Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management to Cashless Debit Card Transition) Bill 2019

The majority voted in favour of a motion to pass the bill in the House, which means it will now be sent to the Senate for their consideration. In parliamentary jargon, they voted to read the bill for a third time.

What does the bill do?

The bill was introduced in order to:

• establish the Northern Territory (NT) and Cape York area as cashless debit card (CDC) trial areas and transition income management participants in these areas onto the cashless debit card trial in 2020
• extend the end date for existing CDC trial sites from 30 June 2020 to 30 June 2021 and establish an end date of 30 June 2021 the proposed NT CDC trial site
• establish an end date for the CDC trial in the Cape York area of 31 December 2021
• remove the current cap of 15,000 CDC trial participants
• enable people in the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay trial site to volunteer to participate in the trial
• enable the Secretary of the Department of Social Services to advise a community body when a person has exited the CDC trial and
• make changes to the CDC trial review and evaluation process.