Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the additional information in relation to the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill 2020. I share the anger and the angst of others on this side of the chamber in relation to the government's pursuit of this legislation. Among this additional information that's been presented to the chamber this afternoon, I note in particular that Senator Siewert asked for information about the departmental costs to date associated with the CDC for the department and any other government department associated with the trials. And it was a rather eye-watering amount: the cost from 2015-16 to 2019-20 was some $33.632 million—for the hotline, the card, merchant management, administration, processing and support, blah, blah, blah. I have to say, when this government is looking at putting people into mandatory cashless debit card income management and they also want to reduce the payments for the same people who are on payments like JobSeeker to just $40 a day—what is it they really think they're doing in spending that astronomical amount of money on micromanaging people's finances? What's the point of micromanaging the finances of people who simply don't have enough to live on anyway?

I note that one of the objectives of the so-called cashless debit card is to address alcohol and drug abuse. I have to say that if you are managing to buy alcohol on those low payments—looking at Labor's dissenting report, we know the research into the cashless debit card showed that some 87 per cent of people on the card simply didn't have a problem with alcohol. Eighty-seven per cent of participants reported they did not have a problem with alcohol. Now, if you take the 76 senators in this place and 76 people who might be on JobSeeker payments in the Northern Territory and who have been placed on this cashless debit card—76 senators verses 76 people on the cashless debit card who get JobSeeker payments in the Northern Territory—who do you think spends more on alcohol each month, each fortnight? Hands down, I'm sure the money spent in here would be tenfold the money spent by anyone on a cashless debit card, so if you want to invite people to look in your pocket, to look at your drug habits, at your alcohol consumption, then go right ahead.

This punitive micromanagement that does nothing to build the capacity and resilience of people is absolutely galling, and I find the focus on making the cashless debit card compulsory in the Northern Territory implicitly and overtly racist. It is overtly racist, just like other examples in Australian history. We had a debate this week about saving a seat in the Northern Territory. In 1911 the Northern Territory was split from South Australia to become a territory, and effectively had its Senate voting rights at that time removed. It had its democratic House of Representatives voting rights removed. South Australia got its 12 senators, and the people of the Northern Territory lost their right to vote for senators. Would we have done that to the population of the Northern Territory back then, in 1911, had the population of the Northern Territory been all white? The answer is obvious. It's intrinsically obvious. The answer is, of course, no. I think in the future when people look back on this debate about the cashless debit card, when they reflect on this debate, they will know that the Northern Territory is being singled out because the majority of people who live there are First Nations people.

So when it comes to these debates, we must, as others have said, leave the cultural authority and leadership around finding things that work for community in the hands of those communities. We are too far and too remote. It's not them; it's not those in the communities of the Northern Territory that are remote. It's we that are remote from them. We have to talk about the issues in their communities in a way in which they have the voice in it, not us as representatives in this place, with all the privileges and income that come with that.

I implore the Senate to reflect morally on what it is to single out the Northern Territory and the other trial sites, essentially and in a large part for their Indigeneity. The government will say, 'This now applies to everyone in the Northern Territory.' But I take you back to the principle. Is the government about to apply this to Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia—to everybody? There are 1.4 million people on JobSeeker payments in our nation. What gives this place the right to start interfering with their budgeting and with their freedom within our society?

These impacts are very real. We leave stupid bureaucratic systems in charge of the fundamental details of people's lives. A person gave evidence to the committee who was a student, a hospitality worker, paying their own rent and earning their own income. Once they finished their study and went onto a JobSeeker payment, they were, of course, also moved onto a cashless debit card. And what did that young person who'd finished their education tell us? They told us that they had lost count of the number of times Indue blocked the payment of their rent. The simple fact is that the cashless debit card is a big bureaucracy that doesn't meet people's needs, that is, their needs to exchange money with family members, to participate in a cash economy, to do basic things like pay their rent. So this afternoon, in this debate, I call on senators to reflect morally on this issue. (Time expired)