Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This bill is fundamentally a broken promise from the Labor Party. In opposition, they were, to their credit, very clear: they said that they would abolish the cashless debit card. They said that they would end compulsory income management. There were no asterisks, no footnotes; they simply told people that they would end a horrific practice that had been perpetrated by the Liberals since 2007. I'd like to quote from a statement made by the then opposition spokesperson on social services, the now Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon. Linda Burney MP, and she said:

Our fundamental principle on the basics card and the cashless debit card, it should be on a voluntary basis … If people want to be on those sorts of income management, then that's their decision. It's not up to Labor or anyone else to tell them what to do. At the moment it's compulsion and that's not Labor's position.

This was just before the election last year. Labor have broken that promise.

I want to be clear: this isn't a question where the research is open. Despite the opposition's use of cherrypicked anecdotes, there is very clear evidence of the harm that compulsory income management has caused for many years. In 2007, the Australian Human Rights Commission concluded that:

Controlling how a person spends their money is a drastic interference into the way a person manages his or her life and family, and human rights require a proportionate response to a problem. In the context of the NT legislation, this means that governments are obliged to consider less intrusive or voluntary option as a first response before moving to options as broad-reaching as compulsory income management.

In 2014 the Social Policy Research Centre concluded:

The evaluation data does not provide evidence of income management having improved the outcomes that it was intending to have an impact upon.

In 2016 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

… evidence before the committee indicates that compulsory income management is not effective in achieving its stated objective of supporting vulnerable individuals and families.

And in 2020 the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights said in relation to the cashless debit card:

The trial evaluations and reviews raise a range of concerns as to whether the cashless welfare scheme is effective to achieve its stated goals, and whether it has caused or contributed to other harms.

That evidence of the human rights violations and the ineffectiveness of the policy were reinforced by the community affairs committee inquiry into the bill. I want to start quoting, particularly, from some of the experts who gave evidence to the inquiry. Professor Matthew Gray, Director of the Australian National University Centre for Social Research and Methods, said in evidence to the committee:

… we are, to put it frankly, horrified by what is proposed both in the legislation and in the documentation which has been provided to the parliament in the form of the explanatory memorandum.Turning to the explanatory memorandum and the document which underpins and is cited in the impact analysis executive summary, the department's Reforming the cashless debit card and income management, the statement grossly distorts the evidence base relating to the effectiveness of the programs.

Emeritus Professor Jon Altman said:

… in 2007, when income management was first introduced, I opposed it as lacking policy logic and lacking any evidence from anywhere globally that it might work to improve the circumstances of targeted Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. Instead, I suggested, it would be expensive to administer and likely ineffective. Sadly, nearly 16 years on, that prediction had proven correct—not just today in 2023 but over many years, many evaluations and many Senate inquiries.

I want to be clear, though, that this isn't some abstract policy question. It has a very real, very devastating impact on people's lives. As the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory, APO NT, said in their powerful submission:

It is disappointing to yet again be making submissions on a Bill that clearly ignores the evidence that has debunked compulsory income management.

…   …   …

APO NT reminds the Government of our support for the repeal of the Cashless Debit Card. We note that while this has allowed some participants to exit income management or voluntarily opt into income management, this is not the case for the majority of NT participants who remain on compulsory income management. Therefore, Aboriginal people in the NT have suffered the longest under this regime and this Bill does nothing to change this.

Despite the Albanese Government's stated intentions of consultation, or stated long term aim that income management is on a voluntary basis, it is important to view the practical and legislative effect of this Bill. The Bill continues the trend of making income management, and in particular compulsory income management, a permanent feature of social services in Australia, without adequate consultation.

I particularly want to quote this point from APO NT:

The legislative effect of the Bill is the opposite of the Albanese Government's pre-election statements that income management should only occur on a voluntary basis.

That is an incredibly strong statement from a peak First Nations organisation, but this government hasn't listened.

I also want to quote the powerful resolution made by the full Central Land Council on 28 April this year, which is included in the Central Land Council's submission to the inquiry:

How many times do we have to say it until the government listens to our voices?

Since Income Management was introduced in 2007 as part of the Commonwealth Government's Intervention in the NT, we have said no.

A different card, a different colour—it is all for the same purpose: to control our lives.

We are not guinea pigs.

The CLC calls on the government to end all forms of compulsory income management now.

Only this week that the parliament passed the bill enabling a referendum on the Voice to Parliament, but here we have the Central Land Council asking government to listen, and they have chosen not to.

In fact, it is government imposed compulsory income management that has in some cases undermined genuinely voluntary community-led services. The Arnhem Land Progress Association said in evidence to the committee:

It is the ALPA board's position that income management should only ever be voluntary, regardless of whether participants have been long-term welfare recipients or not … We have run our own voluntary income management program, known as Foodcard, since 2004 … the introduction of compulsory income management saw the usage of the ALPA Foodcard drop off dramatically. In October 2008 there were over 11,000 community transactions on the Foodcard in ALPA stores and, by 2010, this was below a thousand. The ALPA Foodcard is evidence that community members are more than capable of identifying and engaging with services which can support financial management when they feel that they need to.

We have heard arguments from the minister and others that we need to wait for more consultation. Indeed, I've been told that we need to wait until the Voice is up and running before we can end compulsory income management—before an approach even on compulsory income management can be finalised. That ignores the reality that First Nations communities right now are calling for an end to compulsory income management. The default is simply to rely on the failed and punitive system that was set up by the Liberal Party as part of John Howard's intervention. It was already baked into the system by the Liberal government, and now the Labor government is committed to sticking with it, despite the urgent calls for action. Instead of ignoring the voices of First Nations communities, they should be setting a clear sunset date that ensures that, if First Nations voices call for a form of income management, there's deep consultation and a clear proposal put to parliament—not stringing along on a broken, failed perpetuation of a Liberal Party policy.

I want to thank advocates, campaigners and community organisations who provided important evidence to the committee inquiry on this bill. The Accountable Income Management Network, the Antipoverty Centre, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Northern Territory Council of Social Service, Uniting Communities, Economic Justice Australia, Suicide Prevention Australia and other organisations, advocates and individuals provided powerful and important evidence. I thank them for their advocacy on this issue. I'm sad to say that the Labor Party has chosen to ignore it. It shouldn't have to be this way. We will keep fighting for better policies—ones that genuinely improve people's lives rather than punish them and perpetuate the tired, stale ideas that the old parties have been embracing for decades.

We heard from the minister that consultation is underway. We agree that consultation is important, but it cannot be used as an excuse for inaction when the voices are so clear now. We asked community organisations, such as the Central Land Council, what consultation they had been part of so far. The Central Land Council told us:

In summary, the consultation has been through brief phone conversations and online briefing to the CLC policy team. It's been quite limited, the consultation process. We want the consultation process to be properly carried out and to be an extensive consultation process.

So at this point it appears that consultation is more a reason for delay rather than progress towards genuine change.

I'm particularly concerned about reports in the pages of the Australian. In an article titled 'Leaders eye Pearson's way on welfare' on 24 March they reported:

Both the Northern Territory and federal governments said they were open to extending the program beyond the cape, with sources revealing senior commonwealth bureaucrats were pushing for its expansion behind the scene.

Closer examination of the FRC's welfare control measures, which require state and federal support, began after the Albanese government fulfilled an election pledge to scrap compulsory income management last year.

The simple reality is that even the cashless debit card, which the Labor government campaigned so heavily against, required a new bill to pass through parliament before it was expanded to other areas. My predecessor Rachel Siewert campaigned against many of those bills. There was a public debate about what the government was intending. But this bill takes the ministerial powers currently available under the BasicsCard framework and extends them to new technology provided by the cashless debit card. The combination means it will be much, much easier for the minister to expand compulsory income management to new geographic areas. It will be possible to do so by legislative instrument, and, given that we know that we've got the full support of the Liberal Party for any of this draconian compulsory income management, there's no way that there'll be any opposition to it. It won't require a bill through parliament. It won't require the transparency and the scrutiny that would take place through that legislation having to come before the parliament.

We oppose this bill. We have an amendment to insert a sunset clause, but fundamentally this bill is one that the Liberals could have only dreamed of passing. But in government we have Labor enacting the Liberal Party's agenda. All the progressive campaigners across the country who fought so hard for the end of the cashless debit card, for what they thought was a progressive political party, will be asking themselves: what was it all for?

We have got some other amendments that we are moving, which I probably won't have a chance to speak to; maybe I will in the committee stage. Imposing a sunset date is the first one of those. The others include requiring regular reporting on the costs of the SmartCard scheme, requiring regular review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights—which, given the significant concerns that have been raised about human rights, we think is a small, basic step towards what's required—and requiring review by the community affairs committee on the use of ministerial powers. Given this bill significantly expands the ministerial powers to roll out income management in new areas, we think that would be basic oversight. Our final amendment requires an exit clause for people at risk of harm from the card. There was an exit clause from the cashless debit card for those at risk of harm, but there is none in the SmartCard legislation, so we think this is a very straightforward step.

In summary, we are going to be opposing this bill. We think that it is overreach by this government. It is a broken promise from this government, who promised to end compulsory income management. Compulsory income management has been shown to not work. It has been shown to not be the effective solution. Yes, if there are problems in communities, we'll then address those problems, but don't continue to roll out something on the basis that you are expecting it to solve the problems when it has been clearly shown over so many years that compulsory income management does not work.