Transcript by Hon Kevin Andrews MP

ABC NewsRadio

Program: Breakfast

E&OE

SANDY ALOISI:

(Inaudible) but today attention will be in another area of government change with the first roundtable gathering to consider the review of the welfare system conducted by Patrick McClure. The review provides the basis for what are expected to be significant changes to welfare and specifically for people with disabilities and their carers. For more on that we’re joined by the Social Services Minister and he’s speaking to Marius Benson.

MARIUS BENSON:

Kevin Andrews you’re dealing with an Interim Report with the McClure Report and you have a roundtable today, what do you expect to come from today’s meeting?

MINISTER ANDREWS:

Mr McClure has proposed a new, simpler architecture for welfare in Australia with four, essentially basic payments and then some other add-ons obviously. But the idea is for people to have their input into this proposed architecture, is it something which they believe is workable, what are their views about it and any other comments they have about welfare reform basically in the light of his discussion paper.

MARIUS BENSON:

It’s an early stage in a complex process, when do you think there might actually be practical results in terms of changing the present arrangements, when might they be realised?

MINISTER ANDREWS:

We’re hoping that Mr McClure and the reference group will provide a report back to Government by about September or October of this year. Once we see their recommendations well then obviously the Government will have to consider them, it may be that we’ll have to do some modelling based on the recommendations to see how this would work in practice, but by the end of the year we hope that we’ll have view of what has been recommended to us.

MARIUS BENSON:

Now this is an Interim Report, but it was provided by the Government to the Sunday papers a couple of weeks ago when it came out, and it came out under headlines like “Disabling Rorters” and that set up an expectation, particularly amongst people living with disabilities, that this is a set up by the Government to have them described as rorters.

MINISTER ANDREWS:

Ah Marius there’s been many occasions on I wish I could write headlines, rather than those who write them in the papers. The reality though is that the proposal for disability is there is a disability payment but there’s also a payment which tries to encourage people of working age who’ve got some capacity to work, to also participate in the workforce. One of the major changes with people with disability in the last few years is that more people are going onto the DSP with a mental or psychological illness but some of those people have got episodic illness and have a capacity to work sometimes and not other times and the question is do we try to encourage them to work when they can, or do we just leave them on the DSP for long periods of time.

MARIUS BENSON:

Do you think the reality is that in the present circumstance there is a division between deserving people with disabilities and undeserving?

MINISTER ANDREWS:

That’s not the language which I would use. It’s more a reflection on, as I said, the capacity of people to work at particular times where they have a chronic episodic illness, and the question is whether or not it’s possible to encourage such people to work, are there the situations in which they can work so that’s part of this whole discussion and we’re looking for feedback on that through this consultation process.

MARIUS BENSON:

You’re a long way from action on this particular area of government investigation, but is the Government able to act in any area at the moment. This week we saw the Government go boldly to the Senate with the expectation the carbon tax would be abolished this week, that failed, and there now seems to be a situation of no progress whatsoever for the Government, that Clive Palmer is blocking things. Are you stalled?

MINISTER ANDREWS:

I don’t believe we are. With the carbon tax we’ll obviously re-introduce the Bills on Monday, there seems to have been some confusion in the Senate, which was partly triggered I think by an amendment which the Senate Clerk then said was not constitutionally able to be introduced into the Senate. So, let’s hope that these difficulties are over next week, Mr Palmer has said that he wants to repeal the carbon tax and we’ve taken him at his word on that and negotiated in good faith. So if there was a problem let’s hope that next week it can be resolved, and we can get to the abolition of the carbon tax and the savings for all Australians.

MARIUS BENSON:

Are relations between the Government and Clive Palmer in a state of collapse? He was accusing you of reacting violently to his proposals yesterday and double crossing, not you personally, the Government.

MINISTER ANDREWS:

I don’t believe they are Marius, but we will continue to work through these issues in a careful, calm, methodical way and we’ll deal with all the crossbenchers, including Mr Palmers Senators in the Senate, and we’ll continue to work towards the objective that we promised the Australian people and that is to repeal the carbon tax and save households on average $550 a year.

MARIUS BENSON:

But in fact is the reality that the Palmer tail is now wagging the Government dog?

MINISTER ANDREWS:

Far from it, we’re still governing, we’ll continue to govern. We’ve got a whole legislative program which we will continue to advocate, put through the House of Representatives, put to the Senate. Obviously we’ll have to talk to all the crossbenchers about these matters but we will continue to do that because we were elected to govern the country, to clean up Labor’s mess and that’s what we’ve got to get on and do.

MARIUS BENSON:

Kevin Andrews, thank you very much.

MINISTER ANDREWS:

My pleasure Marius.