'The card declined and I broke down': Life on the cashless welfare card
September 14, 2019
Sydney Morning Herald
Kerryn, a single mother of four, cannot talk about the cashless welfare card's impact on her nine-year-old daughter without crying.
"I can manage all the issues and problems with the card but what I can't handle is the way that it's affecting my children," she says from Bundaberg, in south-east Queensland.
Pressure is building for a national rollout of the cashless welfare card with calls to expand the program for all dole recipients under age of 35.
"My nine-year-old doesn't want to ask me for things anymore because she's - I don't have the cash to do it. She's told me that we're poor now because I now have to say no to things I used to say yes to."
The 32-year-old is one of about 15,000 Australians using the government's cashless debit card - which quarantines 80 per cent of unemployment and other welfare payments to limit spending on alcohol, drugs or gambling.
Trials of the card started in 2016 in Ceduna, in remote South Australia, and the East Kimberley region in Western Australia before being introduced in the WA goldfields and the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay region in Queensland.
The federal government is now planning to extend the trials to another 22,500 people in Cape York and the Northern Territory, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison is eyeing an eventual national rollout as part of a reset of its welfare agenda he says is driven by "compassionate conservatism".
But the towns on the front line remain divided: community workers have seen the card help some and burden others; health professionals say addiction is a health, not welfare, issue and question the card's success in reducing substance abuse; and welfare groups say the card stigmatises already vulnerable people and increases their financial stress.
The cashless debit card restricts welfare recipients to roughly $200 cash a month and prevents them purchasing goods from stores whose main trade is alcohol. Gift cards for stores with alcohol can't be purchased and users can't withdraw cash or direct debit to unapproved accounts.
Card users who spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age say their lives are more stressful and finances more precarious since they joined the trials.
In Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, a single mother with four kids and no job, who asked not to be named because she recently fled domestic violence, says she wasn't able to send one of her children on a school camp because she has restricted access to cash.
"The same thing with school excursions," says the 38-year-old, who has been on the card for a year.
For the same reason, the mature-aged student hasn't been able to buy cheaper second-hand textbooks for university.'