2017-06-19
The Government, ALP and crossbench have voted down an Australian Greens senate motion calling for the cashless welfare card expansion to be abandoned.
“Before completing the evaluation of the current cashless welfare card trial, the Government has proposed extending and expanding the measure”, Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said today.
“Why are they expanding a trial that has not been evaluated for its success in full? This shows that the concept of ‘trialing’ the measure was always farcical, the Government always planned to extend the roll out.
“There are various new locations being planned and we know that compulsory income management has failed in its objectives in the Northern Territory. This has been demonstrated during the Northern Territory intervention.
“It is disappointing to see the Labor party and cross-bench turn their back on people accessing the social safety net who will be dumped onto the card without consultation.
“We need to stop trying to use top-down paternalistic measures on people that are already struggling, it just makes things worse”.