Transcript of
Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Ashleigh Gillon and the Hon Jason Clare MP
14 December 2009
8:40am
E & OE
Subjects: Copenhagen, Climate Action, Health reform
ASHLEIGH GILLON:
Welcome back to AM Agenda, we are going straight to our panel of politicians now. Joining me here in the studio is Labor’s Parliamentary Secretary for Employment, Jason Clare, good morning.
JASON CLARE:
Good morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
Good morning. And also Mitch Fifield from Melbourne, good morning to you.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Ashleigh.
GILLON:
Look guys, we keep hearing how tough, robust, frank, difficult the negotiations are going to be. How is the Government feeling about this Jason, we keep hearing that Penny Wong is locked away in all of these talks, but do you think they are feeling positive, is that the mood?
CLARE:
Well it is obviously difficult, you are bringing all of the countries of the world together to agree like they have never agreed before. But there is all the reasons to act. Last week there was a report that came out of Copenhagen that said this decade is going to be the hottest on record. And I’m feeling pretty positive about it. The fact is you’ve got more than a hundred world leaders that are arriving in Copenhagen this week, they’re not there for Christmas dinner, they’re there to make a deal. And it is going to take political will to get this across the line, that’s what Penny Wong said last week, and I think that is right. There is the potential to make an agreement, the world wants us to act, and it is up to the politicians and the world leaders that are there to make sure we get an agreement.
GILLON:
Well the Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has been locked away in meetings overnight. She had this to say late yesterday:
CLIMATE CHANGE MINISTER PENNY WONG:
We need political ownership of these negotiations, because it is political will which will deliver the outcome the world needs.
GILLON:
Mitch Fifield this is a lot of the rhetoric we are hearing the world needs to act, we need to join together, come as one. Is the Opposition behind that, it is a difficult position for you, isn’t it, because there is no specific climate policy that we have seen from the Coalition so far?
FIFIELD:
Well we’ve given bipartisan support for a five per cent unconditional cut in emissions, so the Australian Government walk into these negotiations with that in their back pocket. They are able to negotiate knowing they have the support of the Federal Opposition for that unconditional five per cent reduction. Obviously at these negotiations there is always a lot of theatre, there is always an element of world championship wrestling as you stand from afar and watch what is happening in Copenhagen. But the scary thing for us to come back to and remember is the Government’s mechanism for giving effect to the reductions, if they are agreed, is a $120 billion new tax. Now the Opposition is going to be putting forward, before the commencement of Parliament next year, an alternative. An alternative which looks at renewables, an alternative which looks at practical issues of land management.
GILLON:
Is that doable, Jason Clare?
CLARE:
Well this is the problem in the debate here. An Emissions Trading Scheme is the cheapest and most effective way to cut our carbon emissions. That’s what John Howard concluded when he put together the Shergold report, that report came out and said the cheapest and the best way to cut emissions is an Emissions Trading Scheme. So John Howard adopted that approach, Malcolm Turnbull agreed with that approach. The Opposition had it as their formal policy for three years. 33 countries have already introduced an Emissions Trading Scheme because it is the cheapest and best way to do it. But unfortunately we are going to go down this route now where the Opposition are going to take a different approach, we already know it is going to cost something like $50 billion dollars or more according to Joe Hockey, with no compensation for local people. But the scheme we are putting in place is going to make sure low income earners, and people that are on disability pensions, pensioners generally, are properly and fully compensated. If you are a family of two, both working, you’ve got two young kids, earning up to $100,000, then all of your costs will be fully compensated. And for some families, that are earning say, $60,000, mum and dad are both working, and they’ve got some young children, they’re going to get all their money back, plus more. Some families will get $400-$500 on top of the costs that they incur. So it is hard for the Liberal Party to run a scare campaign when people will be fully compensated or get money back.
GILLON:
Well Mitch this is of course Labor’s argument, what Tony Abbott’s being speaking about vaguely at the moment is a bit of a magic pudding, saying we can do just as much but costing a lot less.
FIFIELD:
Well we are not talking about a scare campaign, we are talking about a fact campaign. It just so happens that the facts themselves are frightening. You are looking at, for an average Australian household, an increase in their bills of $1,100 a year. Now the Government have yet to rebut that, and the Government have yet to tell us how much your standard small business will pay extra in electricity. How much a grocery business will pay in additional costs. These are the questions which the Government won’t answer. Now the Government have put forward their ETS. We disagree with it. We are being a responsible opposition. We too believe in taking climate action. And that’s why we are going to be putting forward for everyone to see clearly what our alternative policy proposal is. And we see overnight from Copenhagen that there is actually a lot of ground to be made up in the area of land use management. There is great scope for emissions reduction in land-use management in agriculture, better land use practises, reforestation. There is great scope to reduce emissions. And we’ve basically seen that admitted overnight that there is much that can be done in the area of land use and that is an area we are going to be looking at very, very closely.
GILLON:
Well yes Jason we have seen those reports today suggesting that Australia’s emissions are a lot higher than we had been led to believe for a long time because land-use had been excluded. Is that a case of the Government doing some creative accounting and cooking the books a bit when it comes to those emissions?
CLARE:
No I don’t think so. Look all human emissions need to be counted, incorporated into the deal. But there is a simple fact that needs to be made here, for Australia and for the Australian people. And that is if we want to take action on climate change the cheapest way to do it is with an Emissions Trading Scheme. The reason that the Opposition have chosen not to go down this path after John Howard advised them to do so is that you’ve now got a Leader of the Opposition who says climate change is absolute crap. Now this is the problem that Tony Abbott has here. He doesn’t believe that climate change is real, but he recognises that 70-80 per cent of Australians think it is real and so he has got to pretend that it is real and pretend that he is going to come up with an alternative solution. The proof of the pudding, proof of the magic pudding, will be when the Liberal Party finally come up with a plan in January or February next year, but as Malcolm Turnbull said as much last week, it will be a fig leaf, it will be a con.
GILLON:
Of course Tony Abbott has said that saying “climate change was crap” is something he regrets now and he’s…
CLARE:
I bet he does. I bet he does.
GILLON:
I thought I’d put that back, correct the record on that one. But let’s look at what the Government is doing. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is heading over to Copenhagen today and he is going to with some 50-60 Federal Government advisers. Mr Rudd says they are necessary to go through the detail of what could be a very complex agreement. Yesterday on Sunday Agenda we spoke with the Coalition’s environment spokesman Greg Hunt and he had this to say.
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE ACTION, ENVIRONMENT AND HERITAGE:
I would challenge Mr Rudd today to reduce the size of his bandwagon, his delegation by 25 percent. We probably don’t need a hairdresser, a dessert chef and four assistant photographers.
GILLON:
That does seem a bit ridiculous Jason.
CLARE:
Well the Opposition is good at coming up with cheap one liners. It looks like Greg Hunt is turning into Barnaby Joyce all of a sudden. But they are not good at coming up with serious policies to cut carbon emissions. And the fact is that we have got two choices here. We can either be part of the negotiations to make sure that we get a deal in Copenhagen that is in Australia’s interests, or we can sit on the sidelines and watch it on Sky TV. The approach that Tony Abbott’s adopted is, he says, Copenhagen is a waste of time. I don’t think most Australians agree with that. They want a deal out of Copenhagen that is in the interests of the world and in Australia’s interests. Now the only way to do that is to have our Prime Minister there, to be negotiating in Australia’s interests.
GILLON:
Mitch Fifield it is important, isn’t it, for Australia to be well represented over there. Do you think it is a waste of time?
FIFIELD:
Look it is important to be well represented but I think having a hundred odd members of the Australian delegation is excessive. I think Greg Hunt’s call for a 25 per cent reduction in the size of the delegation is a good idea. I did note that Jason didn’t seek to defend the size of the delegation that’s over there.
CLARE:
It’s much less than than 100 Mitch, make sure you get that right.
FIFIELD:
That’s it. The Government’s defence is…
GILLON:
Well the 100 figure includes state and federal governments so its closer to 50-60. Sorry Mitch please continue.
CLARE:
And it also includes people from the embassy in Copenhagen
FIFIELD:
Ashleigh, yes, well the Government’s defence is “oh yeah, it’s not 100, it’s only 50 or 60.” Only 50 or 60! The Government’s other defence is, look, there’s not four assistant photographers, we’ve only got one official photographer. If it is only 50 or 60, let’s give the Government the benefit of the doubt, what are those 50 or 60 people doing? Can’t 20 people do it? Can’t 30 people do it? Can’t 40 people do it? Does it have to be 50 or 60 people? If this is a Government that is serious about reducing its carbon footprint, there is a pretty practical first step it can take and I think the average Australian would take a look at the delegation of 50, 60 or 100 and think that that is excessive.
CLARE:
Well this is the most important meeting in the world since World War II. And an answer like that from Mitch just shows how serious the Opposition are about climate change. If Tony Abbott was the Prime Minister of Australia right now, there would be no one turning up to Copenhagen from Australia, and that’s not in Australia’s national interest.
FIFIELD:
That’s not true.
GILLON:
Well as I mentioned we will be getting a lot of detailed analysis from David Speers from Copenhagen over the next few days. So we will be watching with interest. But I do want to cover off one other topic that is happening here at home. The Federal Government has announced some changes to the Medicare system. I spoke with the Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, a short time ago. Here is some of what she had to say.
HEALTH MINISTER NICOLA ROXON:
Well the key changes are two things. One, by making things simpler for GPs, we are actually encouraging them and allowing them to spend more time with the patients rather than on administration which has become increasingly complex over the last few decades. So that actually delivers for patients as well. But even more importantly, we’ve rebalanced the system, so rather than encouraging, financially, the six minute quick in and out medicine, we’re actually paying more for the longer consultations. We’ve heard the pleas of GPs that many of their patients now have complex and chronic needs and they want to be able to be paid more in the Medicare rebate for those consultations rather than there being a sort of incentive built-in in fact to really speed through patients and we think this will make a significant difference over time, it’s something that doctors have been calling for a long time, and I am very pleased to be announcing that the Government is introducing these changes today.
GILLON:
But the Medicare fee for those longer consultations that you’ve mentioned, you’ve boosted it by under $2, is that enough to provide that sort of incentive?
ROXON:
What it really does is rebalance the system so rather than paying more for those shorter consultations, and not having any price signal at all for the longer consultations, we’ve been able to change that. We’ve been able to acknowledge that some people go to the GP for a very quick consultation if they need a repeat script, that should be paid far less than a regular consultation and we need to be able to build in an incentive for the longer consultations. It’s changing the way about $100 million is spent under the Medicare benefit schedule so it’s not an insignificant change, and of course the slashing of the Medicare item numbers in this primary care area that GPs deal with every day is actually designed to free up much more time for GPs so they are not scrambling around looking for the right number for a particular consultation.
GILLON:
Senator Mitch Fifield does the Opposition support these changes, does it go far enough?
FIFIELD:
Well we haven’t seen the detail yet. Nicola Roxon dropped this information to the press overnight. We’ll study it. But I do note the AMA’s response which is that the Government have spoken a great deal about the need for reform in health and reform in the public hospital system, but have delivered very little. Kevin Rudd put his hand on his heart before the last election and declared that the buck stopped with him. Kevin Rudd declared that he was going to end the blame game. Kevin Rudd said that by the middle of this year, if the states hadn’t fixed public hospitals, he was going to take them over. Well the states haven’t fixed the public hospital system. Waiting lists are long. Queues are increasing for both accident and emergency and elective surgery. And the Prime Minister has squibbed it. Despite the fact that public hospitals haven’t been fixed, he has broken his commitment to take over the public hospital system. We now hear that we have to wait for some time next year to find out what the Government’s plan is on the public hospital system. This Government has talked a very big game on the health system, a very big game on public hospitals, but they have done nothing.
GILLON:
Jason I will let you respond to what Mitch had to say about the takeover, but also doctors groups have pointed out this morning that even after these Medicare changes doctors will still get paid more to do six ten minute consultations than two half-hour ones so it does seem like there is still a way to go.
CLARE:
Well a couple of points. First, we have done more in twelve months in health than the Liberal Party did in twelve years out of health, that’s Tony Abbott’s legacy in health.
FIFIELD:
Rubbish.
CLARE:
We are putting more money back into it. We are actually increasing it by 50 per cent from $43 billion into $65, so that’s their record pulling a billion dollars out our record is putting money in.
GILLON:
But you are ending the blame game aren’t you, Jason Clare?
CLARE:
But that is just the start, the Bennet report has…
FIFIELD:
Sure sounds like it.
CLARE:
…has big reforms about Denticare, they are really going to help people on low-incomes get the Dental care that they need, and a national primary health system that is going to really help to tackle these at the front end before you get to the Hospital. I know we are coming to the end of the program, and maybe this is an issue that Mitch and I can agree on, on the eve of Christmas, and that is that longer consultations with doctors is going to be a good thing, particularly for blokes, because blokes in particular don’t turn up to the doctor unless they really have to, and if you can use that time when you are sitting down with your local GP to look at things like smoking and weight loss, problems with potentially weight loss, diabetes, and other issues, that is going to help stop a lot more people from ending up in hospital.
GILLON:
Ok Jason Clare, as you said we are at the end of the program, so thank you for your time, Mitch Fifield thank you for joining us this morning as well.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Ashleigh.
CLARE:
Thanks Mitch.
FIFIELD:
See you Jason.
ENDS