Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on these opposition amendments to the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Repeal of Cashless Debit Card and Other Measures) Bill 2022. I have listened to the speeches over the last day or so and I have reflected on the lived experience and the passion that so many senators are bringing to this discussion. I did hear an interjection earlier, suggesting that, in some way, this was about extending debate unnecessarily, and I reject that with all of my heart and soul, because there are those of us who live in communities that are marginalised and disadvantage—and this is not just Aboriginal communities.

I heard Noel Pearson, who was one of the people who inspired me to get involved in politics, speak at a Press Club function in about 2008. He talked about these being issues not of race but of poverty. The cashless debit card, when it was enacted, was rolled out to try to assist people who needed additional protections. They needed additional support not just for themselves, and we heard Senator Henderson talk about women being bashed to get access to social security payments. I'm very concerned about some of the discussion where the minister has been proposing that they'll put a PIN on social security cards. Isn't having a PIN for their card just the same problem as forcing people to hand over the password to their card? I don't see that solving the problem at all.

So I join Senator Canavan in his congratulations of the government for listening. They took so many poorly thought through, paternalistic, idealistic statements to the last election which they are, one by one, having to reverse. At the last lot of sittings we saw them having to re-establish the northern Australia committee. On day one of the new parliament they abolished the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia, and by the end of the following week we had re-established the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia. That abolishing the cashless debit card would be the right thing to do is another example of this thought bubble.

I do congratulate Labor on actually listening: on listening to the speeches, on listening to the examples that are being given, on listening to Noel Pearson and other leaders talk about why this is such an appalling decision. By overturning the alcohol restrictions in the Northern Territory and removing the CDC, they are actually driving families into terrible, terrible situations.

I know the stories that I hear in the north are of young people who are unable to study. They are having to get up early and stay up late at night. They are looking after their younger siblings, getting them something to eat and helping them to get dressed and get to school, and it's at the price of their own education. They end up dropping out of school, dropping out of higher education and missing out on the opportunities that this great country has available to us all if we have the sort of supported childhood that most of us here were fortunate enough to have.

So I embrace this embarrassing backflip from Labor where they suddenly work out what the reality of the world is. They get out of Sydney, Melbourne and whatever other protected areas they've been in, and they understand that in regional parts of Australia, and no doubt in outer-city places, people need the support that the CDC extended, because it was a superior welfare card. It had access to a million different sites to spend your money in, as opposed to the BasicsCard, which is exactly that. It is a second-rate, poorly considered alternative to what the CDC is, which is a much-enhanced card that allows people to focus, as Senator Canavan said, their hard-earned dollars from the Australian taxpayer so that, when we provide assistance, we provide assistance for the safety net and for welfare to be spent on housing, on food and on supporting the children to be educated—the important goals of social security—and not on alcohol—on grog—and those other expenditures. That's what the CDC was protecting.

So I support Labor's new amendments to extend the CDC back to allow the Cape York communities, the CDC trial sites and those people in the Northern Territory who voluntarily transitioned from the BasicsCard onto the CDC to remain on it. This is a very good starting point, and it is just the first admission that they have messed up with this ill-conceived election commitment. The amendments put forward by the government confirm that even they admit that abolishing the cashless debit card will have serious consequences for vulnerable communities.

What we saw last night when Senator Chisholm attacked the cashless debit card rollout in Hinkler was an example of the lack of informed debate and understanding that has happened. Senator Henderson has already read into the record the huge amount of consultation that happened in the electorate of Hinkler, in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. Between May 2011 and 2017, the Department of Social Services conducted over 188 meetings with federal government agencies, community members, local government representatives and service providers. Senator Henderson has laid all of this out—the huge amount of consultation. So it is truly appalling to have a government senator somehow represent that there was no consultation with that community at all. It is not the case, and in actual fact there is overwhelming support. When ReachTEL, an independent survey organisation, surveyed that community, they found overwhelming support for the CDC. Anecdotally they're talking about participants having money left over at the end of the fortnight. Some now have savings. Children are going to school with lunch, and they have had breakfast. Requests for emergency food hampers have plummeted. These are good outcomes. These are great outcomes that we want to see more of, in all of the federally funded services—over 70 existing across the region, including drug and alcohol services, financial capability, employment and family and children's programs, just to name a few.

I also want to acknowledge the extraordinary work of the local member, Keith Pitt. He has been attacked by these kinds of senseless, ill-informed, ignorant accusations that were again directed at him yesterday, when he has fought diligently for his community—for the disadvantaged in his community and for the voiceless in his community, particularly the children and the elderly who are now able to feed themselves and have more money left over and not be abused by family members who were trying to access their cash.

So I welcome Labor's backflip and amendments to this CDC legislation, but you now have to wonder: what is the purpose of this legislation at all? What is the purpose of us being here if Labor is just going to slowly and very quietly continue rolling the advantages of the CDC right across Australia? This is a card that the communities say works and that has seen more families in better situations and more appropriately spending the hard-earned taxpayers' dollars that we are using when we fund social welfare.

We know that in communities right across Australia there are poor outcomes. In northern Australia, juvenile crime levels are bordering on the ridiculous, because one of the results of alcohol and drug fuelled home environments is that children feel safer on the streets than they do with their parents. Cairns and Townville will smash previous records for stolen vehicles. In Townsville, car thefts jumped 124 per cent in 2020-21, and there was a further increase of 20 per cent in 2021-22. It's a 140 per cent increase in two years in Townsville, while Toowoomba, the Gold Coast and Brisbane topped the state's card theft dishonour board.

Tripadvisor is advising people against going to Mount Isa, my much loved nearly home town, and I know why: because when you're out in the evenings groups of young people are roaming the streets because it is not safe at home. There is no food at home. There is no protection or nurturing environment at home, and they are on the streets roaming around. They are stealing cars and creating mischief, and they are not ever going to achieve their potential. Father Mick Lowcock, who is a great man in Mount Isa, picks up young people as they come back from Cleveland Youth Detention Centre. He looks out for them, but he knows there are only a small number of children that this applies to. It is children who are not at home because they are not being provided for there. I would welcome seeing the sort of support that the cashless debit card provides to those children being rolled out to Mount Isa and other communities. People pick up these kids. They drop them at home. They watch them run through the house, down the back stairs, over the fence and onto the streets again, and they have not enough resources and places to take these kids to.

So it is clear that steps must be taken to switch off the access to alcohol and drugs as a first step to addressing a multitude of issues. The cashless debit card does exactly that. We have strong evidence over the past five years to show improved outcomes for those who use it and for their loved ones: less alcohol and drug abuse, less violence and more incentives to find employment. In effect, Labor's removal of the CDC is opening the door to more cases of children who are not being fed and nurtured at home and cannot access the advantages of education because they're going to school hungry, without breakfast or lunch, and eventually drop out of school altogether. By banning the purchase of alcohol and gambling products via the card, we are quarantining more money to be spent on fresh food, school excursions, sports gear and petrol for the car.

The cashless debit card, as we have heard, has been operating in Ceduna, South Australia since 15 March 2016; in East Kimberley, Western Australia since April 2016; in the Goldfields, Western Australia since March 2018; and in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland since January 2019. With virtually no consultation, Labor has made it easier for those at risk to spend their taxpayer funded payments on activities and substances that harm themselves, their families, their communities and society at large.

Finally, I want to touch on the community of Doomadgee, where there is an extraordinary group of elder women, the Strong Women's Group. They are the ones who are taking in kids in unofficial, loose fostering arrangements from their own children and making sure that these kids have food, are being dressed and are going to school. I had a discussion with another senator from the north the other day, and we were worried about who is going to do that job for these young people when those elders are gone. Who is going to nurture and feed these children and ensure they get to school so that they can access the potential and possibility that they have within themselves? Who is going to do that? That is why the role of the cashless debit card and other social security measures is to protect our children, to protect our vulnerable, to ensure that money is being spent where we as taxpayers are assuming it's being spent. This is not about individuals' rights to spend money wherever they want. This is about a protection, a social security safety net for communities that are disadvantaged by poverty, by lack of education, by remoteness, by other disadvantage.

In the first independent evaluation of the CDC in late 2017, the card was shown to deliver considerable positive impact in the initial trial sites. Forty-one per cent of participants surveyed drank alcohol less frequently, 48 per cent of participants surveyed who used drugs reported using them less frequently, and 48 per cent of those who were gambling before the trial reported gambling less often. Dozens of evaluations of the cashless debit card have provided consistent evidence about welfare-quarantining policies having positive impacts on communities, on the people who were previously victims of crime and, most importantly, on our children, on our vulnerable and on their future.