Nick G.
About 60 people rallied in Adelaide yesterday
against the Healthy Welfare card first proposed by billionaire miner Twiggy
Forrest.
Abbott and Hockey intend trialling the
cashless welfare card in communities where there were problems with
"welfare-fuelled alcohol and drug abuse".
In his report to the government last year,
Forrest, whose Fortescue Minerals Group evaded company tax over a 7-year period
to 2011, described welfare as a “cash barbecue”.
This is the contempt for the poor that sits
behind pious nonsense about “welfare-fuelled alcohol and drug abuse”.
The largest number of trial communities are
likely to be those with high concentrations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander (ATSI) peoples.
They were the guinea pigs, under the racist
Northern Territory Emergency Intervention, when Coalition and Labor governments
introduced and implemented compulsory income management (CIM) through the
Basics Card which quarantined between 50 and 70 percent of welfare payments.
No study of CIM has ever found it to have
been successful in addressing the alleged problems it was meant to have solved.
Yet it was expanded from NT ATSI communities
to other place-based communities in low SES areas such as Playford in SA,
Shepparton in Victoria, Bankstown in NSW, and Logan and Rockhampton in
Queensland.
Punishing
the poor
The Healthy Welfare Card, like the BasicsCard
before it, singles out the poor and the disadvantaged for punishment – for being
poor and disadvantaged.
The Sydney
Morning Herald recently headlined a story on the Forrest card “’Healthy Welfare
Card trials’ to tackle violence and alcohol abuse”. But domestic violence and the abuse of a
whole assortment of so-called recreational drugs are by no means confined to
the poor. It is just that they are the
ones who cannot afford to hide these problems behind lawyers’ fees and
lifestyle camouflage.
Forrest admitted in his report that in the
short term (!) crimes rates would rise following the introduction of his
cashless welfare card. He called for “having state police commissioners alerted
that, in the short-term, as lifestyles are adjusted, levels of petty crime may
be temporarily elevated…” He was not talking of the Sydney North Shore or
Adelaide’s leafy green eastern suburbs, but of the low SES suburbs and regional
centres where cash-starved welfare recipients (and not just those with gambling
or drug addictions) will be forced to jump the fence and pinch cash from their
neighbours, or walk a few streets from home and engage in aggravated assaults
and bag-snatching to get some cash.
Nijole Naujokas (from SA’s Anti-Poverty
Network) drew attention to the consequences of a cashless welfare card when she
addressed the rally:
“Here are just some of things that you will
never be able to buy or access if you have no cash. Parliamentary Secretary
Alan Tudge says "If you are on welfare and not a heavy drinker or gambler,
the impact of the card would be absolutely minimal." I wonder how minimal
an impact this would have. The poorest people who have no laundries in their
houses won't be able to wash clothes.
-Cannot use laundromat as no coins for
machine
-Cannot drive into town as no coins for
parking machines
-Cannot buy food at Central markets or farmer's
markets
-Cannot buy a bus ticket on the bus
-Cannot buy a can of drink from a machine
-Cannot buy second hand clothes from garage
sales or Gumtree
-Cannot put money into a communal birthday
present
-Cannot give cash for lunch to children going
on an excursion
-Cannot buy second hand fridge or freezer from
the paper or friends
-Cannot buy goods from many small Op-shops as
they operate on cash
-Cannot give children pocket money (This in
turn reduces their ability to learn how to budget)
“Apart from this small list, taking all cash
away from a part of the population is a violation of human rights. It creates a
sub-class of people immediately identified as not worthy of control over their
own lives. It does NOTHING to reduce domestic violence, child abuse or drug
addiction. Taking away cash from addicts doesn't stop them needing drugs. An
addiction is a physical need and addicts will be forced to turn to crime to
feed their habit. Men who abuse women will not stop because their partners
don't have cash. If anything it will enrage them more and they will take out
their anger on their partners.”
Other speakers were Christine Abdullah
(Ngarrindjeri elder), Jamie Newlyn (Maritime Union SA President and SA Unions
President), Members of the Legislative Council Tammy Franks (Greens) and Kelly
Vincent (Dignity for Disability), and Kirstyn Jones (Playford resident and
Basics Card victim).
Jones is a 22-year old who left home at 17
and survived on the “unreasonable to live at home” Youth Allowance. She does not drink, smoke or gamble, has had
part-time work, and was able, over 3 years to manage her money without going
into debt. Reporting to Centrelink after
moving into new rental accommodation in Playford she was asked if she had heard
of the BasicsCard. She hadn’t, but she
was placed on it for no reason other than her new postcode. As a consequence of Centrelink taking over
her rent payments through the BasicsCard she found that she had a $500
debt. Their mismanagement, not
hers. But at least she had access to 50%
of her Youth Allowance. People on the
Healthy Welfare Card will not even have that small measure of personal dignity.
Kirstyn’s story illustrates what is often
overlooked by society’s fat controllers when they stereotype those on welfare,
namely, that welfare recipients are among some of the best money managers. They simply have to be.
As the unions start to ramp up a campaign to
defend living standards from the Abbottoir, the plight of our unemployed and
under-employed welfare recipients must be at the forefront.
Low income Australians who cannot find regular
employment are doing it tough enough without being denied access to cash. Unemployment benefits and welfare allowances
must be substantially raised.
Punish the rich, not the poor!
