Jacinta Price blasts Teal MPs over helping to abolish cashless debit card

Senator Jacinta Price has invited teal MPs to visit remote Indigenous communities after they helped sink the cashless debit card.

Country Liberal senator Jacinta Price. Picture: Jason Edwards

Newly elected Country Liberal Senator Jacinta Price has invited teal independents to visit remote indigenous communities and leave behind their “ivory towers”, after the MPs voted with the government to abolish the cashless debit card.

Senator Price, who is a strong proponent of the program, said the teals did not “know the first thing” about’ indigenous Australians, arguing the independent MPs were using their privilege to undermine indigenous women and children.

Her criticisms come after Labor passed legislation through the lower house to abolish the cashless debit card amid concern it was unfairly stigmatising First Nations Australians.

The decision to scrap the program follows an Australian Nat­ional Audit Office report released in June that highlighted a lack of evidence to demonstrate the ­effectiveness of the scheme.

Implemented under the ­Abbott government in 2016, the scheme was designed to encourage socially responsible behaviour by quarantining 80 per cent of a person’s welfare payments on a debit card to prevent it being spent on alcohol and gambling.

It was initially introduced in Ceduna, South Australia, East Kimberley and the Goldfields in Western Australia, and then ­expanded to Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland. The cost reached $36m in 2020-21, with nearly 17,000 ­people participating as of February this year.

Senator Price argued that the teal independents — many of which represent inner city electorates — did not understand the harmful consequences that would occur as a result of the decision.

“The teals wouldn’t know the first thing about the lives of vulnerable indigenous Australians, they may as well be living on another planet,’ she told The Australian. “To think they would use their privilege to further undermine vulnerable indigenous women and children in remote communities is utterly shameful. “

“I invite them to step out of their ivory towers and come to my part of the world to get some education. No amount of lip service acknowledgments of ‘First Australians’ by these teals will make up for the devastating impacts that will occur as a result of the removal of the CDC.”

But Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel said the evidence to suggest the effectiveness of the scheme ‘did not stack up’ and hence voted to repeal the legislation.

“Evidence that the card reduced alcohol, gambling and domestic (and) financial abuse did not stack up. These issues remain prevalent and need to be addressed in other ways,” she said.

Opposition employment and workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash said the new teal independents should “hang their heads in shame” after they voted to repeal the cashless debit card on Wednesday, saying they were “completely removed from the reality of life” in Indigenous ­communities.

Senator Cash said a lack of proximity between the teals’ inner-city electorates and remote communities where the scheme was used meant they were unable to understand its benefits.

Senator Cash said the teal independents should listen to Senator Price, whose community understood “what good” the scheme had done.