Cashless welfare card inquiry holds hearing in Adelaide

Cashless welfare cards entrench feelings of “injustice” and encourage financial elder abuse, a Senate committee in Adelaide will today hear.

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Cashless welfare cards entrench feelings of “injustice” and encourage financial elder abuse, a Senate committee in Adelaide will today hear.

More than 20 representatives are scheduled to give evidence at an inquiry examining the impact of the cards – before a Bill to introduce the cashless debit card trial in Cape York, and extend it at three sites including Ceduna to June, 2020, is put to a vote.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, if elected, plans to roll back the scheme and develop “better solutions”.

Psychiatrist Kym Jenkins says the cashless debit card trial was not designed to support people with addiction and employment issues.

Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists president Kym Jenkins, in a submission to the inquiry, writes that the college again advocates against an extension because the trial was “not properly designed to support people with concurrent addiction and employment issues”.

Dr Jenkins writes that the trial has increased the vulnerability of individuals and community elders to financial abuse from people seeking funds to purchase alcohol or gambling products.

“(The trials) risk doing further damage by contributing to entrenched feelings of disempowerment, hopelessness and injustice, while encouraging financial elder abuse,” Dr Jenkins writes. She instead urges the Government to further invest in culturally appropriate public rehabilitation and addiction services.

First introduced in 2016, the trial which puts 80 per cent of a welfare recipient’s benefits onto an EFTPOS-like card that can be used to buy necessities now covers more than 5800 people.

Spending on alcohol, drugs or gambling is blocked.

Grey MP Rowan Ramsey will lobby his colleagues for an extension to the welfare card trial.

The trial’s looming end in Ceduna, on the West Coast of Eyre Peninsula, has prompted Grey MP Rowan Ramsey to lobby his federal colleagues for an extension to be passed in the Senate during the remaining sitting week.

Former Ceduna mayor Allan Seuter has previously said the card has improved the lives of many families.