Transcript of
Senator Mitch Fifield
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary
for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector
Sky News AM Agenda
Kieran Gilbert and the Hon Mark Butler MP
1 February 2010
8:45am
E & OE
Subjects: MySchool website, climate change, Intergenerational Report, Private Health Insurance
KIERAN GILBERT:
Welcome back to AM Agenda, with me now, our panel. The Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Senator Mitch Fifield and the Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Mark Butler.
Good morning to you both, and good to see you both.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning Kieran.
MARK BUTLER:
Morning Kieran.
GILBERT:
Our first show for the election year, it is going to be a big one. One of the first election commitments has been the commitment by the Prime Minister yesterday Mitch, to expand the MySchool website, it’s been controversial the teacher’s union doesn’t like it but it seems parents do. Is the Opposition wrong to be critical of it?
FIFIELD:
Well look, we are being critical on two fronts. Firstly, the Government bungled the implementation of the site on day one, and also, we think they have only done half the job. Obviously the more information parents have, the better. That empowers parents to make choices for their children, to choose the right school for them. And if there is a problem at a school, to allow the parents to go in to talk about it, to see if the situation can be resolved. But we think the Government has only done half the job. It is terrific to give parents the information, but you’ve also got to empower schools to fix problems. You’ve got to give principals greater autonomy, you’ve got to give principals the ability to move resources around the school…
GILBERT:
So you like the idea but you, you like the idea of parents getting information, because at the moment the message seems a bit mixed.
FIFIELD:
Sure, absolutely. This website is the natural outworking of what we started to do while we were in government, when we started to talk about national tests, so you can compare schools so that schools and parents can be given information to try and lift performance where assistance is needed. The website is the natural outworking of what we were talking about while we were in government. And I might add the Labor Party weren’t always pleased at the time when we were talking about these sorts of tests. So the tests are a good thing, the information for parents is a good thing, but you’ve got to give schools the independence, the autonomy, to hire and fire staff, and to have greater control over their budgets.
GILBERT:
Mark Butler the Government has promised to expand the website, the Parents and Citizens Association in New South Wales said the idea that the Prime Minister put forward yesterday surveys of parents would be too inconsistent, too varied, is that a realistic thing to look at, the survey’s on bullying and so on?
BUTLER:
Well I think the first thing to say is that the website has been an amazing success, nine million hits on its first day and many, many millions more since then. The feedback I’ve been getting is that it really has started a national discussion about our schools, which was really the ambition Julia Gillard had in the website among other things. So it has been a fantastic success, but the Prime Minister indicated yesterday, it is only part of the job, and we want to build on the information contained in the MySchools website and give parents a rounder view about the sort of overall culture of a school as well as the academic achievements at those schools. So there will be more work on that I’m sure between now and the election, but I think the Prime Minister has put out there and Julia Gillard has repeated this morning, a commitment to build on those academic results and give parents a much fuller view about the feel and culture of the school, the sort of extra-curricular work that they do, how the school deals with things like bullying, the sort of charitable work that they do and the way in which these schools link to their communities. These are the sorts of things that parents want to know as they decide where to send their kids.
GILBERT:
What about giving the principals more independence, autonomy, power to deal with some of the issues they face? As Mitch is suggesting here.
BUTLER:
Well currently we deal with a range of different sectors in the school system, we’ve got Catholic schools, Independent schools and the State schools run essentially by the State Governments. Now we are doing what we can as a National Government to try and give parents more information and more power over the decisions they make over their child’s education. We are also doing things like putting $2 billion into extra literacy and numeracy and other programs to help disadvantaged schools lift their standards. So we are doing all that we can, we are going to continue doing that work, it is going to take a bit of a while, but there will be a great discussion over the course of this year and in to the election because of what Julia Gillard did last week on the website, and because of the challenge the Prime Minister put out there yesterday.
GILBERT:
Well we are back to parliament tomorrow of course, Mitch, your leader faces his first Parliamentary test at the dispatch box. He is a fairly sort of combative leader, we’ve already seen that in terms of his policy approach. What can we expect in the Parliament, a bit more of a combative Abbott do you think?
FIFIELD:
Well I think Kevin Rudd is going to know that there is an Opposition. Tony Abbott isn’t backward in tackling his opponents. He is not backward in tackling the policy issues. So Kevin Rudd is going to find himself under greater scrutiny I think, than he has had at any time during his Prime Ministership. And the public is going to be focusing much more on Federal politics than they have in the last couple of years. The voters do tend to take more of an interest in the policy debates. So Tony Abbott will certainly be asking Kevin Rudd to outline the real effects of his ETS which is something Kevin Rudd hasn’t done, and also, how he is going to repay the massive amount of debt that we have.
GILBERT:
Well the Prime Minister’s really trying to pin Tony Abbott as being erratic. Yesterday Mr Rudd was discussing the imminent release of the alternative climate change policy, he was on the Nine Network. Let’s recap a little bit of what Mr Rudd had to say on Channel Nine.
PRIME MINISTER KEVIN RUDD:
Depends on what day of the week it is for Tony. I mean he supported our scheme, he opposed it, he supported it, he said we should amend it. And then in his defining position of political principle he said to Mr Turnbull, “ohhh look Malcolm, you know on these questions of climate change and the emissions trading scheme, I’m just a weather vane.” Well, we stand for something here, it is a basic question of policy, we will be committed to it, we will pursue it, we will implement it.
GILBERT:
It’s interesting Mark, and Penny Wong this morning on our program, criticising this policy, it hasn’t even been released yet, you are trying to pin him as being erratic and all over the shop, it’s a fairly transparent approach.
BUTLER:
Well it’s the obvious response. I mean people want a clear debate about climate change, but Tony Abbott has had more positions on climate change than you’d find in Karma Sutra. The most notable of which, and he said that climate change, in his words, was, quote, absolute crap, end quote. We also know that the real power now in the Liberal Party, Nick Minchin, thinks it is all a left-wing conspiracy. So who knows what we are going to end up with from the Liberal Party tomorrow. But what we do know, all of us having been back in our electorates over the course of the summer, is that Australians want a meaningful response to climate change. And that’s what we are committed to doing. And Penny Wong is talking to the Greens today, we’ll talk to anyone here in the Parliament who is dinky-di about coming up with a real solution to climate change.
GILBERT:
Mitch Fifield, how important is it for Tony Abbott to be credible economically with this policy tomorrow? The Prime Minister says it is going to be a mega new tax. How important is it for Abbott to have the economic foundation for this policy?
FIFIELD:
This policy will have an economic foundation. I mean it is the height of irony for Kevin Rudd to be accusing the Opposition of wanting to introducing a big new tax. The ETS, it’s a massive new tax. This is going to add $1,100 a year to the household budget of every family in Australia. The Labor Party are the originators of this new tax and for Kevin Rudd to say, “oh, no, no, we are not for a big new tax, it is the opposition…”
GILBERT:
The Government says it’s about $600 and most people are going to be compensated. That is their argument, Penny Wong’s case.
FIFIELD:
Well let them prove it, let them demonstrate it.
BUTLER:
It’s in the legislation.
FIFIELD:
Well the legislation says the cost is so much therefore that is true. I mean they haven’t fully released the modelling, they haven’t released the Morgan Stanley work, they are not coming clean with the Australian public. They need to. I mean we’ve got to remember what this Government is talking about is a new tax that is not only going to penalise every household in Australia, but it is also going to be a major impost on business. It is going to affect the competitiveness and viability of Australian businesses, and for negligible environmental gain, and at a time where the rest of the world hasn’t agreed to sign up to anything.
GILBERT:
That is if it ever gets through and it hasn’t got through Mark, and it is such a big issue for Labor, it was at the last election, Mr Rudd keeps saying he wants to push ahead with this approach but you can’t get it through the Parliament.
BUTLER:
Well you have to remember at the last election we took exactly the same time of policy to the election that John Howard took. I mean even John Howard and Peter Costello through the Shergold Report realised the only viable way to deal with climate change and bringing down emissions is through an Emissions Trading Scheme. It caps emissions, it does it in an efficient way by allowing firms to trade, it makes polluters pay for those permits and then allows Government to compensate households for the extra cost. So far over 35 countries around the world are doing it, John Howard knew it was the only viable thing, Tony Abbott is the only one in this game who thinks there is an alternative.
GILBERT:
Ok Mark. One other issue I want to get you first on, the Intergenerational Report to be released today by the Treasurer, the third report. Talk of more incentives for older Australians to stay in the workforce. Is this just about getting Australians to work longer?
BUTLER:
No, the IGR that Wayne Swan is going to release today is going to show we have got a very serious challenge ahead of us and that is that there is not going to be very many people working to support all of the people over 65 years of age. It will be down to about 2.6, it’s currently 5, when I was born it was about 7.5, so there are serious challenges for us to keep our economic prosperity up, and a range of other things. And first of all what we’ve got to do is lift the productivity of the country, and the Prime Minister’s been talking about that a lot over the last couple of weeks. But we’ve also got to lift the participation rate of people who are able to work. Now that is not just a challenge for more mature Australians, it’s also a challenge for female participation where our rate has frankly lagged behind comparable countries like the UK and Canada for too long, which is why Julia Gillard has talked for some time about lifting the participation rate in the country. And it’s also about having a sensible budgetary policy which is going to deal with the fiscal constraints which come with an ageing population. Now that is why it is so completely irresponsible of the Liberal Party to continue to oppose our changes to the Private Health Insurance rebate. What they are doing is depriving the Federal Budget of $100 billion between now and 2050 that could be put into helping the strains that are going to be placed on our health and aged care system through the ageing of our population. And they are doing that because they want to keep a tax break in place for households earning over $240,000.
GILBERT:
Ok Mitch, what do you say to that, I will let you respond, firstly to the health insurance rebate criticism, but also to the broader issue. Your former boss, Peter Costello, issued the first couple of these reports, it’s been around for a long time, we’ve known it is a looming challenge, is it time to increase the compulsory super contributions from 9 to 11 or 12%?
FIFIELD:
On the subject of superannuation, I think the important thing to do is to let it be. One of the most important things for people investing in superannuation is certainty. Now we put in place a range of incentives when we were in Government and people are getting used to those, they are taking advantage of those. Give people certainty. I think that is the most important thing in relation to superannuation. But just in relation to the Intergenerational Report, obviously we support the concept of the IGR, we introduced it, we handed it down. It is a good practise to get into. The Labor Party were never very helpful at all when we were looking at intergenerational challenges. When we were looking at measures to make the PBS sustainable, Labor were of no assistance. When we were looking at paying down debt, Labor were of no assistance.
GILBERT:
So what about the health rebate?
FIFIELD:
Well glad you raised that Kieran, because the Private Health Insurance rebate, Kevin Rudd said before the last election that he wasn’t going to touch it, not at all. He said we are not going to touch it, “not one jot, not one tittle.” I’m not quite sure what that meant but I think the intent was that it wasn’t going to be changed in any way, shape or form. So the Labor Party are breaking an election commitment. In addition to breaking an election commitment, to means test the Private Health Insurance rebate will see less of a take up of private health insurance, it will see more people put on the public health system, which will increase pressure on the system which the Government said that they were going to fix by the middle of last year and didn’t, and said that they were going to take over if it wasn’t fixed in the middle of last year, and haven’t. So Labor should stick to honouring their election commitment that they won’t touch the Private Health Insurance rebate.
GILBERT:
Alright gentlemen, great to see you both, as always. There is a lot ahead of us in this Parliamentary week and year, Mark Butler, Senator Mitch Fifield, I appreciate both of your time. Thanks.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Kieran.
BUTLER:
Thanks Kieran.
ENDS