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

I put on the record that coalition senators will not be supporting this disallowance motion as moved by Senator Rice. We do support the government's transition in respect of people having to go off the BasicsCard. We've long been saying, even in government, that the BasicsCard is old and clunky technology that is limiting for card holders. It impacts upon the ability for commerce and to engage with merchants. It's very limited in terms of the number of merchants that accept the BasicsCard compared to the cashless debit card, which was based on the Visa card platform. Essentially, it's ubiquitous, and can be used at merchants all across Australia. There are a million merchants that accept Visa in Australia, whereas the BasicsCard has something like 16,000 merchants was very limiting for individuals that were on it. So in that sense we support the individuals on income management that are on the BasicsCard to move on to improved technology.

We are, of course, disappointed with the abolition of the cashless debit card because we know it was having a profound impact upon the communities where it was in operation. For those in the Northern Territory that had already transitioned off the BasicsCard and who went voluntarily onto the cashless debit card, they were experiencing the benefits, but for those in other communities that had the cashless debit card and now no longer have that in place, those communities are different. We've heard from communities across the Northern Goldfields in my home state of Western Australia who have been calling for it to be returned because they know what the community was like before the cashless debit card came in—there was a spate of suicides, a spate of dysfunction within the community—and then the difference when the cashless debit card was put in. It was in operation for a number of years and had a solid impact within the community.

By no means was it a silver bullet—no one says that it was or that it would be—but it was having an impact in places like Wyndham in the East Kimberley. The school there, on a Monday morning, used to have to provide additional food for children for their breakfast program, because kids were going hungry. Come Monday morning, having had not much to eat over the weekend, the square meals in some of these communities was provided by the school. They would come on a Monday morning and the school would have to provide extra food on the Monday compared to Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Because of the cashless debit card, they found that they were not having to provide as much food on a Monday. These communities saw what difference it made in their community and now they're seeing a bit of a return. They're hoping it doesn't go all the back to what it used to be like, but the signs are that it will. I was in Kununurra only a week ago, and you could already see the dysfunction and you could hear from a community disappointed at its abolition. But we do support the fact that people are able to move off the BasicsCard and onto an improved technology.

I want to point out that the government likes to talk about this new SmartCard, this new technology, this new enhanced card, as if it is something new, but the reality is that it's not. It's actually just the cashless debit card, as Senator Rice correctly pointed out. It's just rebadged. It's the cashless debit card with a different colour.