GOVERNMENT HAS “NO PROBLEM” FORCING STRUGGLING FARMERS GO CASHLESS - MONDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2019 - MEDIA RELEASE

Hon Joel Fitzgibbon MP, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Resources

Hon Linda Burney MP, Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services

Drought affected farming families will be rightly shocked by the suggestion they could be subject to the Morrison Government’s cashless welfare card.

Asked yesterday whether he believed farmers on Farm Household Allowance (FHA) should be put on the welfare card Barnaby Joyce answered:

“I’ve got no problem with that.”

Affected farming families will have a different view.

On Sunrise yesterday, when talking about the cashless welfare cards, Barnaby Joyce said:

“We want to be generous but we can’t have money being misspent.”

Does this mean Barnaby believes farming families are misspending their allowance?

On the 7:30 Report last night, when the Prime Minister was asked why he was planning on rolling out the policy nationwide, he said:

“What we want to do is get people off welfare and into work”.

Farmers are already at work – they live at work. Does the Prime Minister not understand what it takes to survive on a drought stricken farm?

Scott Morrison also said one of the key reasons the welfare card has been is working is because “it has been embraced by the communities where it has been put in place...”

Does Scott Morrison really believe communities impacted by one of the most severe droughts in Australian history would embrace his arbitrary cashless card system?

Scott Morrison should guarantee today that farming families on FHA will not be subject to his populist and cruel cashless welfare card.