Jocelyn Wighton says without access to cash pension she would have been stuck, as Senate due to consider bill to expand card’s use

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A domestic violence survivor who is part of the cashless debit card trial says she would not have been able to escape her abusive marriage under the income management scheme.

Speaking at a symposium on the cashless debit card at Melbourne University on Thursday, Jocelyn Wighton, from Ceduna, South Australia said without access to her entire disability pension in cash she would not have been able to afford to start a new life.

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Ceduna is a remote town and has a cash-based economy where many household items are bought in secondhand shops which do not always have facilities for the card.

“I’m a domestic violence survivor,” Wighton said. “If I was on this card when I escaped from my husband, I would not have made it. I bought secondhand furniture down to the plates and knives and forks. You can’t do that on the card.”

Wighton, who is non-Indigenous, said she was deeply embarrassed to be on the card.

“I hate it,” she said. “Every time I get it out I get the shakes, you never know if it’s going to work or not. It’s just so unreliable it’s not funny.”

Welfare recipients in Ceduna and the East Kimberley in Western Australia were placed on the cashless debit card in 2015, as part of an open-ended trial. Old-age pensioners are not included in the trial.

Legislation to roll-out the card to other communities, starting with Kalgoorlie in WA and the Wide Bay region, including Bundaberg, in Queensland, is due to be put before the Senate next Thursday.

The expansion is opposed by Labor and the Greens and needs support from the Nick Xenophon Team to pass. However Labor has continued to support the existing trial sites, pending a more robust evaluation report.

The government-commissioned evaluation report has been widely criticised.

WA senator Sue Lines said Labor did not support the expansion because there had not been sufficient community consultation, and said the Turnbull government relied heavily on statements from local governments, which had not themselves done broad community consultation.

The push to expand the card comes as the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Australian Philip Alston, wrote to the Turnbull government accusing it of stigmatising and marginalising poorer communities, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, in its proposed expansion of the card.

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Wighton, who is 61, said she was counting down the years until she became eligible for the old-age pension and could return to managing her money on her own. She recently applied to have the proportion of her fortnightly income available in cash increased from 20% to 50%, and was told, by an anonymous community panel, that she was only eligible to have 40% of her income available in cash.

Like those in Ceduna, people living in the East Kimberley towns of Kununurra and Wyndham rely on secondhand stores or cheap online retailers where they cannot use the cards.

Bev Walley, an Indigenous woman from Kununurra, said she was placed on the card three months ago after taking an early retirement from her job at the WA education department to look after her granddaughter.

“I find it an insult, I have worked all my life,” she said.

Walley said there was no proper consultation in Kununurra prior to the card’s introduction. Instead, she said, community services minister Alan Tudge worked on persuading four senior Aboriginal leaders, one of whom has since withdrawn his support.

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“Three people had the power,” she said. “Tudge came to Kununurra, promised wrap-around services, the funding to help people ... none of that has happened. We’re still waiting for that today.”

Wighton said she learned about the card through “town gossip.” Walley and her sister held their own town meetings, attracting 80 people to lobby against the card.

“I think it’s unfair that these other communities are being consulted when we in Kununurra weren’t,” Walley said.