The pair met at the back entrance of the Prime Minister's Office, inside Parliament, on Monday. Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion was also in attendance. But in a statement released on his official Facebook page, Pryor says the meeting was disrespectful, and he turned his back and walked away.

"It was a rude meeting," Pryor told BuzzFeed News after the meeting. "He was talking back to us, and it sounded like it was a debate. Like it was on their terms.

"I was disappointed."

Pryor said Turnbull debated him on the merits of the cashless welfare card, which Pryor says is discriminatory.

"(Turnbull) was saying the cashless card is a good thing, he was saying it's all about protecting the children," Pryor told Buzzfeed News.



"I was saying 'no, no - it's an act of racial discrimination towards our people. You can't just blame blackfellas. It's like going back to the ration days'."

Turnbull announced on Friday that the card, which quarantines 80 percent of a person's welfare payment to be used on necessities, will be rolled out to the Goldfields region of Western Australia, the third site in the country following trials in Kununurra, in the north of the state, and Ceduna in South Australia.



All trial sites have high Indigenous populations.

A spokesperson from the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement that Turnbull was "interested to hear their perspective, but respectfully disagreed with several of the matters raised".

"The Turnbull government will always take decisions in the best interest of children, and we make no apologies for working with the Shires in the Goldfields to put in place the cashless debit card," the spokesperson said.