Letter to the The Sydney Institute 31/5/2019
Re: [
thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/welfare-personal-responsibility-and-the-cashless-debit-card/]We write to inform you that a speech made by Mr Paul Fletcher on Monday 25 March 2019, concerning the Indue Ltd Cashless Debit Card program, has omitted key details and evidence regarding the program, omissions that undermine most of the former Social Services minister's perspectives and statements.
Mr Fletcher's speech has failed to mention both the absence of supporting data for his claims, and has omitted critical trial data and evidence that does exist, of a raft of unproductive outcomes of the Indue Cashless Debit Card trials (CDCT).
Mr Fletcher has not informed you of the impact of the CDCT in and on community economies or its impact in the lives of forced trial participants within targeted communities. Mr Fletcher made no mention of rebounding and ongoing socioeconomic impacts at all.
Mr Fletcher has sidestepped the issue of forced participant suicides and along with rises in abuse, domestic violence and other crime, he has ignored documented increases in elder abuse and racketeering. He has failed to inform you of over 474 cases of self injury that have been reported to Senate nor has he included any knowledge of the current and potential outcomes of the "trials" on small business communities placed under program restrictions via Indue Ltd 's invasive merchant terms and conditions obligations.
Mr Fletcher did not present to you any perspective or insight regarding the extent of chaotic impacts already visible as a result of the mismanaged and rushed privatisation of both the centrelink payments systems and the social welfare system concurrently. The destabilising impacts of these twin polices combined with the indignity of Australian citizens being forced to sign legally binding contracts with private corporate entities under duress cannot, at least in terms of governments ongoing legitimacy, be underestimated. Yet it seems the risks to our national institutions, not just our citizens, and potential financial and social implications wider scale has been left out of the picture completely.
The legal quandary visible to note, regarding the governments willingness to strip legal ownership of otherwise inalienable and protected payments, [80% of participant's lawful funds] and give legal ownership of that money to a private corporate entity [Indue Ltd] and further, to subject centrelink recipients to the control of this private politically allied corporation without their consent in order to reclaim it, seems to have been entirely and speciously forgotten.
Mr Fletcher's speech ignored available evidence as regards the lack of CDCT program efficacy, and has negated the abundance of publicly available evidence provided in over 500 submissions from multiple government agencies, service and industry specialists and community groups as well as health and economic institutions, RNZAP, Doctors, The Australian Law Council, ACOSS, Aboriginal corporations and medical services and Indigenous community Elders. He has ignored the learned voices of experienced social welfare agencies, academic bodies, addiction specialists, the testimony of forced trial participants themselves not to mention national charities at the coal face - critical information and data collected over three years, that was submitted over the course of three inquiries.
This speech ignored the conflicts of interest inherent to the development and organisational realities, contracts and management structure of Indue LTD itself and the nepotism clearly self evident in the roll out implementation process. Mr Fletcher has pushed aside grave conflicts of interest concerns both political and economic that exist between the corporation and several key National and Liberal party politicians.
Most importantly, Mr Fletcher acting with gross disrespect, has continuously sought to negate and dismiss the lived experiences of those people forced to participate in "trials" who are being impacted by its outcomes directly, while concurrently claiming to be 'fully and reliably' informed.
Mr Fletcher's speech overlooked the conclusions and recommendations of five government commissioned reports including two longitudinal studies into the failure of forced third party income management as a method of achieving social welfare goals since its inception 10 years ago; and this policy is just that, forced, third party, income, management. It is not " just welfare in another form".
Given the existence of payment protection laws that have not been repealed or rescinded, it is in fact, income theft, in a newly legal form. It remains such, however the LNP choose now to re-interpret or massage the context of those laws to suit their agenda.
This speech ignored the existence of two PJCHR committee statements and their recommendations; it manipulated and misrepresented the actual content of three commissioned trial evaluation reports and completely walked past three human rights submissions by the AHRC itself to the Senate that adamantly state the policy and governments accompanying Human rights compatibility statement, do not met Australian Human Rights standards.
The Indue cashless debit card policy relies upon assumption, presumption, media led social and politically convenient stereotypes and widespread public ignorance to exist. It does not rely on evidence, as the evidence when examined authentically and critically, has shown that the program is not working and is not making peoples lives better. It is, making the majority of forced trial participants lives, a lot worse.
The psycho-social and socioeconomic impacts to forced participants daily lives include - the rising costs of increased third party and inbound banking fees; technology systems insufficient to the task of even basic rental payment transfers; attempted and completed suicide; self injury; miscarriage; family breakdown; rape; loss of banking choices, lack of cash to meet school and social requirements seeing an increase in social inclusion; increased social stigma and street harassment; increased need of many participants to use food banks when payments are delayed or money goes missing from accounts to due lack of account security, increased use of social services, emergency health care, increased mental health decline and illness, homelessness and increased entrenchment of poverty and a deepening of the experience of poverty.
This active role played by Indue cashless card in the creation of more, more debilitating and new forms of poverty, makes a mockery of our national commitment to its reduction and of our commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals forum.
In infringing and limiting the human rights of forced trial participants, and infringing upon the legal, social, economic civil and cultural rights of Australian taxpaying citizens; in removing individual consent via duress; the limiting and restricting of economic choice, social freedom, data privacy and removing non discrimination rights ' by proxy', this government is creating and establishing a dangerous precedence for everyone, regardless of their current socioeconomic status.
It remains that Indue cashless cards and its policy direction are fatally flawed in every measurement possible. There was no need for this policy, an in-place alternative and systems were already available to support those most in need and this policy is now actively hindering the progress of existing frameworks and programs that do work.
The spending habits of centrelink recipients are not the problem the Australian economy is facing, and Indue cashless cards are not the solution to all that ails this nation. This pretext that they are, is a very good distraction from the actual problem however, and this pretext acts as a perception filter that casts the eye away from examining the underlying policy intention, which is simply, cash control and preferably for Mr Fletcher's teams, cash control, controlled by LNP vested interests.
This policy does not stop people from purchasing or ingesting alcohol, stop anyone gambling or stop the use of illicit drugs or trade in drugs. It will not stop rapists, pedophiles, partner abuse, or any other outlandish claim made by its loudest supporters over the course of the last three years. It never has, and as evidence, not hyperbole or propaganda about the policy clearly shows, it has only increased the likely hood of the same as it traps people in vulnerable situations. This policy cannot make people more responsible, it only undermines essential autonomy, self determination and social and political agency needed for the uptake of personal responsibility.
The Indue cashless card policy is not about uplifting people in struggle at all, indeed it is not about people in need at all. It is about binding soft targets, in need or not, to a new instrument of a burgeoning corporatocracy - by force.
Even if this policy were truthful in its current pretext, which it is not, it remains prohibition has never worked, at any time, at any point in all of recorded human history.
LNP are not seeking to stop wastage, or to protect the redistribution of taxation in Australia; this policy is an addition to the current yearly "welfare spend" not a fiscal saving. They are through, via polices such as the Indue cashless cards, seizing increasing control OF the redistribution of all taxation in Australia and further, handing that control over to a single private corporate entity.
Indue cashless cards therefore, represent the tip of a spear, in a longstanding political and ideological battle for control over existing systems of organic wealth distribution via the nations Social Security system. They take essential power from the people, and give it to the corporate sphere. The pretexts for the programs so-called necessity as LNP have established in the public consciousness, are masking what can only be describe as dangerous corporate intrusions into public governance and people's personal lives, couched in terms of "innovation". A battle ground wherein neglect and existential risk to lives is masked as "efficiency", atrocities, as "security" and abuse as "compassionate love".
The Indue Cashless card policy is immature and gestural. In practice it is inhumane. It is short sighted and beyond the patronisation and attempted infantalisation of those already substantially more resilient and in most cases more mature than this policy and Mr Fletcher demeans them to be, it is an ideologically driven moral judgment being wielded puritanically as a weapon, against, not for, the best interests of our most vulnerable citizens, who do not benefit from it at all.
The astounding cost of this policy alone, not just in its direct implementation but inclusive of both wrap around costs ongoing, increases in costs to communities in the need to address declining health, impacts of increased poverty and increased social service use. This is not to mention the multi million dollar pork barreling needed in order to gain foothold and maintain political and public support for roll outs of the program, a sum on its own, that is startling.
On both close and wider examination, this policy as it stands now, is merely a test bed; a method through which to study the use and impacts of political force and gauge public reaction; to up skill public reaction management. These "trials" have been designed specifically to test and so inform on the technology systems needed to enforce what will ultimately become, a cashless Australia.
Cart before horse in true Liberal/National fashion, this push to ultimate collective cashlessness, ignores the impact of the same to the lives of those most dependent on cash income, and comes well before any legitimate and open public debate that ordinarily preempts informed choice and consent by the people, has even begun - an action of dictatorship, not democratic governance.
The organic reality of the Social Security payment spend is that of a 154 billion dollar tax generator and we are all, 'welfare recipients', equal beneficiaries of its service and function regardless of our socioeconomic status. Be that benefit derived from the direct spending of this income by its recipients in local stores, or as we all benefit from its utility as a social and economic stabiliser. More importantly, the necessity and the role of cash specifically in our national economy, in supporting micro-economies and communities, has not even been assessed let alone addressed.
This ongoing ambiguity, and the seeming absence of due diligence or concern for the wider social and economic impacts of this policy informs us that we are all at risk should roll outs be implemented nationally.
The smokescreen of " tax payer dollars" being better served is just that, a misleading pretext. Poverty, is far more expensive than mutual prosperity, and as the legitimately informed are already aware, all social security spending contributes to local economies, supporting communities, not disabling them. This contribution assists in supplying the income that enables the payment of income taxes by other individuals receiving fiscal benefit from this 'welfare' in the second, third and fourth instances.
Micro-economies - cash based small scale and local currency exchanges, are the plankton of the economic system. You damage and undermine them at the risk of system wide existential peril.
Mr Allan Tudge has been open with his desire to eliminate all cash from the entire social security system. This cash control and the impact of the redirection of payment income to conglomerates and away from the small business sector, will be significant. Given both the sums of money and numbers of recipients involved, this absence of literal cash-flow will impact the social spending of almost five million people if national roll out is implemented. Restricted to just 20% of their income in cash, for some barely six dollars a day, that impact will be notable . No plankton = no whales.
What is already manifesting, visible to any observer in microcosm now, and after three years of "trials" in Ceduna SA - is shop closures, populations and businesses migrating out of town as multi million dollar handouts given to preferential CDCT and LNP supporting company's fails to trickle back into the community economy proper. This outcome will no doubt be reflected and repeated in similar impacts to wider Australia. It will eventually be self evident everywhere along with its social consequences.
Lastly, there is the moral question. And we ask; 'What kind of government is it we have installed where maintaining and preserving the basic rights and welfare of its own citizens is now considered inconvenient, too expensive or a 'waste of money' and government time?'
Beyond the destruction of the welfare state and what privatisation means to government own competency to maintain our systems in public hands, are we collectively as a nation being authentically informed and are we prepared to choose socioeconomic apartheid as a representation of our national values at home, and internationally? Are we willing and are we consciously choosing as a nation, to accept destruction of our basic decency and humanity as well?
That is what this policy is asking us to do.
This essential aversion most Australians have, to the wilful commission of acts of conscious cruelty and abuse of the innocent, is the basis of our legal system. It is critical to the maintenance of all human dignity, including our own as individuals.
It is not a left/right wing issue to care about people or to support people and be supported in kind. This willingness to care if people live or die needlessly, is not a fiscal transaction per say, yet is a vital transaction none the less. It is the basis of our social contract and government, not corporate responsibility for those in need is at the heart of it.
If a policy, any government policy external to a national defense context is killing people - it should be stopped immediately and its ethical and moral justifications reexamined at depth. This has always been the case in the past. The Indue Cashless Card policy, is killing people. Roll outs must stop and a meaningful wider evaluation of ALL available evidence and policy impacts must be taken before proceeding in any direction.
Under Indue Cashless Cards and the consequences of forced third party income management, innocent people are being driven to suicide in abject despair. Families have been made homeless for no reason, children have gone hungry and people are being sanctioned economically, despite no proof of delinquency or criminality.
Indue systems failures routinely leave the most vulnerable excluded from the economy and at place them at direct risk. Those least able to defend themselves are placed in the path of criminals, skilled abusers - including children who have been raped and prostituted by cash heavy predators laying claim to entire trial regions as hunting grounds. These injuries, risks, abuses and deaths are entirely avoidable and preventable. Stop the trials, do what works.
The social welfare system was put in place to support the most vulnerable, which may include any one of you at any time, not to kill them. Our 'welfare' system, supports national social security, and so, social and economic stability nation wide, not just the dignity of the individuals who receive it.
After all it was this cause - continued economic viability through social stability and mutual security, that was the first cause of all Social Security legislation. The fact this impersonal origin has become part of our national ethical and moral conscience and in practice for the last fifty years or more it has embedded itself within our national value system as a principle of best practice in its own right, is not a weak or negative attribute, it is a strength.
Social security payments systems maintained in the autonomous hands of the people via our own informed and importantly, accountable government agencies, means that Social Security in its current form and as delivered via Centrelink is one of the last remaining national structures that has allowed us to remain distinct from those nations that have and are falling into chaos as a result of ignoring essential socioeconomic inter-connectivity.
You are free of course to ignore our insight offered here in this letter as you please. We can't force you to consider alternatives and risks. We do stand willing and available to provide documented verification of each of our statements at any time should you require it.
We have no political allegiance or agenda outside our publicly stated goal, and our only concern is the safety, care, protection and prosperity of people, human beings, without class or status judgments impeding that goal. We support and uphold the rights of people, many of whom are unable to defend themselves against this continuous onslaught of abuses of power and position. We, being members of the Australian community too, simply do not want to wake to look in the mirror and find ourselves unrecognisable.
The people government has abandoned through policy failure to exist and survive at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are taking as much personal responsibility as they possibly and humanly can already. It is time this government met their own mutual obligation, and if it desires to retain any legitimacy or authority at all going forward, stops abdicating their own responsibility and accountability to them.
We end this letter with a question, one we impose on everyone we speak to, that is;
"If the Australian economy is not for the primary benefit of the people that are the nation; then who exactly, is it for?"
Thank you for your time.
The Say NO Seven.