Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Hansard source

We do not know what is going to happen to those people who are voluntarily on this card. We don't know what's going to happen to those people who have voluntarily transferred from the BasicsCard to the CDC in the Northern Territory. What is going to happen to them? We do not know what is going to happen. What was the research that underpinned this decision, and where is the research to show what impact the withdrawal of this particular mechanism is going to have on those communities? We don't know what advice has been taken to underpin this decision. We have all these unanswered questions, and this Senate wants to give us four weeks to go and ask those people at the coalface—those people who are impacted by this card, those communities who are impacted by this card, the communities who asked for this card in the first place.

At the same time, those opposite intend to keep income management in place in some communities but not in others. We do not understand the rationale behind keeping people in the Northern Territory on income management when people in other communities are not going to be kept on income management. We do not understand the difference. This is a really important piece of inquiry that I think Australians need to understand. In particular, we need to respect the views and ideas of people in the communities where this card is currently in place. We need to understand what they want and how they want it to be implemented. We need to understand the impact of removing this card without any thought whatsoever, without any consultation. There was no consultation with these communities before the announcement that the card was going to be removed. I think we owe respect to this chamber for review, and we owe respect to those communities to consult with them.