#AusUPR20 Score Card: The Cashless Debit Card (CDC) is an extension of the NT Intervention’s ‘Income Management’ policy and is also racially discriminatory, with more than 81% of compulsory recipients Aboriginal. 1/8
The CDC quarantines 80% of cash welfare, it is humiliating and stigmatises Aboriginal people, exacerbating financial hardship and entrenching disempowerment, with independent reviews reporting that it leads to increased violence and crime. 2/8
A lack of technology, phones and repeated power outages have prevented access to funds and food in remote communities. A Coronial Inquiry into Child Suicide heard the CDC was disempowering and a contributing factor. 3/8
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights considered the CDC limited human rights and disproportionate. Despite being costly, at $10,000 per participant, w/ millions paid to the private company ‘Indue’ to deliver, its going to regions w/ high Aboriginal populations. 4/8
The Community Development Program (CDP), is also racist in its implementation; of the 35,000 people impacted more than 85% are Aboriginal. It requires remote Aboriginal participants to work for welfare payments, 5/8
has additional obligations and is more onerous than for urban participants. It has applied financial penalties disproportionately, giving these 35,000 people 350,000 penalties over two years, resulting in cuts to payments and causing hunger. 6/8
Yingiya Mark Guyula MLA, claims the NT Intervention, Stronger Futures and CDP brought ‘a decline in employment, an increase in court hearings, incarceration rates, increased child removals, suicides. Its a cultural genocide! I am fighting for self-determination, for treaty!’ 7/8
Recommendation: The Stronger Futures, Cashless Debit Card and Community Development Program, must be abolished and welfare entitlements and funding returned to remote communities and Homelands/Outstations within 12 months. 8/8
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