people do not understand and don't see on a day-to-day basis as we do.

I'll just go on, again from that same hearing at the community affairs committee. Mr Taylor, who appeared before the committee in a private capacity, gave very powerful testimony.

He said:

I'm here today to, hopefully, give you some insight from a father who lost his child, a young adult—my son…My son came into contact with social services as a teenager. His life was marred by bouts of alcohol and other drug abuse, through his teenage years into his young manhood. He was 27 when he took his life. This card might have helped …

And Mrs Holman, a business owner in Kalgoorlie, revealed the desperation in the community and the hopes for the CDC—the cashless debit card. She said:

I think they are and, without a lie, every customer that has come into my shop or person I've spoken to, which is quite a lot of people in the community, are welcoming the cashless card. You've got to remember that we are desperate. The cashless card offers us a little bit of light, a little bit of hope, that things might improve. We just want something that helps and stops the alcoholism. Everyone's been celebrating—'We can't wait for it. I hope things get better.' We don't know if it's going to work. No-one does, and everyone who says it's not doesn't know either. We just want to give it a go. We want something—we need something …

This was my experience in Kalgoorlie, from Indigenous to non-Indigenous people I interacted with personally while on the ground, outside the public forum of the committee. Everyone was supportive—from taxi drivers to workers in shops to people I was chatting to in the pub. Obviously, in the committee hearings there were alternative views. In particular, I remember vividly the evidence from the Kalgoorlie Aboriginal Residents Group, who said that, within their organisation, there was a diversity of views: there were those who support it and those who oppose. And that's completely understandable when you have a significant change to the welfare system such as this. It is significant but it is a trial. It is trying something new in a space where we have an extraordinary amount of failure.

Again, if this card can be a tool to help reduce the amount of alcohol- and drug-related domestic and other violence, if it helps channel welfare dollars to where they're best spent, if it makes sure that kids have a meal in their bag when they head to school or if it makes sure the bills are paid on time then that is a way of breaking a cycle of welfare dependency and helping these communities for whom there is a level of desperation. We do have two trials going like this in different regions. Let's keep trying to solve some of these intractable problems. Let's not give up.

In the couple of minutes remaining to me, I want to quickly address something Senator Siewert brought up—the $10,000-per-person cost. The previous minister, in a speech, indicated that that cost reflected some initial set-up costs. That is falling. It's estimated that the per-person cost in Kalgoorlie would be something more like $1,000 and, as the trials expand, that cost will continue to come down. This is an example of the card. We're not supposed to use props in here, but it looks identical to a credit card. It's not white; it's a grey colour.

The government appreciates the support from the Labor Party in continuing Ceduna and East Kimberley, but we would like them to reconsider their position on the other trial sites. It is important that we keep rolling this program out into different communities, because communities are different. Communities have different balances of certain groups, different needs and different employment drivers. There's a wonderful opportunity in the Goldfields at the moment because there are jobs in the community. The mining industry has picked up again. I was there as recently as 10 days ago and was told by a range of community leaders that there are currently a thousand unfilled jobs in Kalgoorlie. There is an opportunity at the moment to really try and break this cycle of welfare dependency, to get people spending their money more wisely and get people out of a cycle of drug and welfare dependency. This is a really good opportunity to expand this, to keep looking and trying to find things that work, things that will change people's lives on the ground. I commend the bill to the Senate.