Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senators statements is a great time to be able to hear from senators and the issues that they really care about. I am following on from two very good presentations here to the Senate. Firstly, Senator Polley, that was an outstanding contribution that you have just made, and I want to commend you for the work that you do in highlighting the impact of dementia and your support for people that are suffering dementia, not just the patients but their families as well. I recently gave a contribution on this subject. Recently a good family friend of mine tragically passed away. I have seen the ravages of dementia on their family and indeed in my own family. So I thank you.

Senator Sterle, your work across the Kimberley and your presentation before was outstanding. You didn't do it just to brag about the work that you do. You would be within your rights to do that, because it's commendable work, but you did it to highlight the support that you've received in providing all those mattresses and providing that support to a community that desperately needs support. I commend you for it. For those that don't know, Senator Sterle and I are co-patrons of the men's shed up in Fitzroy Crossing. I think we're going to miss each other by a couple of days. You're up there later in April and I am there maybe at the beginning of that week. We might just miss each other, but maybe I'll see you on the road train, although I might be in the air. Thank you.

I want to speak today about the cashless debit card, an issue that is a contested policy space in this place. I want to deal with that here today. We are seeing some big impacts of the abolition of the cashless debit card in communities across Australia where the CDC has been in operation. The government did flag its intention to abolish the cashless debit card as part of their campaign leading up to the election, and they will tell you that they received a mandate from the Australian people to abolish the CDC. I beg to differ, because in the locations where the CDC is in operation the members of parliament comfortably won their seats, and they were all either National or Liberal members of parliament.

Putting that aside, the fact is that the Labor Party demonised the cashless debit card as part of their campaign. They wanted to run a lie throughout the campaign, saying that the coalition were going to put aged pensioners onto the CDC. It was an atrocious lie, because it was not something we would do. That's something that I personally would cross the floor on. I would never want to see that happen. The CDC was only ever aimed at supporting people that were vulnerable and needed the assistance. Certainly for aged pensioners, who have paid taxes all their lives and are just going about their lives, there was practically no benefit in the CDC for them, unless they chose to want to be on it themselves. That was a voluntary thing that they could do. The Labor Party ran a scare campaign on this. In order to make that scare campaign true they had to double down on their resistance to the cashless debit card, and they sadly made the decision to take it away from communities that were getting some real benefit.

The interesting thing is, while the CDC was in operation, I guess we didn't have the counterfactual. We kept hearing from people saying, 'The cashless debit card doesn't work. It doesn't help.' I'd get up here and say, 'You needed to have gone to the communities, like I have, to have seen what they were like before.' You would see that there has been a change. There were many things thrown back and there was dismissal of that argument.

Now we do have the counterfactual. We know what these communities were like. I certainly know. I spent a lot of time across all of the CDC communities. I saw the difference the card made once it was implemented in Kununurra and the East Kimberley. There were varying degrees of success of the program. It worked particularly well in Wyndham, the Northern Goldfields and Ceduna. It was a little marginal in other parts. I'm prepared to admit that in some other places it wasn't implemented as well as it could have been. But it was having a real impact.

Now that the CDC has been removed, we've got that counterfactual. We see the devastating impact of its removal, just like we said we would. I think it's a real shame. And, sadly, the government is dismissing those concerns. Its treatment of people who speak up in these communities is very, very disappointing. We've had people like Pat Hill, president of the Shire of Laverton, dismissed by Minister Elliot as being disingenuous when he talks about the difference it has made in his community. This is a member who's lived all his life in that community . He was elected onto the shire in 1992 and has been the shire president for most of those years, elected by his own community.

Shire President Hill came to parliament this week with others from around that area—from Leonora as well, and there were councillors here. We had people comment on their appearance here, saying, 'They're just a bunch of whitefellas here.' Marty Sealander's Aboriginal. He was born and bred up that way—Wongutha, I think it is—up in the Northern Goldfields. Yes, he has grey or silver coloured hair now. These visitors were being racially profiled by their appearance. People would say, 'What would they know?'

It's Marty Sealander's community. He talked about the impact it was having before and he talked about the impact it's having now that it's gone. Pat Hill was in the papers recently. He said that it's been going downhill since they took the cashless debit card away and it's getting worse and worse. He said the cashless debit card needed to be improved. He wasn't gilding the lily or shying away from the fact that there were some ways it could be improved.

I was proud to lead a working group, appointed by Senator Anne Ruston who was the minister at the time, to help bring together the technology providers, the banks and the retailers to work to improve the card, because we'd heard there was some stigma attached to being on the card. You have this card and every time you go to pay for goods there's an inconvenience in how you use that technology. It was a little bit clunky. There was also a bit of a stigma attached, because the card looked a little bit different to the other cards that people normally used. So there was an issue there.

We worked hard to make sure we resolved that. We brought the banks together, all of them, the big ones, and the big retailers, Coles, Woolworths and the service stations, BP and Shell, and Australia Post. They'd make up probably 90 per cent of people's transactions. We worked to improve technology. We recognised that it wasn't a perfect solution. They were originally trials, but through that work we were able to see that technology improve.

Pat Hill spoke about that, in his paper, up there in the Northern Goldfields. He said that keeping domestic violence and alcohol abuse under control was the aim. Something has to be done, because: 'We won't have anyone living in our town if things keep going the way they are.'

This government, sadly, has been tin eared to these communities calling out for it to come back, and I really hope it does for the sake of these communities, for the sake of the East Kimberley and for the sake of the northern Goldfields and Ceduna. The Australian had an article just this weekend saying crime rates were up over summer. Again, it was dismissed by the government saying, 'Oh, it is just because people seasonally come in and out.' Guess what? They come in and out seasonally all the time, and have done for the last four or five years, when we did not see those big spikes. The only difference is that the CDC is not there anymore. I get that it would be egg on your face, but, government, will you please listen to the communities. Listen to the voices of the local people who want to see it returned.