Today we saw the efforts of dedicated team work and the sheer passion of the people who are standing up against the Cashless Debit Card being pushed by the federal MP Keith Pitt and the DSS for Hervey Bay and possibly Bundaberg.

The Hands on the Sand event was created to represent the various payments that people on Centrelink are on. Using different colours to distinguish the different payments.

Dedicated people organized themselves and cut and stuck pop sticks to a massive 5000 hands and then we all turned out to place them in the sand for the visual event.

These last few months with the threat of the card coming many are feeling stressed and worried as we have seen what has happened with the card trials interstate. The thought of losing your autonomy and choices, the threat of having to turn your financial life upside down and handing control to a private financial institution, being forced to contract without consent is a very big concern for these people.

These people feel so strongly about the card coming, that they felt they had to do something out of the box to raise awareness, and it worked, we had many people asking questions, and signing our petition. Everyone enjoyed our free sausage sizzle and the kids had a ball in the perfect weather, on a beautiful winters’ day on the Scarness Beach. See the attached pictures, it was an amazing job done by all involved.

Good people are thoroughly at their witts end of being branded lazy, bludgers, druggies, alcoholic and all manner of other insults being thrown at people either without a job, our youth, or people who are unable to work, including our older unemployed over the age of 45, some of our group are 64 and on newstart and do not support the card for obvious reasons. We are members of this community, parents, grandparents, young, older, sick and disabled. We are someones’ daughter, son, brother, uncle, mother, father, aunty, etc and we do not see why the big push to segregate us from our community and exclude us from being able to partake in the normal day to day living and abilities of enjoying our markets, fresh farmers markets. To be excluded from being able to access secondhand goods in order to scrape by on the small payments we survive on is a big worry as people are worried about not being able to access goods when their old items break down, white goods, cars, furniture, school uniforms, even the kids getting school photos is out, as that is either cash or credit card, both of which choices are being removed for people on Centrelink payments should the card come to the region.

The outright attack on our human rights, rights to self determination, privacy and all manner of other concerns as to allowing the DSS and Indue to take over control of our lives is causing many people great stress. Our Grandparents fought a big war to make sure their grandchildren had their freedoms protected, yet here we are in 2017 seeing those very grandchildren and their children facing being financially , socially and emotionally pushed out of society as we know it,

This is not the Australia we have all grown up with, were we all have equal rights as its’ citizens, we are now seeing the divide between the haves and the have nots being used to lesson a certain quota of the populations rights to protections of certain laws, removal of some laws and weakening of others has been done to allow the card to come into play in other areas. We are still Australians and should be equal at all levels irrespective of income source or amount .

DSS are here in Hervey Bay on Wednesday at 9am at the Community to answer peoples’ questions, we will be attending to ask some questions ourselves.

If you would like to catch up with us for any questions and information that you may not be aware of, please visit our Cashless Debit Card Drop In Centre at shop 4 /33 Main St Tuesday 11am – 4pm
Jane Salmon