Sky News Viewpoint with Chris Kenny
KENNY:
Thanks for joining us Mitch.
FIFIELD:
Good to be with you Chris.
KENNY:
I want to firstly go to this report that’s looked at the NDIS. Now as I say, it’s very much a Labor scheme, Julia Gillard’s legacy item. Of course before the election, the Liberal Party supported it in a bipartisan way to make sure that it had both parties supporting it at the election. Now this report says the thing is pretty much in a mess, that it’s actually taken off before it’s ready – it’s like an aeroplane that you’re trying to repair, or complete in fact while it’s in the air. You were a bit too quick to support it, weren’t you, back in Opposition, just to get rid of it as a political sticking point?
FIFIELD:
Not at all Chris. The NDIS is something that is needed at the moment. In Australia today, the level of support that you get is determined not by your need, but by how you acquired your disability. That’s unfair. We supported the NDIS from day one, I make no apology for that. I am determined to implement it, Tony Abbott is determined to see it come into effect nationwide.
After I came into office last year, I wrote to the Board of the NDIS Agency. I wanted their views on a couple of things. One was how the early experience of the scheme had gone, but the second thing is I wanted to be assured that the Agency was making the commitment of time and resources to plan for the full nationwide rollout. And in response to that, the Board of the Agency appointed an independent review to look at the capability of the Agency.
And what they discovered, Chris, was the fact that the previous government had brought launch forward by a year from the Productivity Commission’s target date of the middle of this year to the middle of last year – what they found was that compressed timeframe had fundamentally compromised some of the key capabilities of the Agency.
KENNY:
We’ll look at some of those criticisms and some of those problems and what you need to do to fix them in a moment because a lot of people are interested, as you rightly say. Most Australians support this scheme to give national standard support to people with disability throughout the country, but the point is – I should mention also Bill Shorten back when he was a Parliamentary Secretary was a great champion for this on the Labor side as well – but as you say, Labor did rush it. You knew it at the time, you knew that this was being rushed as a political policy, a political legacy item if you like, you’ve actually compromised the scheme you’ve ended up with because you were too willing to support Labor, too unwilling to criticise this rush back when you were in Opposition, back when Labor were trying to get it up very quickly before the election?
FIFIELD:
Well, we took Labor’s assurances that they had the ability, that they had the skills and they had the mechanisms to ensure the rollout would be successful. We weren’t looking to make a political issue of the NDIS. We weren’t looking to make cheap political points. We took what Labor said, that they were fully capable of delivering this scheme. What we’ve found is that the staff of the Agency put in a herculean effort against the odds to get the scheme launched in the trial sites in the middle of last year. And I take my hat off to the staff, who’ve done an incredible job. And we are in the situation where there are about 2,000 people with disability who are now getting the better deal that they deserve.
KENNY:
But you’ve been in Government for six months now, and one of the criticisms the report makes is there’s no deputy director if you like – surely this is something you should have been able to rectify in six months?
FIFIELD:
There is a deputy CEO, and the report does make mention of the fact there was a pause in staffing. But that was a very brief pause. It was very shortly after we came into office and it was very quickly resolved. So that in no significant way accounts for the current state of the organisation. They’re doing a reasonable job in terms of delivering the trials in the Hunter, in the Barwon and in South Australia and Tasmania, but what has been compromised are the foundations for the full nationwide rollout. And that falls fairly and squarely at the feet of the previous government, who brought the time for launch forward a year to suit their political timetable. We know there was a significant event in September so they wanted to have it launched in July of last year. We took the government at their word, that they were across it. But clearly they weren’t.
KENNY:
Now, apart from being incomplete in the planning, the scheme is also unfunded. You still would agree with the Productivity Commission report that says once it is fully implemented, it will cost $22 billion a year?
FIFIELD:
That’s right, in full national rollout, in 2018-19, it’ll cost in the order of $22 billion. About half of that is state money, and half is Commonwealth money. And about $8 billion of that is new Commonwealth money.
KENNY:
And yet the levy that has been agreed by both parties to fund this will only provide a small fraction of that, somewhere around $3 billion?
FIFIELD:
Well Chris, it will cover the bulk of the Commonwealth’s additional contribution over the forward estimates. But over time that levy will only cover about half of the Commonwealth’s additional contribution. So although Labor made this commitment, it will be up to the Coalition to fund it. And look, quite simply, we will have to prioritise and we will have to identify savings in other areas to make the numbers add up. But we’re determined to do that because the NDIS is just too important not to happen.
KENNY:
And is there any possibility then, in your search for funding to fund the full scheme nationwide, you’ll delay the full rollout of the scheme?
FIFIELD:
Well Chris, the timeline for implementation is embedded in the intergovernmental agreements that have been negotiated between the Commonwealth and the states. We’re in the process of honouring that. There can’t be a change to those agreements unless there is negotiation and fresh agreements. But what I’m expecting from the Board of the NDIS Agency is that they will provide advice to all Australian Governments as to any implications from the capability report for their ability to deliver a good NDIS in the current timeframe.
KENNY:
So you’ll stick to the timeframe, and I know you say you’d have to negotiate any delays with the states. And I think that’s a common misconception with this scheme – that nothing’s happening in the area at the moment. Of course, all the states provide disability service, the problem is the varying service and the varying capacities around the country. Are you ruling out negotiating with the states to delay the national rollout because you’re worried about implementation processes?
FIFIELD:
Well Chris, I’m making two points. One is that this is a collective venture of all Australian governments and the timeframe has been agreed with all Australian governments, and there can’t be a change to that unless all Australian governments agree. That’s the first point. The second point is I expect the Board of the NDIS Agency to provide me and all other shareholding governments with advice as to whether they think there are any reasons flowing from the capability report as to why they might not be able to meet that timeframe. It’s incumbent on the Board to provide that advice. They’re charged with implementing this scheme so I would expect that advice to come forward if they do foresee any difficulties.
KENNY:
Now, nationwide there are currently over 850,000 people on the Disability Support Pension, yet the NDIS is designed to cater for about half that number. The crucial sticking point for you is going to be around that area of eligibility isn’t it? Those who will be qualifying for support under the NDIS and obviously, when you look at those numbers, you are going to disappoint an enormous number of Australians.
FIFIELD:
Well, I think it’s important to recognise that the NDIS and the Disability Support Pension have two different functions. The DSP is there to provide income support and it has its own criteria. The NDIS is there to provide non-income supports; things like aids and equipment, things like personal support in the home. These are non-income supports and there is different eligibility criteria. So to be eligible, one of the 460,000 people who will be supported by the NDIS, you need to have a permanent and significant disability.
The other thing in relation to NDIS and its eligibility criteria is there is no standard package of support. You’re assessed on the basis of the effect of your disability on your capacity. So if you only need a little bit of support then you’ll only get a little bit of support. If you need a lot of support, because you might be someone who is paraplegic of quadriplegic, then you’ll get support that is appropriate for the situation that you’re in. But DSP and NDIS; two different systems, two different sets of eligibility.
KENNY:
It does give us an indication though, on the number of people suffering from disability. And obviously you’re talking about only half of them actually qualifying for the NDIS support. And again, you make good points about the eligibility criteria and the various packages, but imposing those nationally are necessarily going to disappoint some people. That’s where you’re going to have a lot of difficulty in future negotiations?
FIFIELD:
It’s very important I think to keep the vision of the Productivity Commission in mind. And that was that the NDIS is there to support a group of people who’ve been chronically under supported for years. A situation of a kid who might be 11 years old, needs a wheelchair – at the moment, it’s not uncommon to hear stories of having to wait for two years. Or ageing parent carers who’ll have an adult son or daughter with an intellectual impairment who wonder who is going to look after their son or daughter when they’re no longer around. These are the people the NDIS is targeted to and it’s important that we keep the focus fairly and squarely on those that the scheme is intended to support.
KENNY:
Absolutely. Is it fair to say that the emphasis of the scheme under the Labor Government – under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd – fell fairly and squarely as a government service provider model, whereas you are trying to nudge the scheme into a direction where it acts more like an insurance scheme? That people who qualify get support to fund the services they want from either a government or private supplier?
FIFIELD:
We’ve got to make sure that this doesn’t become a big new government bureaucracy. So this is, if you like, it should be a voucher scheme. An individual, they have their need assessed, they get given their entitlement and then they take that to the service provider of their choice, be it a not-for-profit provider or a for-profit provider. This really is putting the power and control in the hands of the individual.
And at the other end, in terms of the administration of the NDIS Agency, where there’s the capacity to outsource then we should look to do that. And in fact, that’s already happening in Tasmania, where BaptCare is providing some of the local coordination functions for the Agency. So we want to see the maximum dollars getting through to the people who need them. We don’t want to see the dollars tied up in bureaucracy.
KENNY:
You’re already getting blowback from some unions over that, some public sector unions who are suggesting you are trying to privatise disability services.
FIFIELD:
Well, we’re just trying to put the power in the hands of the individual. We want people with a disability to be at the centre and in control. I think it’s very difficult for anyone to argue against that principle.
KENNY:
Mitch Fifield, I just want to ask you before I let you go about your colleague, former Ministerial colleague, still your senatorial colleague, Arthur Sinodinos, who stood aside last week of course. Do you think that Senator Sinodinos should have been suspicious right at the outset? I know this was before he entered the Senate, but, when a company was prepared to pay him $200,000 for a relatively minor chairmanship and a share package that could have been worth up to anything from 10 to 20 million dollars? Should not he have been very wary about that company wanting to have him on board simply for his political influence?
FIFIELD:
Well, look Chris, these matters will be canvassed in the forums of the ICAC. I think Arthur has shown immense courage in stepping aside, in terms of putting the interests of the Government first. He’s someone who has served this nation incredibly well as a senior officer in the Commonwealth Treasury, as the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff…
KENNY:
Undoubtedly, but when something looks too good to be true, it usually is isn’t it?
FIFIELD:
Well, the ICAC will examine the matters that come before it. But Chris, I think it’s important to remember that Arthur has not been accused of anything, there are no specific allegations against him.
KENNY:
I accept that, it’s a point I’ve made myself…
FIFIELD:
He is a witness in the ICAC and look, we’ll just have to let that body do its work.
KENNY:
Indeed, thanks very much for joining us on Viewpoint tonight, Mitch Fifield.
FIFIELD:
Thanks Chris, good to be with you.