'Bloody pointless': Lambie raises new concerns over drug-test welfare bill
The Morrison government has lost ground in its bid to impose random drug tests on welfare recipients after crossbench senator Jacqui Lambie raised new concerns about the lack of rehabilitation services linked to the plan.
In a hardening of her position on the contentious proposal, Senator Lambie not only insisted politicians subject themselves to random drug tests but also fix government services before getting any approval for the welfare change.
"The services are not there and until those services are there then I tell you what, this is bloody pointless," Senator Lambie said of the government bill to be put to Parliament this week.
Asked on Sky News on Monday morning whether more money for rehabilitation services would fix this problem and gain her vote, Senator Lambie said money would not be enough given her concerns.
"I don't even think that's going to help because they can't keep up with the mental services out there, they're miles behind there," she said. "They're just not going to be able to bluff their way out of this one, I don't think. I think it's just not going to work."
The comments counter a report in The Australian on Monday that the government bill was "likely to be passed" with Senator Lambie's support.
The Coalition has argued for several years that welfare recipients should be subject to random drug and alcohol tests so those who fail the tests can be referred for treatment to keep their government payments. The last government bill to do this lapsed at the election and Social Services Minister Anne Ruston intends to introduce a new bill this week.
The drug testing bill is separate from a bill to widen the pilot program for the national rollout of a cashless debit card for welfare recipients, a project that has Senator Lambie's support, subject to the results from the next pilot scheme.
The government is confident of gaining the votes of Pauline Hanson's One Nation and independent senator Cory Bernardi for the drug-testing bill but does not have support from Centre Alliance and needs Senator Lambie to legislate the plan.
The government policy is to set up a $10 million treatment fund for those who fail the random drug tests over a two-year trial period at Logan in Queensland, Canterbury-Bankstown in NSW and Mandurah in Western Australia. It would test 5000 new recipients of Newstart and the Youth Allowance for ice, ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine and heroin.
Those who tested positive would be put on an "income management" plan for two years to quarantine their welfare payments so they could not spend the money on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and gambling. They could lose their payments, however, if they did not agree to a second drug test within 25 working days of their failed test.
Associate professor Nadine Ezard, the clinical director of the drug and alcohol unit at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, estimated there were 500,000 people who needed treatment for drugs and alcohol but could not get the help they needed.
"We're against it because we know the evidence is not there," she said of the government policy. "We're against it because our expertise and experience tells us that this isn't the way to help people into treatment."
Earlier, Senator Lambie insisted welfare recipients should not be drug tested if politicians and others on government salaries were not subject to the same random tests.
"If you're going to deliver these things on others, then you should be prepared to deliver it on yourself," she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Sunday. "That will be the deal breaker. Unless they're going to put it on themselves I won't be voting to put it on others.
"I won't be voting to say that part of society should be having drug and alcohol testing on it. I don't know what the resistance is. What's wrong with doing that in Parliament House on a random basis?"
Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Friday took to social media to say he had "no problem with drug tests for politicians" while Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told Sky News he was "completely relaxed" about submitting to a test, if that was what it would take to win support.