Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to make it clear at the outset that Centre Alliance will not be supporting this bill. As we stated in February when the Senate passed the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card Trial Expansion) Bill 2017, we were happy to allow the government to roll out trials in the three sites as it originally planned. We also supported an extension of the trials until June next year to allow more time for evaluation, but we said then that we would not entertain any further extensions until we had seen robust results of the trial. This bill prematurely attempts to add in a fourth trial site before we have all the data to properly assess whether the existing trials have achieved their harm-minimisation aims. That's partly because the trials are still underway and partly because the initial evaluation process was very much flawed. We accept that the government has now changed the evaluation process to utilise all available data sources and collect baseline data from Goldfields participants; however, this does not change the fact that we were quite clear about our limits in February this year.

The government needs to prove that quarantining 80 per cent of participants' income support can make a positive difference for participants and their communities before it is rolled out to more people than the 10,000 already permitted. We're also concerned that the government's reasons for implementing the trial seem to keep shifting. In the initial trials the aim was to reduce harm and violence from alcohol, gambling and illicit drugs and to 'encourage socially responsible behaviour'. Now the argument has morphed into an attack on intergenerational welfare dependency. In his media release, the Minister for Social Services, Dan Tehan, said that this fourth trial in the Hinkler electorate would 'help break the cycle of welfare dependency'. Unlike in the other trial sites, which apply the card to everyone of working age on income support, in this electorate the bill seeks to limit the cashless debit card to people aged under 36 who are on Newstart, youth allowance or parenting payment. It will target young unemployed people and young families. The minister said:

Intergenerational welfare dependence is ruining families, there are some young people who have never seen their parents, and even their grandparents, hold down a job.

I agree that we need to help young unemployed people get into suitable employment. But in areas where jobs are scarce, income management isn't going to suddenly get people trained and right up and into work. I'm sure the member for Hinkler in the other place is sincere about the challenges in his community. But using the cashless debit card to tackle the particular social ills of the regions seems to me to be very much a blunt instrument. It will not make negligent parents into better parents. It will not train the unemployed for work. It will not tackle disadvantage or improve social skills. It imposes a burden on families who may have no substance abuse or gambling problems whatsoever. In short, I can't see how it will address intergenerational welfare dependency as the minister seems to hope it will.

The unemployment rate in the electorate is high. In the Bundaberg council area it was around nine per cent in the March quarter. It is stubbornly stuck around that level and is significantly higher than the unemployment rate for regional Queensland, at six per cent, and compares with a national rate of 5.5 per cent. In the neighbouring council area covering Hervey Bay the unemployment rate was even higher, at more than 10 per cent, for the March quarter. So, it is clear that the Hinkler electorate needs much more than the cashless debit card to get its young people off welfare and into work. It needs more jobs, first and foremost. If the government is going to impose this card on more people, particularly on young families, it should do it with conclusive, consistent data to demonstrate its case.

In his second reading speech the minister referred to the findings of the August 2017 final evaluation report on the initial trial in the Ceduna and East Kimberley region to make his case for the current trial. However, we now know that those findings were very much flawed. I said in my speech in February that Centre Alliance had concerns about the quality of the outcome data for the trials in Ceduna and the East Kimberley. This has been borne out by the Auditor-General's recent report, The implementation and performance of the cashless debit card trial. The National Audit Office found that key monitoring activities:

… were not undertaken or fully effective, and the level of unrestricted cash available in the community was not effectively monitored.

The Audit Office also said:

There was a lack of robustness in data collection and the department's evaluation did not make use of all available administrative data to measure the impact of the trial including any change in social harm.

These flaws will hopefully be addressed going forward, but, as I said at the beginning of my speech, we will wait to see the outcomes of the evaluations due next year before we're prepared to consider any further extensions of this trial.