Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card Trial Expansion) Bill 2018 will allow for the expansion of the cashless debit card program to the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay areas. There's a fourth trial site under the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999, and the trial will be extended to this site until 30 June 2020, providing sufficient time to implement the trial and for it to operate for at least 12 months. The bill updates the current limitations on the number of participants from 10,000 to 15,000, recognising the increase that would come from implementing the cashless debit card to this area. The bill also moves the provisions in the Social Security (Administration) (Trial of Cashless Welfare Arrangements) Determination 2018 into primary legislation, or, in uncontentious cases, such as the authorising community bodies, into a notifiable instrument. This will mean that for all four sites, including the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay sites, the trial parameters will be embedded in the legislation, providing greater legislative consistency across all sites and improving parliamentary oversight over the cashless debit card legislation.

These amendments specify trial participants for each site, including any exceptions and specifying wellbeing exemptions where being a participant in a cashless debit card trial is determined to pose a serious risk to an individual's mental, physical or emotional wellbeing. In the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay trial site, trial participants are defined as persons under 36 of age receiving Newstart, youth allowance, parenting payment, or single or parenting payment, partner. The selection of the cohort in this area has occurred in response to significant consultations with the impacted community, recognising the need for supporting interventions in the areas of youth unemployment, young families and intergenerational welfare dependency. In the current operating sites of Ceduna in South Australia and the East Kimberley and Goldfields regions of Western Australia, all persons living in the trial area and in receipt of a working-age income support payment are defined as trial participants, which is enshrined in the primary legislation. This aligns with the current arrangement at these sites but provides greater certainty for these communities around the trial arrangements.

For each site, amendments in the bill allow the secretary to make a determination that will vary the restricted percentages for a cashless debit card participant in the event of an unforeseen circumstances, such as a natural disaster or technical failure of the card or the account. The bill also allows the option to establish a community panel by notifiable instrument and clarifies who can be voluntary participants in the current trial sites. Persons living in Ceduna or the East Kimberley or the Goldfields trial sites who are receiving a trigger payment as defined in the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 or an aged pension and are not otherwise trial participants may volunteer to be part of the cashless debit card trial. However, persons in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay trial site who are outside the class of persons identified as a trial participant cannot volunteer. This will allow the opportunity to test the effectiveness of the program on a targeted cohort in the context of a larger urban population with high levels of welfare dependence. The Bundaberg and Hervey Bay area also has a different cultural composition with a much lower proportion of Indigenous Australians in this site compared to the three current trial areas.

The cashless debit card aims to reduce the devastating effects of alcohol, drugs, and gambling abuse. The card operates like an ordinary debit card with the primary difference being that it doesn't work at liquor stores or gambling houses, and it cannot be used to withdraw cash. Consequently, illicit products cannot be purchased with the card. To further this extent, the bill also introduces provisions that allow merchants to block restrictive goods, like cash-like products, at the point of sale, to keep in line with the intent of the program by preventing participants from circumventing the program to spend the welfare payments on alcohol, gambling and drugs. This bill will support additional card functionality at merchants in each of the trial sites and could allow trial participants to access additional merchants. It's important to note that the trial does not detract from the eligibility of a person to receive welfare payments nor reduce the amount of the person's social security entitlement.

The cashless debit card trial has been operating in Ceduna, South Australia, and the East Kimberley, Western Australia, for more than two years, and it was recently expanded to a third site—the Goldfields region in Western Australia in March 2018. Results from the evaluation of the cashless welfare card found that a benefit of the card is that it can increase motivation to find work. A final report evaluating the Ceduna and East Kimberley sites shows feedback from some card participants in 2017 which indicate almost a quarter of people on the card were spending several hours a week looking for work. This was an increase from 11 per cent in February 2017.

By limiting spending on alcohol, drugs and gambling, the cashless debit card can help stabilise people's lives, particularly young people, in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay area, with the potential flow-on impacts of improving chances of finding employment or successfully completing education and training. The government has also announced a second evaluation of the cashless debit card across all three current trial sites to assess the ongoing effectiveness of the program. The second evaluation will use research methodologies informed by the University of Queensland and draw on the baseline measurements of social conditions in the Goldfields developed by the University of Adelaide. Findings for the second evaluation will be published in late 2019. The initial positive finds of the impact of the cashless debit card in Ceduna and the East Kimberley have been encouraging. The expansion to Bundaberg and Hervey Bay will help test the card and the technology that supports it in more diverse communities and settings. This will build on the evidence available to further evaluate the impacts and outcomes of the cashless debit card on all participants.

In drafting the bill, the government has carefully balanced community support for the cashless debit card at existing and proposed sites with the concerns raised in parliament around allowing additional time for the gathering of evidence to further evaluate impacts and outcomes. The government remains committed to the continuation of the cashless debit card to provide a strong social welfare safety net through reducing social harm in areas with high levels of welfare dependency and supporting vulnerable people, families and communities.

Just briefly—I'm pleased that Senator Faruqi is still in the chamber—can I just make some short comments on her contribution. In her maiden speech she indicated her interest in Indigenous affairs, and I thank the senator. I normally rely on Senator Siewert in these matters, but it's tremendous to have someone else with that interest. However, I can see early in the piece that some of our views will move. Senator Siewert knows my strongly-held views on this. I come from the Northern Territory where the effects of the first cashless debit card, which was the BasicsCard, was trialled. I can remember a Northern Territory with many communities simply awash with grog. I appreciate more services so that when people are getting bashed we just have to build more domestic violence services. I'm not suggesting any mischief in your approach. The approach we took was that alcohol was causing so much dysfunction to communities, tearing down a culture. If somebody else could have pointed to a way in which we could reduce the amount of alcohol consumed in communities—because I don't think the results of that consumption can be controlled—we would have been more than happy to listen to that. I've been in this place for a while since then and have been listening carefully to Senator Siewert and others, but there is no alternative. This isn't doing something because it is something to do. This is a very important matter.

I understand that one of the groups in Ceduna that have been really, really badly affected—in fact, I understand that their small to medium-sized business has been completely interrupted and they've moved out of Ceduna—has been those people who are purveyors of methamphetamine. They have complained bitterly and effectively don't think there's really a market in town. The pubs, those people who run the poker machines, have said that this is absolutely outrageous: 'Look at the amount of money that we've lost through our pokies. We should have people from Ceduna here.' A lot of the poor people come into Ceduna and put all their money through the pokies. Those who run the pokies were adamant. They were saying, 'This is a terrible thing to happen to us.' But I don't share that business model and I think the cashless welfare card is an important tool.

In the Territory, while people will say, 'No, no, you can't find a person in the Territory that will support the card,' let me tell you, it's a bit like the privacy of the booth: you can't get women to say too much publicly because the guerillas and thugs are out there to make sure that you don't speak up about domestic violence. 'You don't speak up about the cashless welfare card. We've decided, the community'—mostly men in the community—'that we don't want the cashless welfare card because it stops my life, my life of making sure that I'll go and gamble, I'll go and drink and I will take the money and I can take it in cash. But I can't now.' And, in the Territory, it's only 50 per cent, so 50 per cent of the money is still spent in whatever discretionary way we have. Some of the trial sites are indicating movement to 80-20. This is a debit card. Whatever you want to point to—second-hand shops, anywhere—you can buy what you want. The only thing you can't get is cash, and you can't go into a place that serves alcohol. They're normally separated, like in Woolies. They separate those places.

I think these are very good initiatives. These initiatives have been at the behest of the leaders in the community. Of course, there'll be those who say, 'Oh, no, he's not the leader,' and, 'We don't really like her,' because they might differ. But fundamentally the leaders of the communities have been very supportive of this. In terms of meeting with the women's groups, if you said, 'Let's get rid of the BasicsCard—we'll just pay you all cash again,' there would be an outrage in the Northern Territory. The women would say, 'Please don't do this to us. Don't take us back to those bad old days.' I think that in and of itself is very much a voice worth listening to.