Ceduna,on the shores of Murat Bay about 786 kilometres north-west of Adelaide,has been trialling the cashless welfare card since March 2016.
"We haven't seen a decrease whatsoever in people coming,"Mr Wilson said of the Stepping Stones Drug and Alcohol Day Centre,which has nearly 20,000 client contacts a year."I keep hearing the rhetoric from the government about how successful these trials are. We've sort of said from our point of view people obviously still have access to alcohol."
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The federal government began trialling the card - which quarantines 80 per cent of unemployment and various other welfare payments to prevent them being spent on alcohol,drugs or gambling - in Ceduna,the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay region of Queensland,and East Kimberley,Western Australia. Itwants to expand the trials to the Northern Territory and Cape York before eventually extending it nationwide.
Figures seen byThe Sydney Morning Herald andThe Age show that Stepping Stones in Ceduna,which has a district population of 3400,had 14,746 client contacts in the 2015-16 financial year. That had increased to 18,190 in 2018-19.
"There are a number of reasons why people attend the'drying out'centre,"said Rowan Ramsey,the federal Liberal member for Grey,which covers Ceduna."The last time I saw the figures on this,the levels of intoxication for those entering[the centre] are a lot lower."