Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to note the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report into compulsory income management, entry 4 on page 10 of today's Notice Paper. Its response requires more calling out of the Albanese government's inability to deal with the facts, its distortion of data and the devastation caused by Labor ideology.

This joint committee report into compulsory income management is setting the scene to wreak further havoc on individuals, families and communities that rely on income management. It's about paving the way for welfare recipients with addiction to spend more money on gambling, alcohol and drugs rather than on essential other items, and it's about coercing money from those who do the right thing. And if the devastation proven by the 2022 removal of the cashless debit card in locations across Australia isn't enough evidence of the harm your policy does, what will convince you? You didn't improve lives; you made it worse for people who live there and for the people who relied on it for the stability the card provided.

Nor, it seems, have you learnt from the Northern Territory experience in 2022, when you stood by while alcohol restrictions were removed. Crime, violence, emergency presentations and gambling went up while school attendance went down. The evidence is in. The facts, as outlined in the independent Adelaide university report on the impact of the removal of the cashless debit card, are this: the cashless debit card did make a difference for those who were on it and those families who relied on it; there was more money for food, less violence and more kids in the local school with the CDC; there was more money for school books and sport. How about that?

The consistent theme is that women felt safer under the card because they were. Children experienced greater exposure to the perils of alcohol and substance misuse when you removed the CDC. On page 97, thanks to your actions, one participant talks about now having $900 a fortnight for drugs and alcohol. He's drinking it all, he says, and he knows it's killing him.

The report tells us 90 per cent of people subject to income management in the Northern Territory were Indigenous and around 60 per cent were female. That means women get greater protection from the perils of humbugging, coercion and bullying because they were on the card. But I don't expect that happens to every one of you at night and every day of the year. Indigenous Australians make up 26 per cent of the total Northern Territory population, and 47 per cent are under the age of 25. Have you considered that important demographic fact and what you're aiming to do with this report?

On page 23 you say that compulsory income management has been an 'expensive failure'. Yet you have failed to provide me with the answer to the question about what does it cost for the CDC now the numbers are so low? In Ceduna, in South Australia—where I come from—there are some 3,500 residents. There was once 1,000 people on the card; now there are 14. That's a township right now with 21 support services in a town of 3,500 people. And don't think for a minute that all of those 3,500 people are on income support. What nonsense! They're working.

I asked what was the cost of this card under your watch. They said: 'Well, services are accessed by a wide range of income recipients and the broader community. It's not possible to estimate a reliable unit cost of such services.' You know the number. It is obviously eye watering. You just don't want anyone to know. So much for this government, elected on a promise of transparency.

In this report, people who don't live or work in the areas impacted where income management exists make up all sorts of arguments against it. Why don't you ask people who live there, who talked of increased crime, increased alcohol consumption and increased antisocial behaviour? You need to look closer and accept the facts in the Adelaide University report. There's an obvious disconnect between the views expressed by many of the academic and civil society submitters to the inquiry and the firsthand evidence obtained from on-the-ground stakeholders and participants. A bit of honesty wouldn't go astray. Every business wrote to the minister and told them what happened. There's no just reason to ignore the evidence, to pretend the Adelaide University report doesn't exist, because the Albanese government doesn't like its overwhelming findings that it failed the most vulnerable people.

Debate adjourned.