Coalition launches ‘counter attack’ against Labor scare campaign

The Coalition has issued a letter blasting tens of thousands of voters who have been told by Labor there will be a cashless welfare card for pensioners.

A “targeted counter-attack” of Labor’s baseless cashless welfare card scare campaign is underway, with the Coalition letter blasting tens of thousands of voters in four electorates across the country.

Federal Labor has been slammed by an independent senior’s advocacy group for scaring pensioners for claiming the Coalition would extend the cashless welfare card income management program to older Australians.

Despite the criticism, social media feeds of Labor candidates in marginal seats show the party is still peddling the misinformation.

The Coalition, sending a strong signal it is willing to get in the trenches, confirmed it had sent out 25,000 letters to older Australians in the seats of Longman and Hinkler in Queensland this week outlining “the government’s record supporting age pensioners”.

About 14,000 copies of the pamphlet, designed to “myth bust” Labor’s “shameful scare campaign”, have also been sent to people in the ultra-safe Queensland seat of Groom with a smaller drop happening in the Labor-held seat of Lyons in Tasmania.

Labor’s candidate for Longman Rebecca Fanning’s social media posts in recent days include the false claim that people on the cashless welfare card “can’t support local kids” doing lolly fundraisers with gold coin donations and that pensioners “can’t withdraw cash for their grandkids birthdays.

This despite the rules stating people on the card are allowed to withdraw up to 20 per cent of their payments as cash, with this limit climbing to 50 per cent in the Northern Territory where the Basics Card is used.

The Coalition has no policy or plan to extend the card to pensioners, nor is it in any legislation to make it happen.

A social media post by Labor’s candidate for Longman Rebecca Fanning.

The federal government has copped criticism for the cashless debit card as a whole, with Aboriginal justice and health bodies opposed to the measure due to its coercive impacts on First Nations peoples.

Use of the card also becomes problematic in remote Aboriginal communities when power outages occur, meaning there is no way to purchase necessities like groceries with the card.

The LNP is initiating a targeted counterattack on what it says are cashless welfare lies by Labor.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers slammed the Prime Minister as a “pathological liar” when asked to defend his own party’s baseless aged pension scare campaign.

He reiterated Labor would “abolish” the card altogether.

Mr Chalmers also said no one trusted the government and called the Prime Minister “a pathological liar”

“It’s the same as when they said before the 2013 election, no cuts to the pension, no cuts to the ABC or health or education,” Mr Chalmers said.

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