Sky News Showdown
With Peter van Onselen
5 February 2013
8:10pm
E & OE
Subjects: National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Welcome back. You’re watching Showdown and I’m joined now by the shadow minister responsible for disabilities services out of Canberra, Senator Mitch Fifield. Senator, thanks very much for your company.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Good to be with you Peter.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Now the Coalition has said that it supports an NDIS, so presumably that means as the shadow minister looking back on the history of the Coalition and its dealings with disabilities you must be beyond embarrassed by the Howard years. It was 1.8 per cent growth per a year which was actually less than inflation in terms of the amount of money that the Howard Government put into disabilities services. Is that shameful?
MITCH FIFIELD:
I don’t think any side of politics, Liberal, Labor, State or Federal, have particularly covered themselves in glory when it comes to disability policy. We did a few good things when we were in government. We introduced the Carers Bonus. We designed and announced the Helping Children with Autism package, which were good things. And this government have done some good things as well. So each government builds a little bit on top of what they’ve done before. But I don’t think any government can claim to have done a terrific job. We all need to do better and that is what the NDIS is about.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
In fairness though every government builds a little bit, but some build less than others and a 1.8 per cent average growth per annum under the Howard years despite the sort of schemes you’re talking about, which are included in that, at less than inflation, it basically means that disabled people at the end of the Howard years were worse off than they were at the start them.
MITCH FIFIELD:
No. Mal Brough when he had portfolio responsibility massively increased funding through the Commonwealth / State disability agreements. You need to take that into account as well, but look I am not here to defend what previous governments have done. I am here to make sure that Australian’s with a disability get a better deal. We need to see the NDIS become a reality. It has got cross party support. We need to see it come to fruition.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Tony Abbott wants his colleagues to be a bit more positive in their approach in this election year, presumably in response to the Dr No or the Mr No tag that was levelled at him. Can you be positive and tell us that, you know, you can argue about a whole range of others things but at the end of the day Labor put the NDIS on the agenda and it is hard to argue that that is not a good thing.
MITCH FIFIELD:
It is a good thing. I give credit to Bill Shorten who did a good job helping put disability on the national policy agenda. But I think we’ve also got to give the lion’s share of the credit to Australian’s with disability, their carers, the organisations that support them. Who got together. Spoke with one voice. And said ‘we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore, we want a better deal’. Particular credit to Bruce Bonyhady, the Chair of Philanthropy Australia, and also John Walsh from PwC. They’ve really been the two drivers of the concept of the NDIS.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
And what about, you mention that the Opposition supports it, its bi-partisan support, there is some disagreement though within the Opposition about the deliverability timetable of it, vis-a-vis, funding. Now you’ve got Tony Abbott on the one hand saying that he supports the Productivity Commission recommendations which included it coming out of general revenue. But then you’ve got Joe Hockey on a number of interviews last year making the point that he will only go down this path if he thinks that there is fiscal prudence in doing so. Is that a guarded guarantee as opposed to an unequivocal guarantee of supporting an NDIS being fully implemented by 2018.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Tony, myself and Joe have all been saying the same thing which is that a government that is being prudent, a government that’s managing well, a government that prioritises appropriately should be able to deliver the NDIS within the Productivity Commission’s timeline target date of completion by 2018-19. What Joe has done before the last budget was, he simply posed the question, would the Government make full provision for the NDIS in that budget over the forward estimates. They didn’t. They only allocated a billion dollars. The Productivity Commission said that over those four years you would need $3.9 billion to give effect to their vision. Now I hope that the government do make full provision for that in the coming budget. We have supported every milestone as a Coalition along the road to the NDIS. We supported the initial work of the Productivity Commission. We supported the billion dollars in the last budget. We supported the five launch sites. We supported the agreement between the Commonwealth and New South Wales for a full rollout in that state and we also support the legislation that it is in the parliament. So we’ve been positive. We want this to happen and we’ve offered from the outset to work with the Government to make this a reality.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Before the start of the election campaign the Government says that it will commit to outling the full funding of the NDIS beyond the trial period that has been done to date. Will the Opposition make the same commitment? That you will outline your full funding and maybe the same obviously once you see the Government’s package, pardon me, but you may not agree with some of the mechanisms in place for them to fund it and therefore have to go out and find your own.
MITCH FIFIELD:
The Government should have outlined that in the last budget. They should have outlined it in MYEFO. They didn’t. I hope they do so in this coming budget. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour and as I say we have supported every significant milestone on the road to the NDIS.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Sorry Senator, but what about the Coalition’s perspective? Will you provide your own approach of how to fund this ahead of the election? Because I guess where I am coming from is, the Government it seems, they’re unashamedly doing this, they’re going down a path of putting forward, I guess what I would term a class war. The funding mechanisms coming out of things like superannuation increases for the wealthy and so forth to fund the Gonski review and the NDIS, and their plan is I understand is to detail that funding ahead of the election and I’m assuming that ideologically that the Coalition will have a problem with those funding mechanisms, which means of course you will then have to have alternative mechanisms or not support the scheme.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Peter, I hope you’re wrong. I hope the Government don’t look for divisive ways of bringing the NDIS into being. We’ve suggested, we’ve offered, we’ve put a motion into the Senate, which the Government voted against, that there should be a joint parliamentary committee chaired by both sides of politics, that can work together to make this a reality. We will have to wait and see how the Government propose to fund this. But yes, of course, we will outline our plan before the next election.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
At the end of July on The Bolt Report actually, Andrew Robb, your shadow finance spokesperson said it would probably require the removal or scaling back of other programs, end quote, to implement the NDIS. What are those other programs that are likely to be scaled back or removed in your view?
MITCH FIFIELD:
Andrew was making the point that governing is about choices. Governing is about priorities. What we aim to do is focus on that which is necessary, like an NDIS, rather than that which is merely desirable. So we will have choices to make. We will have some tough decisions. We are being up front about that. But we want to see the NDIS happen. Tony indicated in his Press Club speech the other week that it was a priority. And we restate again, we would love the Government to accept the hand of genuine bi-partisanship which we’ve extended. And that is to sit down together, to work this out, through a cross party committee that both sides of politics chair. This issue is too important to be mired in politics. It needs to be elevated beyond the day to day scrapping. We need to see an end to the Prime Minister picking fights, as she did with the Premiers of New South Wales and Victoria at the COAG before last. You couldn’t find two Premiers who are more committed to the NDIS than Ted Baillieu and Barry O’Farrell. Yet the Prime Minister sought to gain some partisan advantage there. We need to work together to see this happen.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
You mentioned wanting to have a committee, but there is already a committee in place, the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, and in your press release of 26 November last year you said the Opposition would seek to refer the Bill to a Senate inquiry so people with disability, carers and other stakeholders can themselves review and comment on the legislation. Well the Government have effectively done that with that Senate committee that is in effect, haven’t they?
MITCH FIFIELD:
I supported that reference and I’ve been travelling around the country hearing evidence on the Community Affairs Committee of the Senate. That is appropriate. That is a good thing to happen. That should happen with every significant piece of legislation.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
But why do we need a second committee?
MITCH FIFIELD:
To oversight the implementation. There are a range of threshold issues which have yet to be decided. The guts of the scheme is going to be determined by legislative instruments known as the NDIS rules, which we haven’t seen yet. Those will determine who’s in, who’s out. So there does need to be close scrutiny of those. But the implementation of the NDIS is going to span three parliaments. We need to have an oversight committee that can check that that is done in the best possible way. To make sure that the scheme is the best that it possibly can be. The Government should accept that offer. There are parallels with oversight in other parliaments for other purposes. You have oversight committees for ICACs and IBACs. There is no reason why we shouldn’t have an oversight committee in a social policy area. So the Government should take that offer up so that we can make sure the scheme is the best that it can be.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Just taking a step back from the scheme put forward. Do you feel that there is a level of politicking going on here by the Government? That they’re trying to in a sense wedge the Opposition into supporting this by moving to enacted it very late in the Government of the time when their polling suggests out of government by the time the heavy lifting on funding has to be done, and that means your side by committing to it, a very costly scheme with ongoing costs year in year out, and no levy to pay for it, as a lot of experts have suggested is the best way to go, are the Government playing politics with this in your view?
MITCH FIFIELD:
No one has to wedge us to support the NDIS. We are there with bells on. We want to see it happen. Where the Government have been playing politics at the margins is claiming that the NDIS represents uniquely Labor values. It doesn’t. It represents Australian values. It is very much inline with our philosophy because it is about putting control in the hands of the individual. That is what the NDIS is all about. So, I think that is where the Government has been playing politics and they need to stop doing that.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Senator, just one final question on polls. The Labor Party is in more trouble this week as a result of Newspoll. Every poll that we ever see shows that Kevin Rudd is more popular than Julia Gillard, is it a case now that the Opposition, just to give itself the best electoral chance, come polling day, needs to try in a sense, you know, carry the Prime Minister through and make sure that there is on change of leadership, because Kevin Rudd is a lot more popular than Julia Gillard, and that also makes him a lot more popular than Tony Abbott.
MITCH FIFIELD:
We’re not terribly fussed who we face, whether it is Kevin Rudd, whether it is Julia Gillard, whether it is Bill Shorten, whether it is Greg Combet. The problem is this government’s policies. It is the fact that they’ve introduced a carbon tax. It is the fact that they’ve introduced a mining tax, that raises no money, perversely, but yet attacks business confidence. Whoever leads the Labor Party is still going to have those policies. It is not a change of Labor leader that we need. It is a change of government.
PETER VAN ONSELEN:
Alright, Senator Fifield, we appreciate you joining us on Showdown, thanks for your company.
MITCH FIFIELD:
Thanks very much Peter.
ENDS
Media contact: Sarah Bridger
0435 183 137 | sarah.bridger@aph.gov.au