Sky News, The Latest with Laura Jayes
E&OE.
LAURA JAYES:
Assistant Minister thanks so much for your time.
ALAN TUDGE:
Hi there Laura.
LAURA JAYES:
First of all are you looking at this trial with a view to be rolling this out Australia-wide after the election?
ALAN TUDGE:
We’re taking this one step at a time Laura. Our initial step is to trial this concept in two or three locations. Should this trial be successful then of course we’ll be thinking where else we apply this card to.
The most logical extension of what we’re doing is to apply it to those communities who already have their hand up to ask for this card to be introduced into their locations. However we’re thinking more broadly in relation to it as well.
LAURA JAYES:
So you’re not ruling it out. Obviously this is a bit of a test. It would be silly to just roll it out and put this across all welfare communities straight away. But you’re certainly not ruling out and if it does work do you think there is scope to make it more broad?
ALAN TUDGE:
We’re just not at that stage yet. We’re really are taking this one step at a time. I think the card will make a demonstrable difference, particularly in those high welfare communities where you see a lot of welfare-fuelled alcohol, drug and gambling abuse. It causes not just damage to the individuals who are consuming too much alcohol, or consuming drugs, but it causes damage to entire communities, because food isn’t on the table, the violence rates skyrocket.
This card is squarely aimed at trying to get on top of those things. I hope it works, I then hope that we might be able to be in the position to roll it out, at the very least to other communities who are putting their hand up and saying that they would like to consider introducing this card to their communities.
LAURA JAYES:
Looking at how it will be rolled out and how it will operate, these things are always subject to some kind of rorting. Perhaps it is a call to some of those more enterprising and agile members of the community that might seek to get around it. I know you’ve talked about having mechanisms in place to make sure that doesn’t happen but what are they?
ALAN TUDGE:
Laura, inevitably some people will be enterprising and try to get around this system. You won’t be able to stop all of it.
However a couple of points. Firstly everybody who is on an income support payment will be receiving this card and consequently a lot of the cash will be taken out of the community so the ability to trade the cards will be limited purely because of that.
The second point I’d make is I think the best analogy in relation to what we’re trying to do here is when an alcohol restriction is introduced into a discrete community. Typically when that occurs, you’ll halve the amount of violence overnight even though some grog runners will try to infiltrate themselves into that community. You can never stop the grog runners in entirety but you’ll nevertheless have a demonstrable impact on the social conditions of those locations and I think this card will be operating in the same way.
LAURA JAYES:
But how will you measure it? What are the benchmarks that are going to be in place? Would you like to see a restriction or sales of alcohol going down, less gambling in these communities? How will it be measured?
ALAN TUDGE:
The central aim of the card is to reduce the very significant social harm which is caused by welfare-fuelled alcohol and drug abuse particularly.
We’re going to be looking at some of those social indicators, such as the violence rates, such as the hospitalisation rates due to assaults, such as some of the crime rates.
They’re the things that we’d like to be seeing come down as a result. The evidence at the moment is that two-thirds of that, at least in relation to violence, is squarely related to alcohol in many locations.
We’ll have a full evaluation done on it, an independent evaluation. That will give us good evidence as to whether or not that is working.
LAURA JAYES:
How long are you going to give this to work? Six months? A year?
ALAN TUDGE:
The trials are for one year. We’ll be starting them off in March, in Ceduna in South Australia with a subsequent trial beginning just after that in the East Kimberley. We’ll have a third trial site, most likely another one in Western Australia. One of the ones which we’re considering actually is a location which is 70 per cent non-indigenous, so it has a very different flavour to those other two sites. With the overall message that this is not about indigenes try as such; this is about welfare abuse and the welfare abuse which is causing damage that we want to try to stop.
LAURA JAYES:
I’ll get to the indigenous issue in a moment but just quickly to talk about the details of the card, this will be an 80-20 per cent split so 20 per cent will still be cash accessible. As you mentioned Ceduna, another community in the Kimberley and possibly a third site, this will cover about 10,000 people is that correct?
ALAN TUDGE:
Yeah the legislation enables us to cover about 10,000 people. The first two sites are about a thousand to 1500 people each. The other sites which we are looking at are slightly larger than that.
As I said, even though the first two sites have a stronger proportion of indigenous people, it’s not an indigenous specific card. It’s a card which will apply across a geographical area and anyone within that geographical area will be issued win that card.
As you said Laura, 80 per cent of people’s welfare payments will be placed onto this card and you’ll only be able to access your welfare payments via this, what will be a Visa debit card. With the other 20 per cent, it will continue to go into the recipients ordinary savings account which they can access as cash.
LAURA JAYES:
This was a recommendation out of the Forrest Review, Andrew Forrest actually recommended that this be- he said it it shouldn’t just be to indigenous communities and he was suggesting 100 per cent no cash on these cards and the Government hasn’t gone that way. I know you said this is not targeted at the indigenous population but certainly this is an enormous problem and you’d be hoping that this will work in some of these indigenous communities, perhaps more that others?
ALAN TUDGE:
I think that’s right Laura. The most significant social problems caused by grog abuse, by welfare abuse, tends to be in some of the more remote and regional aboriginal communities unfortunately. The grog can be the absolute poison in some of these places which just causes devastation. It means the kids are less safe, it means that women are often bashed an an extraordinarily high rate, it means that it’s hard for kids to get a good nights sleep and get to school.
This card will hopefully squarely address some of those issues. The card itself will limit the amount of cash which you can spend on the alcohol which of course is nearly all welfare cash in these more remote places.
At the same time it’s important to point out Laura, you can’t just switch off the supply overnight. Consequently we are introducing additional alcohol rehabilitation mechanisms as well and that will work concurrently in the restriction in cash available for alcohol.
We consider this a full scale assault on alcohol abuse in some of these communities and we hope it will have demonstrable impact on some of those communities and make them safer for everybody.
LAURA JAYES:
Among the 27 recommendations out of the Forrest Review this was of course one of them. He also called for a tax free status for innovative indigenous businesses and a national form on drivers licences. How is the Government going in implementing these recommendations? How many have you implemented so far? How many do you plan to? And those two suggestions and recommendations I’ve pointed out, are you keen on doing those or not?
ALAN TUDGE:
There’s 27 recommendations and we basically agreed to implement 26 of them in some capacity. This welfare card was the centrepiece of this report and we’re largely implementing it as Andrew Forrest suggested although there are some minor differences.
In all of the other recommendations- we’re progressing. The one that we’re not is the one that you mentioned and that is this innovative idea for a tax free status business if you employ a certain number of aboriginal people.
That we’re just finding is too complex to implement. The intent I think is right. We agree with the intent about trying to create economic incentives for businesses to employ aboriginal people but the particular measure we’re not in favour of.
LAURA JAYES:
26 recommendations out of 27 is not too bad. Alan Tudge thanks so much for your time this evening and Happy New Year to you.
ALAN TUDGE:
Thanks very much Laura, you too.