New cashless welfare card will allow holders to purchase pornography

PORNOGRAPHY can be bought on the new cashless welfare card which will be rolled out to 23,000 people currently on the Basics Card

Pornography can be purchased on the new cashless welfare card, to be rolled out to 23,000 people currently on the Basics Card

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PORNOGRAPHY can be bought on the new cashless welfare card, to be rolled out to 23,000 people currently on the Basics Card.

Department of Social Services communities group manager Teena Blewitt told a Cashless Debit Card hearing in Canberra that pornography could be purchased by people using the welfare cards — almost all of whom live in the NT — as long as it came from a legal provider and was a legal product.

“The Basics Card and the Cashless Debit Card had two different policy drivers so that’s why the Cashless Debit Card … has been actually set up to test the reduction in anti-social harm that could be caused as a result of alcohol, gambling, you know, purchase of drugs,” she said.

“The BasicsCard was set up for a different purpose – so they’ve actually got two different policy intentions.”

The original Basics Card was introduced as part of the Federal Government’s Northern Territory “intervention” in 2007.

It could only be used at certain retailers and could not be used on cigarettes, alcohol, pornography or gambling, or to obtain cash.

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But it has been was revealed that the new cashless card would enable the purchase of porn despite no indication of a policy change or evidence on why from the Government.

Health Department representatives suggested pornography had become more accessible in the 12 years since the BasicsCard was introduced in 2007, and people could get their hands on pornography without paying.

The department suggested porn purchases had become “irrelevant”.

Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy said there was a conflict on the policy given one of the reasons the Basics Card was first established was to ban and restrict access to products such as pornography.

“I’m just trying to understand this policy because it is a critical one in terms of the Northern Territory, what evidence is there that the ban (on porn) was ineffective then in the NT?” she said.

“For people who’ve been under a particular regimen for 12 years and were told that it was all evidence based, and now a decision’s been made without any evidence to change it, it’s just very peculiar that’s all.”