Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

This report from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into compulsory income management must spell the end of compulsory income management. For years advocates, participants, academics and the Greens have fought for the abolition of compulsory income management. Evidence before this committee showed dramatically different rates of exemptions granted from compulsory income management, with First Nations people much less likely to apply for exemptions and significantly less likely to get exemptions.

This report, one of many through the years, only confirms what the Greens and the community have been saying for years: this system does nothing but reinforce a racist and oppressive program. The fundamental premise of this system is discriminatory. This scheme is only another way in which the government systematically discriminates against and oppresses First Nations people. Evidence to this inquiry called the scheme 'a racist, paternalistic policy framework that only does damage to individuals and communities, especially to First Nations people'.

The system is built on the assumption that some communities cannot manage their finances, so they need to be limited by the government. This program has been a dud since its inception. Its stated purpose is to prevent welfare payments from being spent on gambling, alcohol and drugs, but the data doesn't bear this out. Ninety-seven per cent of recipients subject to this program have never gambled or have never gambled more than they could afford to lose. Eighty-one per cent said they never drank or drank less frequently than more than once a week. In attempting to address a non-existent problem, this government went back on its promise and instead expanded a paternalistic system that makes managing finances more difficult and discriminatory for recipients, and it tells these recipients that it doesn't trust them.

This report also highlighted the complete lack of positive impacts that these decisions have had. Instead, successive governments have crafted a system that places additional burdens and pressures on women and children fleeing domestic violence. It makes it harder to put money aside to escape abuse, and survivors have expressed difficulty in buying bus fares, school lunches and second-hand clothes. Compulsory income management also limits a recipient's ability to purchase cheaper second-hand goods, including things like textbooks for study. Evidence from the report showed:

… subjecting an individual to mandatory income management and restricting how they may spend a portion of their social security payment engages and limits the rights to: social security, privacy and equality and non-discrimination, and may limit other human rights (including the right to an adequate standard of living and the rights of the child).

In many submissions to the committee, recipients described extra fees and added difficulty to pay rent and bills on time as a direct result of the SmartCard system. One respondent noted that compulsory income management felt similar to the financial control and abuse that they suffered in a former domestic violence relationship.

This report is long overdue, and the complete abolition of compulsory income management is even more overdue. Labor must not continue to kick this can down the road. It is a matter of urgency that compulsory income management be abolished. It's a matter of urgency because just in the past few days we've seen the incoming Northern Territory leader commit the NT government to shift parents of kids who are missing school to income management. All of this is against a background where you have the most underfunded schools in the country in the NT. Instead of coming at this from a place of care, support and empathy, we've now got a new Territory minister jumping up and down, asking the federal government to keep expanding income management.

It is critical for this government to take advantage of progressive support in the Senate to abolish compulsory income management for good. Otherwise, we risk the very real possibility of a more amenable government coming into power and expanding income management even more. I urge the Labor government to act now and to act on the promises that they made in opposition. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.