Senator Kerrynne Liddle’s maiden speech warns against axing controversial welfare cards

South Australia’s first Indigenous federal MP has used her maiden speech to back controversial cashless welfare cards, and personal freedoms.

Axing the Cashless Debit Card system would unleash “the rivers of alcohol and drugs” on vulnerable communities, South Australia’s first Indigenous federal politician has declared in her maiden speech.

Addressing the Senate in her landmark first speech on Wednesday evening, Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle told of her experience living among Aboriginal communities devastated by substance abuse and violence.

“Australians have contacted me lamenting the devastation and chaos they know will revisit their lives with the intended removal of the cashless debit card,” Senator Liddle, a successful former businesswoman, said.

SA Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle gives her maiden speech in the Senate. Picture: Martin Ollman

She said in order to understand the importance of the card, which prevents users from spending money on alcohol and withdrawing cash, one must visit vulnerable towns.

“Maybe you need to have lived in a town devastated by alcohol, drugs and violence, and seen it eroded from within,” she said, revealing her experience looking after a child with Foetal Alcohol Syndrome who is now a man with a Certificate Four and a steady job.

“So rather than unleashing the rivers of alcohol and drugs and with it more associated abuse and neglect how about ridding our communities of the miscreants, pretenders, controllers, and rescuers; leave them nowhere to hide or thrive,” Senator Liddle said.

She also expressed her frustration in being frequently defined “firstly or only by race”.

“I know from experience it is getting worse,” she told parliament.

“I was not an Indigenous news reporter, nor an Indigenous businesswoman or an Indigenous company board director – first and foremost, I am just me.”

Senator Liddle, who detailed her extensive experience from running small businesses to volunteering for not-for-profit health organisations, said during her time in parliament she would call out “naval-gazing, paternalism, box ticking (and) quasi consultation”.

She drew on comments made by former prime minister Sir Robert Menzies in 1942 about pushing back on government policies that seek to control and limit freedom.

“In short, give me the tools and information I need to make decisions and to prepare for my own future and ‘help me’ only when I truly need it,” Senator Liddle said.

She outlined her “great interest” in taking environmental action, due to her work in protecting vulnerable species, “but not in the way that supports hands glued to sidewalks”.

“Common sense beats the emotional, the hysterical on every issues – every time,” she said.

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth has launched moves to axe the cashless welfare card and replace it with a different form of “voluntary” income management.

She has argued the card “stigmatises and often makes participants’ lives more difficult because they cannot access the cash economy”.

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