The evaluation report on the Cashless Debit Card trial in Ceduna and the East Kimberley (Orima Research 2017) was recently released with much fanfare. The Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, claimed the trial a huge success.

Social policy analyst Eva Cox has highlighted many of the problems with the survey design, the way interviews were conducted and the ethics of the process (Cox 2017), all of which suggest that the results presented should be treated with great scepticism. Her criticisms of the evaluation process are valid, but what, if anything, can be drawn from the data that are presented, flawed as they are? And what about what isn’t presented? Is there any evidence that this trial is achieving its stated objectives?