Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Social Security (Administration) (Trial Area) Amendment Determination (No. 2) 2017, made under the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, be disallowed [F2017L01170].

I know some people in this place will think this is groundhog day, 'Here she is again, talking about trying to disallow these awful trials.' I make absolutely no apology for making you all debate this disallowance. I will continue to do so while this awful legislation exists and while these trials continue. I will bring this issue back again and again and again.

So we're clear, this is to disallow the Social Security (Administration) (Trial Area) Amendment Determination (No. 2) 2017. This determination amends the Ceduna and East Kimberley determinations to extend both of the cashless welfare card trials, in the East Kimberley, predominantly centred on Kununurra and Wyndham, and in Ceduna. It extends the Ceduna determination until 14 March this year and the East Kimberley determination until 25 April 2018. I will note that the next debate we enter into after this will be on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card) Bill 2017 and the government's desire to continue to roll out the cashless welfare card.

This instrument was made on 11 September 2017 and registered on 13 September 2017, one day before the Ceduna and surrounding region determination was in fact due to cease. So there are a lot of people on this card thinking, 'Finally, we're going to get off it,' and then, bang, the legislative instrument comes in and furthers the trial.

As anticipated, the trials and the subsequent extensions—supported by both this government and the opposition—have turned out to be a rubber stamp on income support, based on reports and evaluations spruiked with premature evidence, anecdotes and ideology. That's what these are based on: anecdotes and ideology. Because if it wasn't, the government and the opposition would not have (a) initiated this program and (b), in the case of the opposition, supported it. The evidence from the Northern Territory is overwhelmingly clear: income management failed. It met none of its objectives. I bet most people in this chamber have not bothered ever to go and look at that final evaluation. It's a very thick report. If you're time-poor, as we all are, go and read the conclusion; go and read the key points. That will tell you the facts you need to know.

People in the trial areas were told that they would be subject to the card for one year only. But the government keeps sneakily extending the card through legislative instruments, and the opposition just keeps letting them, as does the crossbench. In fact, when they last extended the trials, last year, participants were given just one day's notice that the trials were continuing. This is no way to treat people, particularly those who feel traumatised and disadvantaged by the card. Despite the heartbreaking, spectacular failure of the 10 years of intervention and income management and then new income management, the government thought they'd give income management another shot. The ideology wins out again! Maybe 10 years worth of failure is just not definitive enough! And the continuing disadvantage in the Northern Territory: I don't know, it's just not definitive enough to say, 'Actually, income management doesn't work.'

Quite frankly, it is mind-boggling that the government's solution to helping communities who do have issues with drug and alcohol addiction, gambling and other major problems is a card that quarantines 80 per cent of income support recipients. Somehow this will magically solve the problems of addiction, of disadvantage and those underlying causes of disadvantage. Really and truly, if it were that simple—that you just bring in a card, you quarantine people's finances and you take control of their financial literacy, and that deals with addiction—wouldn't that put a whole lot of our medical professionals out of a job? Now, why didn't those medical professionals think, 'Why don't we just bring in a card where we control people's finances, we control their lives and that will magically fix addiction?' It'll magically fix the intergenerational trauma that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel and—as was pointed out at the Close the Gap breakfast this morning—deal with the history of disadvantage and of dispossession. The evidence of the impact of that is ongoing in people's lives today. All that will be magically fixed with this card! Although the government says they acknowledge that it's not a silver bullet, in fact they do think that. From their behaviours, it's quite obvious that they do, that they think this will magically fix it. And that's a belief—not based on evidence.

I'm growing so tired of the government just relying on anecdotal evidence and it being presented as fact—when the facts they ignore. They ignore the facts in the Northern Territory. They ignore the fact that 49 per cent of people said that their lives are made worse—and that's from a flawed survey. So, 49 per cent, when it is genuinely acknowledged across the board that the ORIMA valuations were flawed—particularly the push polling, the so-called surveys. Even in that process so many people said that it's made their lives worse. The so-called ORIMA evaluation reports rely very heavily on anecdotal evidence and are based on push poll surveys and skewed data. The reports simply don't stand up to scrutiny, and I can give you quite a significant stack of papers in which respected researchers have gone through and looked at the ORIMA reports and been quite scathing, in many cases, of those evaluations. We've had academics and data experts give evidence at the bills inquiry—we're going to be talking about that as the next item of business in this place—that the reports are flawed. They expressed concerns regarding the research and methodology being used to validate claims that the card is working and needs to be extended and expanded.

The list of concerns is long, but I'll note a few. Well-regarded academics—Dr Janet Hunt from the ANU, Professor Eva Cox from the UTS and Dr Elise Klein from the University of Melbourne—have concerns regarding research design, the sampling strategy, questionnaire design, recall bias, social desirability bias, the rising refusal rates of those surveyed, and the combination of longitudinal and intercept data, amongst other things. No baseline data was used and the ORIMA report's authors overlooked or dismissed important data that was not favourable to the trial. East Kimberley and Ceduna were weighted equally, despite the East Kimberley having a much higher rate of trial participants. Many survey participants deemed questions regarding changes in alcohol, drug or gambling behaviours as not applicable because they never engaged in those behaviours in the first place.

If you are a vulnerable person struggling with alcohol, drugs or gambling addictions and an authoritative figure starts questioning you about your drug use, it's highly likely that you are going to say, 'I've reduced my drug use' or 'I've stopped using.' Of course you're going to say that. It's a well-known and recognised survey risk. If I think you might take even more money away from me or you're going to take my kids away from me, I'm going to say on the survey, 'Yes, I've reduced my drug and alcohol intake.' If you're asking people if they've drunk less or are looking after their children better, what do you expect people to say? Of course they're going to say, 'I'm drinking less. Yes, I'm looking after my children.'

The evaluation claims that public perceptions of safety had increased. However, researchers at the University of Western Australia have demonstrated that public perception of crime is not reliable and rarely correct. But, if people say that to the researchers compiling the ORIMA reports, somehow it's fact, somehow it's correct, even though the research shows it's incorrect. In fact, the same was shown for the Northern Territory intervention. There were perceptions that things were better. However, when the researchers tested that in other regions not subjected to income management, they found the same levels. So, in other words, it wasn't safer. They just perceived it was safer because of income management, although it wasn't. It comes as no surprise that the trial areas didn't see an increase in employment. It's funny—it would be funny if it weren't tragic, I should say—how the government think that giving people a card is magically going to find them a job. There are simply so few jobs available in these communities. Where are people going to magically find these jobs?

The government are using a report that they know is flawed to justify the trial expansions. Government senators come into this place and parrot the government's lines with no understanding of the issues on the ground or of the flawed ORIMA report. They have no understanding of the impact of the card on people's lives. One senator claimed that it made no difference if people weren't spending their money on drugs or alcohol or gambling. That is utterly not true. I spoke to a number of participants on the card last week who, in fact, don't drink, don't take drugs and don't gamble, and they said the card has had a profound impact on their ability to manage their money. They gave an example of the shame they felt when they went into a restaurant and weren't able to pay to eat because the restaurant sold alcohol, as a lot of venues do. They couldn't pay. So it's absolute nonsense to say that it makes no difference if you were 'doing the right thing', as the government puts it. That brings me to the point that, apparently, if you're on income support, 'the right thing' is that you're not even allowed to buy a glass of wine. If you're on a DSP, you're not even allowed to have a glass of wine because that's 'the wrong thing'.

Senator Brandis, yesterday in his valedictory speech, made the point about the growing authoritarianism of the Left. That's from the party who are telling people how to spend their money and want to control people's daily lives. They take away people's financial independence—control of their finances and control of their life. I found that quite a significant point of interest—that we are the ones being accused of authoritarianism, when they are the ones seeking to control people's lives.

Mr Tudge, while Minister for Human Services, kept saying that they will only roll out the card if the community wants it. Well, it's pretty clear from the Senate inquiry that, while some communities are divided on the issue and some are very strongly opposed, the one thing that is universally agreed upon is that they want to be listened to, they want wraparound services and they want to be consulted. If they're on income support, they want to be consulted, and the people in the Kimberley and Ceduna haven't been. People have many problems with the card, and they don't want to be on the card.

Over the course of the Senate inquiry into the latest bill, we heard about the lack of consultation with people who are living on the card and with key community organisations. In fact, when I went to Hervey Bay, which is in the region where the government wants to roll out the welfare card, I held a public meeting, and more people attended that than had been turning up to the consultations the government had been running and inviting people to. At one of our Senate hearings, we heard from the Mayor of Ceduna, who said that the 'consultations' taking place in his town were people calling into the office. Apparently that was the process of consultation. The people actually living on the card had not been consulted, and that is just simply not good enough.

I'm very glad that community members from the trial areas came to Canberra to talk to the committee. It's time the government listened to them. In November, I also tabled a petition with over 850 signatures from members of the Bundaberg community who do not want their area to be another trial site. And I think we need to stop using this term 'trial', because it's quite clear the government wants to keep rolling this out. You can wear the word 'trial' when they said it was for a year, but they just keep rolling it out in the East Kimberley and in Ceduna—and now they want to put it in other places too.

People in those communities in Bundaberg don't want it in their area. They want to see real assistance from the government to tackle issues like substance abuse. Again, people want to deal with these issues of addiction, but they recognise addiction is a health issue. People want help dealing with the issues in their communities, but they want investment in wraparound services and they want to address the underlying causes; they don't want another trial of a card that doesn't work.

Of course we all know the card overwhelmingly targets Aboriginal people. We know it was brought in in response to Andrew Forrest's report Creating Parity, which was about creating parity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. He wanted this card for Aboriginal people. We know that there were people who moved away when they heard the trial might be coming to the area. This is particularly devastating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and for the Aboriginal communities in remote communities. The first peoples should not have to choose between living on country and having proper access to income support.

People in remote communities need access to cash. I've heard multiple examples of why that's important. It's just common sense. Banking and card facilities that we have in the city are just not available in rural and regional areas—and I outlined yesterday, in my contribution to the second reading debate on the new rollout of the card, some of the concerns that people have. People simply can't survive on 20 per cent of their income in cash in these communities.

The survey data includes significant personal reports of increased hardship, and, in the wave 2 financial evaluation report, many of the surveyed participants said that they ran out of money to buy food or to pay for items for their children. There are a number of reasons why people are running out of cash on their card—and I articulated yesterday the problems with forcing people to use the credit facilities and the problems with the EFTPOS facilities. There is simply no evidence that blanket income management works, and it should be abandoned.

Some of the other issues that people have raised with me include, for example, the community panels, where the government has consistently refused to name the people on them. I have a form here that people are supposed to fill in if they want an exemption from the 80-20 rule. You can't get off the card, but you can apply to this faceless community panel, which may include your neighbour, to get the percentage quarantined—reduced from, say, 80 per cent; the lowest is 50-50. The person I was talking to, a person on DSP who does not spend money on drugs, alcohol or gambling, made an application to the panel in their region and asked for 50-50. With no explanation whatsoever, the panel said 60-40. There's absolutely no evidence that this person is suffering from any addiction or that she mismanages her money, yet an arbitrary decision was made of 60-40.

They have conditions like: 'I give my consent for the panel administrator collecting the personal information I've provided on this form. I give my consent'—this is from Western Australian, the Kununurra region—'for the Western Australia Police to provide information surrounding any convictions I have.' The Department of Housing, Community Housing Limited, Kununurra Hospital, Catholic Education WA, the Department of Education, the Department for Child Protection and East Kimberley Job Pathways—it says, 'I give my consent to the panel administration providing my personal information received from the above authorities to the community panel.' They're going around asking every single body they can think of about a person's personal life and personal finances. It is an outrageous invasion of privacy. People don't want this card. It doesn't work. This farce should end. I urge this chamber to support this disallowance to put an end to this farce once and for all.