26 July, 2012
2GB Radio
With Ross Greenwood
25 July 2012
6.35pm
E & OE
Subjects: National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), COAG
ROSS GREENWOOD:
The shadow minister for disabilities, carers and the voluntary sector is Mitch Fifield, the Liberal Senator who joins me now. Many thanks for your time Mitch.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good evening Ross.
ROSS GREENWOOD:
Look here’s the point as I see it. This, in principle, is a brilliant concept. It’s a brilliant ideal for this country to make certain that a person no matter how or where they are inflicted with a disability, that they are covered by some form of compensation. But the problem is that this does not go even to scratch the surface of what is required in this country.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right Ross. I think many people were led to believe on budget night that the Government had fully committed to an NDIS fully committed to fund and implement it. But what actually happened in the May Budget was that only $1 billion was allocated over the forward estimates. Now that’s less than the $3.9 billion that the Productivity Commission said was necessary just to commence the launch sites. So I think there has been a bit of a rude awakening today that the Government haven’t funded it, that they haven’t committed to implement it, and Australians with disability and their families are bitterly disappointed tonight.
ROSS GREENWOOD:
So let’s go backwards a little bit to the Productivity Commission, it’s report, Gary Banks who is the head of the Productivity Commission, said that to be able to have this scheme, to get the launch sites up and going, it would require as you say $3.9 billion. But what it also said was if you had a target date for a full National Disability Insurance Scheme by 2018-19, that it would require $18 billion per year. And the truth is there is absolutely no mention in the Federal Budget or in anything that the Prime Minister has said today.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right. The Productivity Commission’s vision was that the states would contribute the money that they currently spend on disability, the Commonwealth would contribute the money that they currently spend, and the difference between that and the cost of a full NDIS, which is about $7 billion, would be met by the Commonwealth. So that’s the basis upon which the states were coming to COAG today. Quite happy to put the money that they currently spend on disability into the pot. So contrary to what the Prime Minister has said, the states were bringing money to the table. But the Prime Minister has walked away from the Productivity Commission vision and she hasn’t, as I said, yet committed in any way shape or form, to fully implement an NDIS. And that’s the rude shock for people today.
ROSS GREENWOOD:
But here’s the craziness of all this. Tony Abbott, the Coalition, you, have all said that you are prepared to contemplate a National Disability Insurance Scheme. The Federal Government says it wishes to have a National Disability Insurance Scheme and yet somehow the two sides cannot get themselves together in the spirit of bipartisanship to actually implement it and to allocate the necessary money. Therefore, as a result getting through the next election to enable, say for example, the Coalition, or the Government as it is now, to be able to simply proceed and get it implemented?
MITCH FIFIELD:
We’ve offered bipartisanship from the outset. With the interim Productivity Commission report, with the final Productivity Commission report, we said it’s a good thing and it’s got to happen. Before the last budget, we were calling for there to be an appropriate allocation of funds in that budget. There wasn’t. But if there had been, we would have warmly welcomed that. And we’ve also put to the Prime Minister a proposal to take this beyond the realms of partisanship. That there should be a cross-party joint parliamentary committee chaired by people from both sides of politics to oversight the implementation of the NDIS. Because the implementation, as you say, is going to take until 2018-19. It will span several parliaments. And we need a mechanism that can elevate it beyond partisanship but also a mechanism that can make sure that this is owned by the Parliament as a whole and not by any political party. I think that would go a long way to creating the environment where we can actually get this thing happening.
ROSS GREENWOOD:
In the meantime, those people who are supporting a person who has become disabled, who is not covered by any form of insurance or compensation at the moment, they’ve got to continue to struggle on.
MITCH FIFIELD:
That’s right. The scenario that always gets me is that of the ageing parent-carer who may have an intellectually impaired son or daughter that they’ve been looking after at home for forty or fifty years. And their greatest concern is who is going to look after their son or daughter after they die. We are a first world country. We should have an answer for this question. If you were starting from scratch and working out what should be the core business of government, what you’d start with would be proper support for people with disability. Proper support for people who, for reasons beyond their control, need additional help. I think governments have got to get back to the idea of what is their core business. This is it.