Subjects: Productivity Commission inquiry into disability services; wearing of the burqa; NBN; Kevin Rudd’s great big new tax.
E&OE……
TONY ABBOTT:
I’m pleased to be here at the Trinity Gardens School with Christopher Pyne, the local Member and also with Senator Mitch Fifield who is the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services. It’s great to see a school here which is doing so much good work with kids with disabilities. The Coalition appreciates that people with disabilities get a raw deal. The Government has commissioned a Productivity Commission inquiry into how we can deliver better and more effective services to people with disabilities. The Opposition strongly supports this inquiry and should we come into government at the end of the year we would very much look forward to getting the recommendations of the Productivity Commission and I give people this assurance, that we would treat any Productivity Commission recommendations in this area much more seriously than the Government has treated the recommendations of the Henry Review.
We think this is a very important issue. There are millions of Australians who are involved with this, not because they necessarily have a disability themselves but because their loved ones do and they are rightly, rightly, very interested in the outcome of this Productivity Commission inquiry and we won’t let them down. I’m going to ask Christopher to say a few words and then Mitch and then we’ll have a few questions.
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Thank you, Tony and can I thank Vicki Stokes, Principal of the Trinity Gardens Primary School, for having us here today and Tony Abbott, my leader, for coming to my electorate and making a very strong commitment to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the National Disability Insurance Scheme and also the outcomes of that if we win government at the end of this year, and I’d also like to welcome Mitch Fifield who’s the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for disability policy who’s put a great deal of work into the Coalition’s view into the future about how we can support people with disabilities.
Trinity Gardens Primary School is a fantastic example of mainstreaming children with disabilities so that they get a full experience like other children do of all aspects of life, but also they have a great impact on all the other children in the schools. We saw this morning that Carlo, his best friend was Ainsley; Ainsley has no disabilities, Carlo has serious disabilities. They’ve been friends since they’ve been here at school together. It is a part of building both a strong community and also teaching children that not everybody is exactly the same, so I really congratulate Trinity Gardens Primary School. I have a very strong personal commitment to children with disabilities and I think as the education spokesman it would be an area that we will be thinking very carefully about as we come closer to the election and how to support children in both government and non-government schools with disabilities. Mitch.
SENATOR FIFIELD:
Thanks, Christopher. It’s great to be here with Christopher and Tony. It’s a real privilege to be at Trinity Gardens and to look at the terrific work that the disability unit does. I think one of the great things about having a disability unit co-located at a primary school is that you can have siblings, one with disability, one who doesn’t, at the same school together and that’s a terrific thing. As Tony indicated, the Coalition’s committed to examining the concept of a national disability insurance scheme. There’s an assumption I think in Australia that because we’re a wealthy advanced economy that if you have a disability you therefore get the support you need. Sadly, that’s not the case. The support that you receive if you have a disability is not determined by your need, it’s determined by how you acquired your disability in many cases and that’s a fundamental inequity. It’s something that needs to fixed and the national disability insurance scheme is a good proposal and one which we’re seriously going to examine.
QUESTION:
I just wanted to ask Christopher about the burqa issue because I know you’ve spoken on it today already. Senator Cory Bernardi, what do you make of his comments?
CHRISTOPHER PYNE:
Well I echo the Leader’s comments that he made recently at Burton. I have nothing more to add than what Mr Abbott has already said on the matter.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, did you organise for Cory Bernardi to make the call for the ban?
TONY ABBOTT:
No.
QUESTION:
Is he entitled to his views, do you think?
TONY ABBOTT:
Of course, look, of course. I mean, we believe in free speech in this country and people are entitled to a personal view. Even politicians are entitled to a personal view and the point I made earlier is that I think a lot of Australians find the wearing of the burqa quite confronting and I wish it was not widely worn, but the point is that we don’t have a policy to ban it and we have always respected people’s rights in this area.
QUESTION:
The difficulty is, unfortunately for yourself, is that Mr Bernardi’s not really one step removed in this issue, he’s saying it as a Liberal person.
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, as I said, this is an area in which people are perfectly entitled to a view. He’s expressed a view, I respect the view, I don’t absolutely share it but I can understand the concerns in the community.
QUESTION:
Is part of the problem for the Liberal Party is that these side issues come along and distract you, take you off message because you’ve got people from the party like Cory Bernardi…
TONY ABBOTT:
No, it’s not a problem at all.
QUESTION:
…like Barnaby Joyce.
TONY ABBOTT:
And the Labor Party’s got Julia Gillard and they’ve got Kevin Rudd and they’ve got Peter Garrett and they’ve got Kelvin Thompson. I mean…
QUESTION:
But they’re more disciplined aren’t they?
TONY ABBOTT:
No, no, what we’ve got from the Labor Party is a complete failure to govern, a comprehensive failure to deliver services. Just at the moment, we’ve got in the Building the Education Revolution programme, we’ve got crimes against the tax payer that are being perpetrated right around this country. In the new tax on the mining sector, we’ve got a dagger aimed at the absolute heart of our economy. Now, if a few of my colleagues want to reflect what they think are widespread popular sentiments, good on them and we are not a Stalinist party here, but I tell you what, when it comes to government we are a competent party unlike the Labor Party.
QUESTION:
So, you won’t be telling Cory Bernardi to pull his head in, to keep his mouth shut next time you’re trying to sell a message?
TONY ABBOTT:
I’m very happy that we are a party which respects the right of individual members to a conscientious view. Always have been always will be.
QUESTION:
Yesterday, Isobel Redmond, the state Opposition Leader said that her moves to formalise the factions in South Australia was likely to fail and that she was now intent on destroying them and she named Cory Bernardi and Christopher Pyne as people that she’s been speaking to about that. What’s your view on the factions?
TONY ABBOTT:
My view is that the people of South Australia are entitled to feel cheated. They voted to change the government and they haven’t had a change of government and the fact that they wanted to change the government and sadly that hasn’t happened here in South Australia is going to make them all the more determined to change the government federally, particularly now that they’re now starting to understand that the federal Labor Government has a dagger aimed at the heart of the prosperity of South Australia, which is very dependent upon the continued expansion of the resources sector here in this state.
QUESTION:
That didn’t really answer the question, though. What’s your view on the factions? Do you think they should be formalised?
TONY ABBOTT:
I think that South Australians are entitled to feel badly ripped-off by the Labor Party which is still in Government, even though they voted to change the Government.
QUESTION:
A Morgan poll is showing that there’s a 78 per cent approval rating for the rise in super. Are you making a big mistake opposing this?
TONY ABBOTT:
I am going to call it as I see it. I haven’t enunciated a final position on that, although I have pointed out that this is not a free gift to future retirees, this is a three per cent payroll tax on every business. This additional superannuation that the Government is talking about is not being paid for by the greedy overseas capitalists who invest in mining companies, in the Government’s view; this is being paid for, should it come about, by the struggling businesses of Australia. So it really is a three per cent payroll tax. It’s a tax on jobs and people should be under no illusions about it and I say to the Government, where is this three per cent coming from? Is it coming from workers’ pay increases or is it just going to have to be paid for by small business out of their meagre profits?
QUESTION:
It obviously sits well with the people being polled.
TONY ABBOTT:
Well we’ll see how it all pans out on polling day, won’t we?
QUESTION:
Senator Conroy this morning said he still doesn’t know whether Telstra would sign off on the broadband deal. What’s gone wrong with all that? It’s taking forever, it seems.
TONY ABBOTT:
What’s gone wrong is that, yet again, this is a Government that rushed into something that it hadn’t thought through and it didn’t really understand and it is typical of a Government which cannot be trusted with public money that they plucked a figure out of the air, $43 billion, and they committed that to something which arguably we didn’t need and which at least at that stage seemed to involve the confiscation of the property of millions of Australian investors in Telstra. Now, they’ve apparently reconsidered it. Fair enough, but it just goes to show a Government which is making things up as it goes along. It doesn’t understand what it’s doing.
Look, this is a Government which doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going when it comes to serious economic management. On the one hand, you had Senator Conroy say yesterday that in the case of the NBN a six per cent rate of return is modest, but you’ve got the Government saying in the case of the resources sector that six per cent-plus is a super profit. Now, the Treasurer tried to explain it and he gave us some bucolic metaphor about apples and pears. It’s a completely inadequate explanation and it just shows that this is a Government which is out of its depth, which is making policy on the run, which has lost control of the economic debate in this country.
Thank you.
[ends]