Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

At the risk of repeating myself, to be very clear: there are no further plans or decisions that have been made in relation to the future of the cashless debit card. What the government policy is is before us at the moment. However, we will continue to work with community leaders, stakeholders and communities generally about the benefits and opportunities that we can offer them by working with them.

I'll go to your question around ASIC and section 12DL. Senator McCarthy, I want to put on the record that I meant no offence to you personally in my response; I just wanted to make it really clear that I understood very clearly that the ASIC determination does not apply to what we are intending to do in the way that we are proposing that the card will be offered to people in the Northern Territory. The reason that I say that, Senator Wong, is because the intention of the method to offer the card is actually to go out to communities, one by one, and work with communities to explain to them the benefits of the card and to help them in the process of moving from the BasicsCard to the cashless debit card.

In fact, we as a government, through Services Australia, do remote servicing around the Northern Territory. We do it around the whole of Australia; we make sure that we provide a service to people, even if they're in the most remote of communities. For people who want to go on to the cashless debit card, we are now offering a voluntary transfer from the BasicsCard to the cashless welfare card which entirely circumvents the issue which has been raised today by Senator McCarthy. However, it doesn't change the intention of the government in relation to how we intend to continue to consult with and assist people in the Northern Territory.

In fact, in the consultations that I did in January this year when I was in the Northern Territory, I went to a number of communities and we spoke about how they would like the information to be provided to them about the cashless debit card. They sought for that information to be provided to them in person, and often the request was for it to be in first language—and I acknowledge that there are quite a number of those, Senator McCarthy. So the process to make this offering to the Northern Territory will probably take some time, but it is our intention to engage one on one with communities as this card is offered out into the Northern Territory.