Cashless welfare costs privacy

A WOMAN who was forced onto a controversial income management scheme has told how she was forced to beg for permission to buy a bra.

Bianca Chatfield told a parliamentary inquiry she was placed on the Cashless Debit Card after living temporarily in Bundaberg, Queensland.

However, she did not receive the card until she was living in Brisbane and was weeks away from moving to Sydney.

During that time she said she had trouble paying her rent, purchasing second-hand uniforms for her children and buying groceries from Aldi.

But it was trying to purchase a bra online that left her “absolutely gobsmacked”.

“I have a very, very large bust and I can’t afford brands that are here in Australia,” she told the Senate inquiry on Tuesday. “So I buy my bras from eBay from a place in England.”

eBay is a blocked merchant under the scheme and Ms Chatfield was told she would have to send a picture of the bra to Indue, the company that manages the program, for approval.

“I felt like it was a major invasion of my privacy because this photo is going to someone that’s sitting behind a screen that has all of my personal details. I don’t know who they are,” she said.

Out of curiosity, she asked if the same process would apply if she wanted to purchase something from an adult store.

She was told it would.

“So not only did I apparently need permission to purchase a bra, apparently I needed permission to climax as well,” she said.

Ms Chatfield said the process was “unacceptable” and if a partner exercised the same control over her finances it would be “considered domestic violence”. She described the program as “government sanctioned financial abuse”.

A parliamentary committee is examining the Albanese government’s proposal to abolish the cashless debit card.

The card quarantines up to 80 per cent of welfare payments into a restricted bank account and was introduced by the Coalition in 2016 to prevent cash withdrawals or spending on certain items such as alcohol and gambling.

The card was trialled across Ceduna, South Australia and East Kimberley and the Goldfields in Western Australia, and Bundaberg and Hervey Bay in Queensland. More recently it was expanded into the NT and Cape York.

If legislated, 17,300 welfare recipients who have a cashless card will have the option to remain on the program voluntarily or opt out. But not everyone who shared evidence with the committee is in favour of scrapping the program.

Leading Indigenous think tank, Cape York Institute, wants the government to allow communities on the card to decide for themselves.