Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I've visited the cashless debit card trial sites many times. I can tell you that life is not easy for people in Ceduna, Bundaberg, the East Kimberley and the Goldfields. I've seen the poverty. I've seen the family violence and the alcohol abuse. I wanted the cashless debit card to fix those things. It didn't. It didn't get the results I had hoped it would. That's why the card is going. Right now, whatever happens to the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Repeal of Cashless Debit Card and Other Measures) Bill 2022, everyone in the trial sites is coming off the card this December.

The card will be gone. It will be gone because two years ago I didn't give Morrison the vote he needed to make it permanent. Honestly, it was one of the hardest choices I have ever had to make in this place, because I desperately wanted the card to work. I wanted to see life get better for people in those trial sites. I wanted to give people an out from addiction and welfare dependency and give them a way to manage their money and fight their worst impulses. I did that because I know what it's like to be on welfare; I know what it's like to live with an addict. I wanted the card to work because I wanted to fix things for people like me and my family.

But the truth is that the coalition government did not set the card up for success, and that is why it failed. I have always said to them: 'If you want to help people, you've got to have a carrot and a stick.' You can't just punish people; you cannot just have a stick. You need the carrot so people know that there's light at the end of the tunnel, that there's reward—it's called reward—that there's a pathway to make their lives better if they want to take it. The former coalition government were good at the stick. They were crap at the rest.

They put the card in. That was the stick; there was no carrot. They never did put in the work to help people get off welfare, get off the card and get into a decent job. They didn't set up residential rehab facilities for alcohols and ice addicts. They didn't get proper, real jobs into trial sites or help business get off the ground; they just chucked the magic card at people. They expected the card to fix everything. That was the only effort they wanted to put in. That was it—just a plastic card.

Well, that card couldn't fix anything by itself. It was never going to be successful. It was never going to work. They set it up to fail, and fail it did. And that's why the card is going—not because of anybody else in this Senate. You had seven years, and you failed miserably. That's why, back then, I voted against making this card permanent. The coalition have no-one to blame but themselves.

And here's the thing: taking the card away isn't good either. That's not going to fix it, because the problems in the trial sites won't disappear when that card goes; they'll only get worse. Those problems—the alcohol abuse, the drug abuse, the violence, the hopelessness—aren't going anywhere. That all stays, and it gets worse. That's the saddest thing for me.

The card is going somewhere: it's going in the bin. It's going in the bin because, let's be honest, the coalition has trashed it. It was seven years in the making, and you trashed it. What should have been gold you trashed. Taking the card away doesn't fix this. I will tell you how worried I am about this: if the coalition had expected the card to fix everything, Labor seems to think that ripping it out will fix everything too. It won't. You can't pull this thing out from under people and walk away like that's your job done. The kids and the families in those trial sites deserve better than that. I've met those kids and those families. I know their faces. I know what their lives look like. With or without the card, they aren't getting the opportunities in life that they deserve. We can't leave them to figure it out on their own. Every single one of us in this place has a responsibility to do better by those people.

If this bill passes tonight, that will not be our job done. It will be the start of our working day, not the time to clock off, I can assure you. I will be running around those trial sites, and I expect to be back here within six months, telling you you have done a disastrous job—that's the Labor Party. Not only will you have killed the card off, the mess that you will make on top of that will be absolutely disastrous. I've written to the Minister to ask her to work with me on four issues. Here's the first one.

Make sure services in the trial sites actually work. Public servants love paying for 'services' for poor people. I've never known a public servant who didn't think all the world's problems couldn't be fixed with more services and more cash. Like Noel Pearson said, public servants see a problem and they grab their four-wheel drive, they grab their wide-brimmed hats, they set up someone with a clipboard and a fax machine and they reckon their job is done. Seriously, that's what I saw in the trial sites, over and over again. It was devastating. That's where you did waste money. You shouldn't have bothered sending them, because they couldn't sell anything, let alone themselves. There was plenty of money for services but no thought about whether the services actually worked.

Take Ceduna as a great example. Ceduna has a number of cashed-up services that were set up as part of the cashless debit card trial. You can get a free breakfast whenever you want in Ceduna. You can hang out at the community centre and do arts and crafts, but the best you can get from the local TAFE is a short course on first aid, and that's on a good day. If you're a heavy drinker in Ceduna you can go to the sobering up centre for a safe bed to sleep that night. As a matter of fact, you can go there every night if you want, and when you wake up they'll even give you breakfast. How's that helping you? It's great, isn't it? There's no rehab if you want to get over your addiction, and there's no psychological support. There are no residential facilities for you to break out of your bad habits. If you want to go to rehab, you'll have to go five hours up the road to Port Augusta. I don't know about you people, but that doesn't work for Indigenous people; they've got to be close to family. Five hours is too far away. That was your first failure. Once you come back, more than likely you'll fall in with the same crowd and you'll be drinking again and carrying on.

The situation in Ceduna is the same for all the trial sites. That's why I've campaigned for each of them to receive better-targeted, more-meaningful support. The government has promised to put money in for services. I hope that won't mean more money for free breakfasts and crafts afternoons. What people in those sites don't need is more window dressing. What they need is a fair go to make their lives better. That's why I've called on the government to put the money for services towards organisations that will help people get their lives back on track. There should be funding for residential rehab in regional areas; money to help people get real jobs, not just time fillers like work for the dole, because that's rubbish—it was never going to work and it hasn't even worked for white people, so good luck with that. There should be funding for better mental and physical health facilities and support for Indigenous-run businesses. It's not rocket science here, people; it really isn't.

It may be the case that the government will have to take money from community organisations that aren't working—so sad, too bad—and there are plenty of those in the trial sites that have nothing to offer but dressing up. It will be hard. Apparently, we have a deficit in this country and there isn't unlimited funds. We've got to make sure that that money is spent properly so people can get on with their lives.

No. 2 for the Labor Party: show us your transition plan. I'm yet to see one. We're going to go from bad to worse. Next you'll be having interventions again—'I have kids out there being abused'—because that's where we're heading. If this bill passes, people will start coming off the card from next week. Whether you think the card worked or not, taking it away is going to be disruptive, and it is not going to be helpful. We're looking at a massive change for some very vulnerable people. The first thing I'm worried about is crime. People have told me plenty of times that crime, antisocial behaviour and alcohol abuse spike when trial sites get big cash payments, such as mining royalties, on top of people's quarantined income from Centrelink. There's your other problem. Do something about the mining royalties. It's a massive problem. If Twiggy Forrest can direct it elsewhere, why can't every other mining company in this country do so? No more royalties via cheques. No more! Letting people opt out of the card is going to have a similar effect. I want to know from Labor: what are you going to do about that? How will you protect these people?

This bill will also make a big difference to the women who rely on the compulsory nature of the card to have control of their own money. Being able to say to your sister, your brother or your husband, 'Sorry, I can't give you cash because it's all on my card; I've got nothing left,' is useful to a lot of women. It stops a lot of domestic violence. Once again, it's not rocket science.

When you go to the trial sites and you ask the women what they think of the card, I'll tell you what they say. When the blokes are around, they'll sit there and say, 'It's no good.' When you clear those blokes out, they're nearly jumping up, dancing, because they can't believe how effective this card has been for their lives, especially when it comes to humbugging and abuse—abuse! Making the card voluntary is going to take that away. My question is: what's going to happen to those women? What's the plan for them? Once again, silence from Labor. No plan.

The last thing on transition that bothers me is how we're going to make sure people get new cards on time and without hassle. I don't know if you know this, but they're trying to get them on a brand new card up there in the Northern Territory. Even though it was state of the art and would get them off a BasicsCard, even though they were selling that for three weeks around the Northern Territory, there was no way in hell they were going to buy into that. I'm not a public servant. I was dressed up like they are and I'm Indigenous. Many of these people in these small communities are uneducated. It's very difficult for them; they don't understand. You can't just go out there with a public servant and put something on the screen. It's not going to work. You people have got no idea what you're up against over here—none at all!

You can't just mail it out. Mail's not going to work. It can take two or three weeks to do all that stuff. And then, once again, you have to explain to them about this card and what's happening. You people over there are just not getting this at all. You're lost in a bubble. Plenty of people in the trial sites have no fixed address; they only have their card. You're giving them a whole new system. Once again: how are you selling it? I imagine committee time is going to be an absolute ripper in here shortly. And even if they do have an address, it could, like I said, take two weeks, at best, to deliver a letter.

Six months after this bill passes everyone who's still on the CDC will get the boot off the card. The government expects people to switch their bank accounts and bank cards over in a day. Once again: we're dealing with a heap of uneducated people, so good luck with that. I don't see how that's going to happen without blocking some people from their own money, and then they're not going to have money. It will take a lot of careful planning and preparation to make the transition off the cashless debit card work.

And I still haven't seen anything from the minister or department on how they plan to manage it. That's why I've asked the minister to release the transition plan for the trial sites. The government need to show us how they're going to handle the next six months with the people who are going to come off the card. Put it on paper. Since you think your plan's going to work so well, let's see it! Let's see what the abuse is going to look like in six months time. Let's see how many more alcoholics you've got in these communities in six months time. Let's look at child abuse go through the roof in these communities in six months time. That's what you are facing. You're accountable for what comes next, so lay your cards out on the table. Show us that you're up for the challenge. Right now all I'm getting from the Labor Party on the cashless debit card is a heap of silence and a stupid look of 'I don't know'.

One of the last government's biggest stuff-ups on the cashless debit card was that it didn't monitor its effects properly. When you do a test on whether something works of not, you have to start by looking at how things were before you made a change. Well, here you go. I hope you've been doing your travels out there, because I want to see all that paperwork. What does it look like today? Because I can tell you what: I'm going to be back here in six months asking you. I know what it looks like now; I'm going to tell you what it look like in six months time. And no doubt there will be silence on that side as well.

You have to measure your starting point; that's how you know how far you've come. We didn't do that with the cashless debit card and the trials weren't much of a trial at all. Statistics are very important. I can come in here and tell you how many times I've visited those trial sites and the differences I've seen in them, even if it was only a 20 or 30 per cent difference. I have seen ones that are more successful than others because they had more on the ground. They had limited alcohol consumption, because they had some of the strictest liquor licences in the country. Then they had the cashless debit card. Then they had dogs on patrol. Then they had magistrates—the same magistrates going through the court. It's not a one-thing fix. You need all these additives with it. The cashless debit card was never going to fix everything, but it was a starter.

Making the card voluntary is going to take that away. My question is: what's going to happen out there? I remember Labor saying that they didn't have the statistics, the data and all that. You guys are doing the same thing, so that's really unfortunate. There are also 4,000 people on the CDC in the Northern Territory in Cape York, and those people should be left alone. That system is working very well. Where it is working, leave it alone. If the communities want it, then let them have them. And leave the card there, so if anyone else has drug and alcohol problems in the future they can opt in. It's simple. I would also like to foreshadow that later I will be moving my second reading amendment, as detailed on sheet 1668.