Mining billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has revealed himself as being ‘de facto’ in charge of the federal government’s cashless debit card policy, with his foundation telling a senate committee that a national working group to support a countrywide rollout was established at its request.
The existence of the CDC Technology Working Group has been known since March — it includes major banks ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac as well as Australia Post, Coles, Metcash and Woolworths — but in a submission to a a parliamentary review, Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation offshoot Generation One confirms it originated with them.
Generation One is proud to have established a CDC Technology Working Group (TWG) in February 2020, jointly facilitated by Minderoo Foundation and the Department of Social Services,” the submission says.
“The CDC TWG has a strong interest and a genuine commitment to contribute to CDC progress and improvement. The purpose of the TWG is to work with key stakeholders to consider a number of improvements… and the technical requirements necessary should multiple Issuers support the CDC on a national basis.”
The group has met every month since March.
In last month’s federal budget, the Coalition revealed it plans to end the five-year trials of the income management card and convert them to permanent arrangements despite years of damning reports and inconclusive evidence about whether they even work.
More importantly, the government has heard growing testimony about both the intended and unintended consequences of the trials doing serious harm to people struggling to deal with poverty, mental illness, addiction and family violence.
For welfare recipients who are on the card, 80 percent of their income is quarantined in a special account. This cannot be used to purchase prohibited items such as alcohol or in gambling venues. The remaining 20 per cent is theirs to spend as they wish.
The most recent evaluation of the trials commissioned by the Commonwealth, from the University of Adelaide, was due to be handed to Social Services Minister Anne Ruston in October last year but it has not been finished. A final draft of the summary report was only delivered at the end of October this year with two data reports outstanding.
A decision to extend the trial, therefore, happened without any reliable assessment of how the policy performed in the four locations where it has been implemented.
“There is some evidence that the schemes have had negative impacts on mental health of those affected, and that many of those under income management have not had substance or gambling issues prior to being put on income management,” the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) says in its own submission to the senate standing committee on community affairs.
“While the measures are not targeted explicitly by race, in practice many of the trial areas have large Aboriginal communities.
“The explanatory memorandum for the Bill largely relies on the evaluation evidence from the first evaluation study by ORIMA (for Ceduna and East Kimberley), notwithstanding the fact that the Australian National Audit Office found significant issues with the contracting and conduct of the research which undermined the credibility of its findings.”
Mining magnate Twiggy Forrest is the architect of the scheme itself following his 2014 recommendation of a “healthy welfare card” but his foundation executives gave evidence at yesterday’s senate hearing that Generation One and the Minderoo Foundation are leading the development of the policy and pushing for its national rollout.
Australian Unemployed Workers Union spokesperson Kristin O’Connell said the arrangement is just another example of the federal government “abdicating all of its responsibility for things it does not care about” and handing them to “the wealthiest people in this country.”
“It does not surprise me that Twiggy has been given full control of this process,” she said.
“They are treating people as an extractive industry. Twiggy has no expertise in social services and no understanding of how violence and poverty works.
“By allowing Twiggy control of this process, the government is setting a precedent that it is OK to hand over enormous influence to very wealthy people who are not accountable to the general public.”
Rick Morton is the author of the bestselling One Hundred Years of Dirt. He has been a journalist for 15 years with a particular focus on social policy and national affairs. Rick is the senior reporter for The Saturday Paper.
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