The Australian government in 2016 introduced the trial of a welfare quarantining system, via a Cashless Debit Card (CDC), that aimed to govern how those in receipt of welfare spent their money, with the idea being to both prevent the sale of alcohol, cigarettes, and some gift cards and block 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. The government placed a temporary pause on transitioning new participants onto the CDC in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but 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 Northern Territory and Cape York.
Legislation to extend the trials for another two years and "voluntarily" roll out the tech to the Northern Territory and Cape York was on Wednesday night passed by the Senate.
The Bill, titled Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Continuation of Cashless Welfare) Bill 2020, removes the trial parameters to establish the CDC as an ongoing program, establishes the Northern Territory and Cape York areas as CDC program areas -- with individuals living in those areas to move onto the program in 2021 -- and removes a current exclusion to enable people in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay program area to voluntarily participate in the program, among other things.
An amendment introduced by Minister for Families and Social Services Anne Ruston watered down the permanency element to, instead, be a two-year extension of