Working with colleagues Dr Skye Akbar from the University of South Australia, Associate Professor Julie Brimblecombe from the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food at Monash University and Dr Emma McMahon from the Menzies School of Health research at Royal Darwin Hospital, Dr Greenacre turned to the data.

First, the research team obtained sales data from grocery stores in one of the trial areas, as well as control stores in a nearby community.

“All in all, our results were not showing much change in behaviour. Only in one community did store sales go up, but that increase was driven by increases in purchases of unhealthy foods, likely harming life outcomes for people; hardly the outcomes sought from the card,” he says.

The team also compared crime data, hospital presentations and gambling data from poker machines.

None of these showed any changes when the cashless debit card was introduced. “When we examined the data from the Government’s own agencies it became clear that the data did not support the efficacy of the cashless debit card,” Dr Greenacre says.

Rather than being cost-effective, estimates placed the administration and other costs of the cashless debit card policy at

$10,000 per person

.

“People on low incomes and those on welfare can be, and often, already are smart with their money.”

As the federal election loomed last year, both the Labor party and the Greens relied on the team’s research results in their policy documents, and ultimately it was a Labor-led government that ended the trial of the cashless debit card.

https://impact.monash.edu/thriving-communities/built-on-hope-and-biases-why-the-...