While the new Labor government has promised to scrap the Coalition's controversial Cashless Debit Card, questions remain about what comes next.
For Bundaberg single mother Kerryn Griffis, who has been on the card for more than three years, the changes can't come soon enough.
"I'm not anticipating I'll be off it tomorrow or anything like that," she told 7.30.
"But the point is I will be getting off it eventually, there is hope for the future and soon I can get my life back."
However, her local federal MP and long-time champion of the card, the Nationals' Keith Pitt, wants the new government to tread carefully.
"They need to talk to the community. You can't make these decisions without consultation," he said.
"The feedback that we've been given that's across the community is that it's had a positive impact."
'Almost like they're guinea pigs'
The card was first introduced in South Australia's Ceduna region and Western Australia's East Kimberley in 2016.
The trial was later extended to WA's Goldfields, the Northern Territory, and Queensland's Bundaberg/Hervey Bay and Cape York regions.
More than 16,000 welfare recipients in these areas have been forced to use a card — operated by the private company Indue — which limited how much cash they could access and prevented the remainder of the benefit from being spent on alcohol and gambling.
Labor promised to abolish the card and, after the election, the auditor-general found the program's monitoring and evaluation were "inadequate".
"DSS (Department of Social Security) has not demonstrated that the CDC (Cashless Debit Card) program is meeting its intended objectives," the auditor-general's report said.
The Mayor of Fraser Coast Regional Council, George Seymour, said the findings were upsetting.
But East Kimberley Indigenous leader Ian Trust said the feedback he had received over the past few years was mostly positive.
"For a certain target group, such as old people, women and so on, they would be protected from harassment, or they call it 'humbugging' up here, for their money," he said.
"I think it had a big impact on gambling."
Mr Trust fears making the card voluntary could make things worse.
"The people who the card should be targeted at are going to be the first ones who are going to put their hand up and say, 'We're wanting to come off,' and they're the ones who probably need more help."
'All this card did was push people down'
Shelley Bielefeld from Griffith Law School surveyed community leaders and card users in all trial sites and found the Department of Social Services tended to rely on people who supported the card when seeking feedback on its effectiveness.
"Some voices of power holders in communities were given the equivalent of a microphone or megaphone in front of them and some voices were dialled right down in volume," she said.
Ms Griffis said she found her three years on the card to be a humiliating experience, as she struggled to find enough cash to buy second-hand goods and pay for school activities.
"To tackle the social issues in this town – it's not like a blanket approach, we're going to have this, we're going to control you — people need to be supported," the mother of five said.
"All this card did was to push people down when they were already down."
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