Social Services Legislation Amendment (Cashless Debit Card Trial Expansion) Bill 2018

The majority voted in favour of passing this bill in the Senate, with amendments. In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read the bill for a third time. The bill will now be sent back to the House of Representatives so that our MPs there can decide whether they agree with the amendments or not.

What does the bill do?

The bill was introduced to:

• expand the cashless debit card arrangements to a further trial site, the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay area, to run until 30 June 2020;
• specify the class of trial participants for the area and increase the total number of trial participants overall to 15 000;
• provide for an exception from the restrictive trade practices provisions of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 for merchants that implement product level blocking systems to identify that a cashless debit card is being used for payment and, if any restricted products are being purchased, decline the transaction; and
• limit the use of the restricted portion of a payment to prevent the portion being used to obtain cash-like products which could be used to obtain alcohol or gambling.