Greens say government is not showing the full picture and is relying on anecdotal evidence in assessing the card’s rollout

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Greens senator Rachel Siewert has accused the human services minister, Alan Tudge, of “cherry-picking” data to feature in the government’s six-month progress report on the cashless welfare card trial – amid a rise in some crime categories during the test period.

The trial of the card began in the South Australian town of Ceduna on 15 March and in the West Australian towns of Kununurra and Wyndham on 26 April, when welfare recipients began receiving 80% of their payments into a restricted debit card. The rest is available in cash, but the card cannot be used to buy alcohol or gambling products.

The six-month progress report, published in October, contained anecdotal evidence of the card’s success, along with statistics from South Australia police.

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The number of people arrested for public drunkenness in Ceduna, a seaside town on the west coast of the Eyre peninsula, was 54% lower between March and June last year compared with the same period in 2015, the report said. It also found reports of domestic violence received in July last year were 13% lower compared with April.

Sexual assault, robbery and other offences against the person had been “generally decreasing” in the Eyre western area since the trial’s implementation, the report found.

But at the time of compiling the report, the department also had police data showing a 71% increase in aggravated robbery for the area in the period from October 2015 to October 2016 compared with the same period the previous year. Non-aggravated robbery increased 200% in the same period.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rachel Siewert says the government is ‘cherry picking’ data to make the case for the welfare card. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

“It is odd how this did not make it on to the minister’s top lines when he was spruiking the card to media,” Siewert said.

“When it comes to the cashless debit card trial progress report, we knew that the government was cherry-picking data to shine the card in the best possible light, but to ignore SA police statistics that show an increase in aggravated and non-aggravated robbery is worrisome.”

The 12-month trials of the card will conclude this year, at which point there will be an independent evaluation. Siewert questioned why the department released its six-month progress report, given it was not independent and that a proper evaluation was being conducted.

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“I urge the minister to allow the trial to finish before he starts trying to pre-empt the outcome with premature ‘progress reports’,” she said.

Tudge did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia, which were instead answered by a spokeswoman from the department of social services. She said the use of anecdotal data in the progress report was justified because “anecdotal feedback offers an insight into people’s thoughts and experiences about the trial and what is being observed on the ground”.

One anecdote in the report said there were more children walking around with cleaner, newer clothes, and another citeda perceived reduction in violence.

“The progress report is not a replacement for the independent evaluation and was released in the interests of transparency in data reporting on the trial,” the spokeswoman said.

“The full, independent evaluation, which is due to be completed in late 2017, will provide a more robust analysis of the trial’s impact.”

The additional police data was not included in the report because it compared the total number of crimes in the past 12 months with the previous 12 months, she said. While this was a useful statistic for measuring long-term trends, the department believed it did not provide the most accurate picture of crime during the trial period.

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“As the trial began less than 12 months ago, a significant amount of pre-trial data will be mixed with the rolling year variance data,” the spokeswoman said.

“When reporting on crime data, the department of social services prefers to compare the most recent data with an equivalent point in time from before the trial commenced. This makes for a more accurate representation of changes since the trial began.”

Welfare recipients in the trial towns are largely Aboriginal. On Tuesday, the president of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Pat Turner, said the card “reminds Aboriginal people every day that they are treated as second- and third-class citizens in their own land”.

But the department said the trial has been developed in close partnership with community leaders, including Aboriginal elders.

• Do you know more? melissa.davey@theguardian.com



