The Greens say the Government should abandon the Cashless Debit Card not continue to throw money at the failed punitive program.
\n“The $30 million \u201cJob Ready Package\u201d intended for the Cashless Debit Card Trial sites must be invested in supportive measures, for all people in regional, rural and remote areas that need support and training.
\n\u201cAccording to a budget leak some portion of the \u201cJob Ready Package\u201d money will be allocated to assisting with helping people get tax file numbers, driver\u2019s licences or other documentation, this should be happening right now in all areas.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s frankly ridiculous that Employment Providers who are being paid billions in Government money are not already providing this essential and very basic support.
\n\u201cHelping people address key barriers like poverty or assistance with administration or access to the internet has been recommended extensively by people in the Jobactive program and by experts for years.
\n“Now we finally have some tacit acknowledgement that we need to help people address what is stopping them finding work rather than just punishing them or telling them to \u201cget a job”.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s appalling that Government Senators keep spinning out their tired lines on how good the Cashless Debit Card is. It\u2019s absolute rubbish and it needs to be called out.
\n\u201cThis Government has been unable to provide ANY compelling evidence that the card has had a positive outcome or achieved any of its supposed aims.
\n\u201cThe Government has spent billions pushing this punitive scheme, and millions on flawed evaluations trying to prove that this approach works and to justify their punitive approach.
\n\u201cGovernment Senators claim they know what communities want when First Nations organisations have been extremely clear that this card is contrary to the Closing the Gap objectives of self-determination and free, prior informed consent.
\n\u201cThe card doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s racist, discriminatory and punitive. If there was a genuine will to assist people with the barriers they face we would see investments in wrap around services that are delivered by the community and abandonment of the card.
\n\u201cThis card causes loss of dignity, shame and stigmatisation, this is what people have said when asked in the Government\u2019s evaluations.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Greens say the Government should abandon the Cashless Debit Card not continue to throw money at the failed punitive program. “The $30 million \u201cJob Ready Package\u201d intended for the Cashless Debit Card Trial sites must be invested in supportive measures, for all people in regional, rural and remote areas that need support and training. … Continue reading “Government keeps spinning tall tales on Cashless Debit Card despite failure to prove it works”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}