5 May, 2011
Ultra 106.5 FM Radio Hobart
Breakfast Program with Scott Haas
5 April 2011
8:05am
E & OE
Subjects: Disability services, National Disability Insurance Scheme, Disability Support Pension
SCOTT HAAS:
And now we’re going to hear from Senator Mitch Fifield, the Shadow Minister for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector. Good morning, Senator.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good morning, Scott.
HAAS:
How are you finding the weather down here in Hobart? I guess it’s pretty similar to Melbourne’s weather, really.
FIFIELD:
Yes, you’re right. It feels like home.
HAAS:
So I understand that some of your family may be a bit disappointed in your choice of politics, Mitch. I hear that some of your family used to work for the Labor Party!
FIFIELD:
Yes you’re right. I had an uncle who worked as an adviser to the Whitlam Government, and I also had a grandfather who was a trade union secretary for about 25 years. So I’ve strayed from the fold.
HAAS:
Do you ever get you know those letters you get from your family saying ‘Mitch! We need to talk about this. We’re a bit concerned you need to turn back around the right way.’
FIFIELD:
I think they cope well with the politics I’ve taken up. I think that the Labor Party today is a very different creature to the one that my family used to be a part of.
HAAS:
And you’d be buoyed by the latest Newspoll? It’s a big swing towards the Liberals.
FIFIELD:
Well you always prefer a good poll to the alternative. But we don’t need a poll to tell us that Australians are deeply concerned about the carbon tax; that they don’t want to pay an extra $300 a year for electricity; that they don’t want to pay an extra six and a half cents per litre for petrol. So I’m not surprised that things are trending our way. But of course, there’s a fair way to go between now and the next election.
HAAS:
Are you suggesting that it’s not necessarily a tick of approval for Tony Abbott, as it is a vote against Julia Gillard?
FIFIELD:
I think it’s both. I think it’s a tick for Tony and a vote against Julia Gillard. Tony’s been very strong he understands that Australian families are doing it tough, that cost of living pressures are increasing. We want to lighten the load on families, and Labor wants to increase the burden.
HAAS:
So today you’re here to speak at the National Disabilities Forum. What are some of your key points?
FIFIELD:
It’s great that National Disability Services Tasmania have organised this forum. One of the key focuses is the idea of a National Disability Insurance Scheme. In Australia today we’ve got the inequitable situation that the level of support that you receive if you have a disability is not determined by your need it’s determined by how you acquired your disability. So if you acquire it through falling off the roof at home, or being born with a disability, you’ve really got to cobble together your own support. If you’re in an automobile accident in Victoria, or a workplace accident in New South Wales, you tend to get pretty good long term care. So we need a new national arrangement that fills in those gaps. At the moment it’s basically a Soviet-style system of rationing, where you’ve got to be in the queue for supported accommodation, or for aids and equipment. It’s only really when you have a real crisis in your life that you get to the top of the list. That’s just not good enough.
HAAS:
I worked in intellectual disability in Victoria for many years, and then here in Tasmania. And I’ve got to admit, I noticed a big difference between the support given in Tasmania and Victoria. Is that a concern?
FIFIELD:
It’s a great concern. At the moment most disability support comes through state governments. The Commonwealth looks after disability employment and income support, but the bulk of the services come through the states and there’s a wide variety between the state jurisdictions. Victoria and Western Australia tend to have systems that are very much focussed on the individual where the individual has a great deal of choice about where they get their services from. In Tasmania, it tends to be a little more like that Soviet-style model that I was talking about before.
HAAS:
Would a national approach be a better one? Would that be a better system for Australia?
FIFIELD:
Whether it’s national in terms of the Commonwealth running it all, or whether it’s national in terms of having some consistency – we need to do better. We need to have the individual at the centre and in charge. I’m not too fussed whether that’s done through a national scheme or through the states agreeing together, but we’ve got to do better.
HAAS:
Carers are amazing. They sacrifice so much. How can we better support the roles that they play?
FIFIELD:
I think the best way we can support carers is actually to improve the support we give to people with disabilities. A lot of the load that unpaid carers have is a result of the fact that people with disabilities don’t get the support they need. So you have family and friends who are trying to fill the gaps themselves. If we give adequate support to people with disabilities, that will lighten the load on carers immeasurably.
HAAS:
You’re role is a rather huge role, as a Shadow Minister. I guess in some ways we seem to undervalue the whole area of disability and volunteering and caring. How can we raise it up to the level it needs to be in Australia?
FIFIELD:
It’s a good point. Most Australians assume that because we live in a wealthy western economy, because we pay our taxes, that if someone has a disability they will get looked after. Well, the truth is that they don’t. I think there’s a role for politicians to shine a light on the fact that there isn’t adequate support and to do something about it. That’s part of the reason I’m in Tasmania with Senator Abetz today.
But the other area of volunteers – I think we don’t celebrate enough the contribution that volunteers make to our society. If you took the volunteer effort out of Australia, it wouldn’t be the nation we know today. Basically, our society would collapse. So we need to find a way of engaging the community we need to find a way to encourage the next generation of volunteers to get involved.
One of the ideas we took to the last election was giving a HECS debt relief to university students who engage in volunteer work. So for each hour of volunteer work that a university student did, they might get HECS debt relief. And that might add up to a couple of thousand dollars a year. It would just be a token but it would be a way to try to excite and encourage the next generation.
HAAS:
And in our busy lifestyles these days, volunteering is getting harder and harder to do. You talked about HECS relief could it also be linked to Centrelink payments?
FIFIELD:
There’s any number of ways that you could do it. Our focus initially would be on seeking to engage university students. You could also have a complementary scheme which encourages people in the TAFE system to take part in volunteer work. It’s not the complete answer, but it’s part of it.
HAAS:
You’re here today to talk at the National Disability Forum. I know Tony Abbott came out recently and talked about his new welfare policy. Some, especially from the Labor Party, have called that a cruel policy. What do you think of that?
FIFIELD:
It’s designed to help people – the sorts of things that Tony’s talking about. We’re not talking about a punitive system we’re not talking about trying to punish people. To the contrary we’re trying to help people. Particularly in the area of disabilities, Tony talked about coming up with a more sophisticated model of the Disability Support Pension.
What we want to do is make sure that those people who are never able to work because of their disability aren’t put through the hoops of having to periodically justify that they have a disability. We want to be able to say to people, ‘you have a disability, we recognise that, you’re entitled to the Disability Support Pension, you don’t have to continually jump through the hoops.’ Then there’s another group of people who may be in a situation where their condition will improve. And when their condition does improve, we want to give them the support that they need to get back in to work. So this isn’t about being punitive. It’s about recognising those people who will never recover and who need income support, and helping those who can recover to have the support that they need to work. We all draw so much of our self worth from the jobs that we do and what we do during the day and we want to make that available to as many people as possible.
HAAS:
The Forum today is it open to anyone to come along to?
FIFIELD:
Sure. It’s a public forum there’ll be a range of speakers from both the federal and state levels, and there’ll be disability service providers talking. It’s just so important that we put the focus on the fact that in Australia today, if you have a disability, the level of support you receive is really a lottery. It’s not good enough in a society like Australia and we need to fix it.
HAAS:
Have you got the details of the time and the place for this forum?
FIFIELD:
It’s at 12:45pm at Parliament House here in Hobart.
HAAS:
Thanks for being here. It was great to meet you.
FIFIELD:
Thanks indeed, Scott.
HAAS:
That’s Senator Fifield, he’s the Shadow Minister for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector.
ENDS