Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the documents.

The Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management and Cashless Welfare) Bill 2019 is fundamentally flawed. Labor senators listened to all the evidence presented at the inquiries, read all the submissions and carefully considered our response to this bill. This legislation will have a direct impact on the lives of 23,000 people, the majority of them First Nations people living in the Northern Territory. It will impact their families, their communities and their futures.

What this legislation does is turn the entire Northern Territory into one cashless debit card trial, and it creates three classes of people who will be forced to participate. It requires 23,000 people to open a bank account with Indue Ltd. It allows personal data to be collected and shared between the federal and Northern Territory governments, with a lack of clarity and transparency about Indue Ltd's role in data collection and use. It fails to provide a fair process for people to exit the trial, even where it is causing harm.

The bottom line is that there is no independent verified evidence to support the idea that broad-based income management reduces social harm. It might fit with your preconceived philosophy and views about people who receive income support, but the fact is there is no evidence—quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. We have 12 years of experience of it in the Northern Territory. The Howard intervention of 2007 introduced compulsory income management to the Northern Territory. Despite remote areas of our Territory being subject to this unrelenting and costly policy, poverty has worsened there. There is no independent rigorous evaluation of the CDC in the trial sites that indicates it is effective in reducing social harms, particularly the harmful use of alcohol and other substances, and there is no robust evaluation on the BasicsCard showing that it reduces social harm.

Evidence from Danila Dilba Health Service given to the committee that inquired into this bill showed that more than 23,000 Aboriginal people have been subjected to income management or income quarantining since 2007. The original objectives of income management were supposedly to improve the health, wellbeing and education outcomes of Aboriginal children and to protect women and older people from humbugging and violence.

Over the 12 years of compulsory income management in the Northern Territory, Danila Dilba said there has been an astonishing lack of credible evidence that income management has made any significant improvement to any of the key indicators of wellbeing—child health, birth weights, failure to thrive and child protection notifications and substantiations. There are no improvements in school attendance, and certainly nothing we can see would suggest that there has been a reduction in family or community violence.

Given the government contends this bill is a swap for recipients from one tool to another—that is, from the BasicsCard to the cashless debit card—the lack of evidence regarding the efficacy of either card brings into question why this legislation is being imposed. In fact, many submitters and witnesses provided evidence of negative impacts of both the BasicsCard and the CDC.

Two of the stated objectives of the cashless debit card are to ensure that vulnerable people are protected from the abuse of substances and any associated harm and violence and to give people an increased ability to meet their basic needs. Some witnesses and submitters gave evidence that a CDC could exacerbate the harms it is purportedly meant to reduce. Money Mob Talkabout Limited, a financial literacy and assistance organisation, told the committee that their data suggests welfare quarantining can cause harm. While older people and people with disabilities won't be directly put on the CDC, it's unlikely to stop them from being targeted because they receive those higher payments, such as an age pension or a disability pension. We're seeing them currently having their cards and income management allocations taken and used by other people who've already expended their income. So it's actually increasing their vulnerability and diminishing their ability to meet their basic needs. One type of vulnerability could be just supplanting another.

This bill gives the minister extraordinary powers to determine the level of restricted payments, and now we see from amendments that have been introduced in the other place today that the real agenda of this government is to increase the quarantined income level for all income support recipients to 80 per cent, in line with the other trial sites. Having your dollars quarantined by 80 per cent—that is the true intent of this government.

There are huge flaws in the operation of the CDC. It's been proven that the CDC can be used to purchase supposedly banned items. The loopholes in the CDC provisions that allow participants to purchase supposedly banned items, such as alcohol, through the use of credit cards and barter-type arrangements with unscrupulous individuals is of great concern. These loopholes bring into question the effectiveness of the card, and they were summed up in comments by Senator Lambie in a hearing of our committee. She said:

So I can go and get eight bottles of wine on my Visa card and you guys—

the department—

have got no idea, and I can just pay it off with my other card. That's a new one. That's a beauty! Everyone will be getting Visa cards tomorrow, watch.

Those are very true words and very valid concerns.

There has been no real consultation with the people of the Northern Territory—none of the stakeholders, affected communities or any of them—on the planned rollout of the cashless debit card. This government is spending $129 million on this expansion of a flawed system that no-one wants and that doesn't even work. If the government really want to spend $129 million to support welfare recipients in the Northern Territory, I've got a few suggestions for them. How about the spending of a few million dollars on the provision of support services in remote regions? It is well established in the medical profession that the treatment of alcohol and drug misuse disorders requires individualised responses and access to services, but there is a shortage of rehabilitation and mental health services, especially in remote communities. The imposition of this cashless debit card, with absolutely no consultation with the community, is reprehensible. Has this government learned nothing since the disaster and the harm caused by the intervention in the Northern Territory 12 years ago?

We know that community developed and run initiatives to reduce social harm have more chance of gaining support and—get this—even positive outcomes. Well, what do you know! There are proven examples of this. The Arnhem Land Progress Association's food card and Tangentyere Council's previous voluntary income management system were cited as evidence of community driven solutions, They should be supported by this government.

A delegation of people from the Northern Territory was in Canberra this week, talking to senators and others about why they don't want or need the cashless debit card. These are people with the lived experience, and I thank colleagues in the Senate and those in the other house who took the time to meet and speak with this delegation, who travelled thousands and thousands of kilometres just so that you could understand—or at least try to understand—the pain that is being placed on our First Nations people not just in the Northern Territory but right across the country when governments and representatives of parliament do not listen and do not take heed of the positive programs that are working. Programs work when you work with First Nations people instead of coming from the top down and always imposing your views and your policies on top of First Nations people. Their message was very clear, and it's one that First Nations people around the country are saying louder and louder. Senators, please listen again. Every time I stand I ask: listen to First Nations people. Nothing for us without us. The cashless debit card is not for us, and you will do it without us. (Time expired)