Cashless debit card to replace Basics Card in the NT as government gets set to charge ahead with law change

AS many as 23,000 Territorians on welfare payments will soon be moved to the controversial cashless debit card, with the federal government poised to ram through legislation by the end of the year.

AS many as 23,000 Territorians on welfare payments will soon be moved to the controversial cashless debit card, with the federal government poised to ram through legislation by the end of the year.

The federal government introduced a Bill in October that would transition Territorians on the BasicsCard – a program introduced during the 2007 Northern Territory intervention – to the cashless debit card.

The Bill would also make the program, which quarantines up to 80 per cent of a person’s welfare payments, permanent in existing sites in South Australia, Western Australia, and Queensland.

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A CDC indue card. Picture: Tricia Watkinson

According to the government, moving the NT to the cashless debit card means they will have access to “improved technology” and access to a “range of flexible payment options”, greater access to shops and fewer restrictions not available under the BasicsCard.

The amount of money quarantined won’t increase for Territorians transitioning from the BasicsCard to the cashless debit card.

After holding one public hearing into the new laws and receiving 145 submissions, most of which opposed the Bill, Liberal members of the senate committee investigating the laws recommended in a report released yesterday that it be passed.

The commonwealth hasn’t released the results of a government-commissioned $2.5m research study into the impacts of the card, apart from three dot points in the committee report that purport to show early findings are positive.

The government has earmarked $17.5m to transition the NT and people in Cape York, Queensland, to the card but has cited “commercial in confidence” for not releasing the program’s cost to the taxpayer in the long run.

Senator Malarndirri McCarthy. Picture: Che Chorley

Labor and the Greens vehemently oppose the Bill, as does the NT government and peak bodies including the Northern Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency, particularly as it removes “the right to self-determination”.

It is estimated Indigenous people will make up 83 per cent of those impacted by the move to the cashless debit card in the NT.

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NT Senator Malarndirri McCarthy said the government was pursuing this policy “regardless of evidence”.

“The government is ideologically obsessed with the cashless debit card. Yet, it has so far failed to prove that it is effective,” she said.