Submission to the inquiry into the Income Management to Cashless Debit Card Transition Bill
“ERA is strongly opposed to welfare conditionality, and opposes the expansion of the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) Trial through the compulsory transitioning on people on Income Management to the CDC. ERA supports the CDC as an opt-in program only.
We are concerned that the program discriminates against women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with disparate impacts on these groups. We note that the expansion of the CDC program ignores clear evidence that the program is harmful to participants without any evidence of significant benefits for participants. We further note the repeated critiques of the program evaluation quoted by the Government on the benefits of the program, and on which the justification of this legislation is based.”