Labor will oppose the Government’s legislation to make the #CashlessDebitCard permanent and roll it out across the Northern Territory.

Last month, the Government introduced legislation to make the Cashless Debit Card permanent in Ceduna, East Kimberley, Goldfields, and Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. As well as roll it out to 23,000 people in the Northern Territory.

The Government is ideologically obsessed with the Cashless Debit Card.

Yet, it has so far failed to prove that it is effective.

An Auditor General’s report from 2018 panned the Government’s evaluation of the card, which failed to demonstrate that its broad-based compulsory income management program actually worked.

Instead, it has made it more difficult for participants to purchase basic and essential items at more affordable prices.

The University of Adelaide was engaged to evaluate the trial sites following the botched trial, in 2018 – at a cost of almost $2.5 million.

This month at Senate estimates, it was revealed that the Government decided to make the Cashless Debit Card permanent, despite the Minister for Families and Social Services Senator Anne Ruston admitting she hadn’t read the long-awaited evaluation.

The Government also revealed that it has set up a formal working group with the big banks and Australia Post to work on making the Cashless Debit Card part of mainstream accounts and point of sale technology – revealing their real plan to roll this technology out more broadly.

It is clear that the Government is absolutely determined to ram through and roll out this ideological obsession with broad-based compulsory income management.

The Government’s Cashless Debit Card legislation – which disproportionately impacts First Nations people (68 per cent of the people who will be put on the card are First Nations Australians) – has been brought on by the Government in NAIDOC Week.

The Combined Pensioners & Superannuants Association says members have contacted them about “how very fearful they are of being put compulsorily on [Income management/Cashless Debit Card] if the Government is not stopped.”

The Government’s determination to roll this card out more widely should have pensioners asking if they’re next.