Radio National
LISON CARABINE:
Kevin Andrews good morning.
MINISTER:
Good morning Alison.
LISON CARABINE:
Kevin Andrews, the Senate will block about half of the $37 billion worth of savings announced on Tuesday night. Is your budget repair job now in tatters?
MINISTER:
Well these measures haven’t even gone through the House yet, let alone the Senate. So we will put the legislation through as necessary and we will call upon the good sense of those in the House and the Senate to start the repair job to the mess that Labor left us.
LISON CARABINE:
But isn’t the Budget reply speeches from both Bill Shorten and Christine Milne last night a pretty good indication that your budget was simply too harsh, you went too far, your Budget is unacceptable to most of the country?
MINISTER:
Look frankly Mr Shorten is in total denial. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described denial as the first stage of grief and that’s obviously where Mr Shorten is. He offered no solution to paying down Labor’s record debt; he offered no responsibility for the mess that the Commonwealth finances are in at the present time. We will get on with the job.
LISON CARABINE:
But why should he have done that last night, we’re two and half years out from a normal election. Why should Labor be spelling out, at this stage, what it would be doing with the Budget if indeed it was in Government?
MINISTER:
It would be nice if Mr Shorten actually conceded that we have got record debts and deficits, he won’t do that at all. He’s not only the arsonist who set fire to the Commonwealth finances; he’s now blocking the fire trucks that want to do something about the problem he created. If Mr Shorten wasn’t in denial that would be a good thing because Labor has left us a total mess.
LISON CARABINE:
Well Bill Shorten was focusing on some of the measures in your Budget, you’re the Social Services Minister so family budgets fall within your bailiwick. Last night the Opposition Leader was citing some research showing budget measures such as the Medicare co-payment, petrol excise, loss of benefits and so forth would cost $6000 a year for a couple with a single earner on $65,000 a year and two children. That’s $6000 a year. How does that fit with the Coalition’s campaign to lower the cost of living?
MINISTER:
Well the taxes are coming down overall in this budget by some $5 billion, but if you take a family with Family Tax Benefits who’ve got a couple of children say aged 6-12 or something like that. If their income is under $100,000 a year and their youngest child is under six that means they will continue to get the Family Tax Benefit and in fact a family with two-three children, with earning of under $100,000 will receive Family Tax Benefits for up to ten years depending on the spacing of their children, possibly more. So there will still be very considerable income assistance provided by the taxpayer to families with children.
LISON CARABINE:
Well what about families who receive the Family Tax Benefit B, which are single income families. When their youngest child turns six they will lose that benefit, won’t that measure disproportionately target lower income families?
MINISTER:
Well if you look at a single income family with a couple of children aged 6-13, if they’ve got income of $30,000 they will receive government payments of over $20,000. If they’ve got income of $40,000, they’ll still be getting government payments of over $14,000. So there are very substantial payments going to families in those situations and then in addition to that there are childcare payments, if they’re renting they may be eligible for rent assistance and other payments as well. So for families in the situation you described there is very considerable Commonwealth assistance being provided to them.
LISON CARABINE:
Are you saying they will be better off as a result of this Budget?
MINISTER:
Look we’ve said that this Budget requires some belt tightening on the part of all Australians, whether they are lower income or higher income, there are measures in this Budget which go towards trying to repair the mess. But this gets back to the total failure of Mr Shorten last night. There was no solutions, no economics, simply politics and a denial of the problem that Labor have left us. The Australian people know we’ve got to fix this problem. We’ve started to do that in careful, cautious and responsible way and we will get on with the job.
LISON CARABINE:
Well one of the measures that will be blocked is the saving achieved by forcing people under 30 to wait six months before receiving unemployment benefits. Bill Shorten pointed to this as the single most heartless measure in the budget. Have you thought through how tough this could make life for a young person in an area of high unemployment?
MINISTER:
What this measure is is targeted to work ready young people. There’s a whole range of exemptions, if they’re single parents, if they’re principle carers, if they’re not able to work over 30 hours, if they’re part time apprentices, if they’re participants in the Disability Employment Service Program, or they are stream three and four job seekers that’s people who are deemed to face barriers to work, they are exempted from this. But most importantly all a young person has to do is to get into the training and we’re proving more assistance for training, and then they’ll be exempt from these provisions. So if they’re work ready, they don’t want to go to training and they don’t want to go to work, well then they’ll be caught by this provision and we think that’s fair.
LISON CARABINE:
Well the PM has said he’s prepared to do some horse trading. How much ground would you be prepared to give to get your Budget through Parliament, for example, on the changes to the Newstart Allowance for young people? Is that now non-negotiable that measure or could that be one of the areas the PM might be prepared to horse trade on?
MINISTER:
Look as I said earlier Alison, we will put the legislation we will put the legislation into the Parliament, the Budget Bills. We expect they will pass the House and go to the Senate, and we’ll be calling upon all the parties and all the Senators in the Senate when it’s there to look at the mess that we’re in, take a responsible economic attitude that we’ve taken and pass these measures so that we can get on with repairing the mess we’ve got.
LISON CARABINE:
But the Senate’s not going to pass a number of these measures, at least not before July 1, and a number of the Budget initiatives would also be in doubt under the new Senate. Both Bill Shorten and Christine Milne were daring the PM last night to call a double dissolution election, how serious is the PM with his threat to go to the polls?
MINISTER:
What the PM is serious about is repairing the mess that Labor left to us. I believe that’s what the Australian people elected us to do, to get the Budget back into its proper shape. We can only do that by taking some measures, such as those in this Budget, to try and pay down the huge deficits, to address the trajectory of a debt which is going out to $670 billion. That’s the task ahead of us and I think the Australian people know that and that’s what we’re focused on and will continue to focus on.
LISON CARABINE:
Well Minister just finally if I could ask you, despite the cuts to education in this Budget there was $245 million to continue the School Chaplaincy Program, but schools will no longer have the option of appointing secular welfare workers. We are a secular nation, why are you forcing schools to appoint only religious chaplains to these positions?
MINISTER:
Look all I can say is from the schools that operate in my area where I have contact, because it’s not in my portfolio with the Chaplaincy Program, it’s one which is very well embraced by the schools. They think this adds a lot to the atmosphere and the overall amount of advice and counselling available in schools, and I’ve found the report back from the ground to be very positive about it.
LISON CARABINE:
But that doesn’t answer the question, why are you stopping schools appointing secular welfare workers?
MINISTER:
Well this was a Chaplaincy Program from the outset and we remain faithful to the type of guidelines which applied to the program from the outset.
LISON CARABINE:
Minister thanks so much for joining Breakfast.
MINISTER:
Pleasure Alison. Ends.