The federal opposition has renounced the government's plan to make the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) a permanent feature of the Australian welfare system.
Labor said it would oppose legislation to make the CDC permanent and stop its scheduled rollout in the Northern Territory.
The Australian government introduced the trial of the welfare quarantining system in 2016, via a CDC, with the aim being to govern how those in receipt of welfare spent the money, such as by preventing the sale of alcohol, cigarettes, and some gift cards and blocking the funds from being used on activities such as gambling.
Participants of the CDC trial have 80% their funds placed on card, which is managed by Indue, with the remaining 20% to be paid into a bank account.
As of early March, there were 12,150 participants in the CDC trials[1] across Bundaberg and Hervey Bay, the East Kimberley, Ceduna, and Goldfields regions.
Services Australia is charged with oversight of the initiative, and as the agency was inundated[2] with a new wave of welfare payments in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak[3], the government announced it would place a temporary pause on transitioning new participants onto the CDC.
Since then, it has quietly made the decision to both make the card permanent in the trial sites and roll out the card to 23,000 people in the Nothern Territory.
"The government is ideologically obsessed with the Cashless Debit Card," Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services Linda Burney said on Friday. "Yet, it has so far failed to prove that it is effective."
The decision to make the CDC permanent was made as part of the 2020 federal Budget[4], announced on October 6. But during Senate Estimates last month[5], it was revealed the decision