Doorstop interview
E&OE
QUESTION:
Four week wait for the dole programme was defeated in the Senate last night, what is next for this bill?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well it didn’t surprise me that Labor and the Greens once again teamed up to prevent the government being able to say to job ready young people that you need to go through a pre-activation period of four weeks and out there looking for work before having access to income support. The Labor Party and the Greens – it wouldn’t matter how we changed this bill. We changed it from six months to one month; we increased the investment in youth employment programmes by $330 million dollars. What is clear is the Labor Party thinks that job ready young people who are in a position to go out and seek and be in work shouldn’t have to wait more than 30 minutes let alone 30 days to have access to the dole and we have a different view to that. The savings measures around this bill are actually negative; we are investing more on job programmes for young people than the savings that are contained in this measure. We believe strongly in this measure because it is a strong value position the government is taking, it is a practical position which says you don’t go, as I have said many times before, you don’t go from the school gate to the Centrelink front door. That is not how we think it should work in this country and in New Zealand we have seen that where they have implemented measures like this that 40 per cent of those who started that 20 working day period – that four week waiting period don’t go on to the dole on that end of that. Now I think that is a good outcome, I would like to see those outcomes here and the Labor Party and the Greens are saying no.
QUESTION:
But it doesn’t have support in the Senate so what are you going to do next?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I am going to put the measure up again and I am going to argue my case again.
QUESTION:
How do job ready young people pay for rent or food in the four weeks that they are waiting for the dole?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The same way it happens in New Zealand but also the job ready young people we are talking about are those who are in a situation far more able to be able to support themselves over that period. There is also emergency cash assistance measures that we introduced to support those who would be most disadvantaged by that arrangement. But we have measures in there for exemptions which I have spelt out on other occasions, they include if someone for example can’t go home to their family because it is not a safe place the measure doesn’t apply to them, if they have a disability, if they are a long term unemployed young person who is not in the job ready streams, these measures don’t apply to those individuals. These measures apply to job ready young people and as we have seen in New Zealand 40 per cent didn’t end up going on benefits – that is a great outcome. When young people are then going on to a life of work rather than being locked into a lifetime of welfare that is a good outcome, it is a good outcome for them. That is why I am proposing these measures; I want that outcome for those young people.
QUESTION:
You are going to put the measures to the Senate again are you willing to negotiate down to say two weeks?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Look I am always willing to listen to the crossbench what I think is unfortunate is the Labor Party have never been prepared to engage on this issue and the Labor Party can’t go round blaming the crossbench every time that a government measure fails and that is going to happen from time to time that is the nature of the Senate. But it is the Labor Party who is opposing this measure of the government; they are the ones who say there should be no waiting period at all for a job ready young person to get access to the dole and to be able to walk from the school gate to the Centrelink front door. That is the Labor Party policy.
QUESTION:
Minister Morrison, isn’t this measure slightly jarring when you look at the latest unemployment figures it shows there are people out there who want jobs then there are jobs available?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well there are around 60,000 vacancies for low skilled jobs based on reports I have been provided. And we have evidence that was provided to the Senate hearing that showed over 20 per cent of employers were finding it difficult to fill those positions for low skilled jobs. They are the frustrations that employers have articulated. There is no such thing as a bad job, there is not such thing as a bad job. A job that pays you for your work and for your effort and that releases you from being dependant on welfare is a good job. That is a job that the income support system can’t replace. If you lose your job and you are not in a position to be in employment then the government can provide income support but we can’t replace a job and the independence and the opportunity that a job provides you. I want to see young people in jobs and I want to provide every encouragement. That is why we provide $330 million in new employment programmes to help young people to get into jobs. But for those who are going to go straight from the school gate to the Centrelink front door and opt for welfare in the first instance, well we are saying “no, you have to wait four weeks and get a plan together and go out there an find a job.”
QUESTION:
Minister Morrison, just to the government’s announcement yesterday, was the Prime Minister only able to make such a generous gesture by taking 12,000 refugees because of your success as Minister?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Two years ago we started responding to the crisis in Syria with our refugee and humanitarian programme. Our response didn’t start yesterday it started two years ago, when we came to government the number of refugees and humanitarian entrants that we were taking from Syria was less than a hundred, it was 95. In our first year we increased that tenfold, in our second year we doubled down on that again and increased it by more, over 2200. We resettled more refugees from Syria in our first two years than Labor did in six – in fact more than ten times the amount and multiples more. So our response to the humanitarian crisis started two years ago, it goes into another phase now because of the further developments. The reason we are able to do all of that is because we stopped the boats, because we took control of our borders, we took control of our refugee and humanitarian programme and this is the compassion dividend from a strong border protection policy.
QUESTION:
Just on the remote jobs and communities programme report yesterday that it is not doing very well, you’re response to that?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Sorry, I missed that?
QUESTION:
Yeah, the remote jobs and communities programme $1.6 billion dollar largely indigenous communities reports that fewer than half…
MINISTER MORRISON:
I would have to refer you to Luke Hartsuyker on that the Assistant Minister for Employment.
QUESTION:
On the 12,000 that are coming through Scott, what sort of role will now your department be taking?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well our department settles all 12,000 of them in addition to the 13,750 that we are currently settling now which will ramp up as everyone knows to 18, 750 by the end of the forward estimates. So in addition to the 12,000 that we have made available under yesterday’s announcement over the budget and forward estimates there is also an additional 7,500 places that were coming on stream anyway, so that takes us closer to 20,000 over the next four years. The other point I would make is we are offering permanent visas to those who are coming under this programme. Many of the current countries in Europe are not doing that they are doing temporary visas. Now that may well be I would suggest it is appropriate to their circumstance because they will take many people who will be in a position to go back at the end of the conflict and that is appropriate when you are on the other side of the world closer to that area. In Australia we will be taking people who will never be able to go back, that is why we are focusing our intake of that 12,000 on persecuted minorities which are predominately Middle Eastern Christians. Middle Eastern Christians that have been run out of town in the Middle East now for many years and that is why our government right from the outset has had a much higher priority focus on those persecuted minorities in the Middle East which are predominately Christian and that is where our focus will be. That is not to say that there won’t be people of other faiths that are taken under the programme as there already has been under the intake to date. Those intakes would focus more on family members here in Australia and people who have connections in Australia and that is where a lot of this intake will be. We need to remember that those who will be resettling particularly out of persecuted minorities are predominately not in camps in the Middle East. Refugee camps for persecuted minorities can actually be a very dangerous place for those persecuted minorities and many face persecution in those camps themselves. So they are often in homes and other places, scattered throughout Lebanon and throughout Jordan and particularly in Turkey. Last time I was in Lebanon I met many of them, I saw them in the streets and finding them, identifying them, assessing them, processing them, pre-departure, support and bringing them to Australia and taking them through our settlement programme.
Now I am labouring this because it is important I think to explain when we resettle people we just don’t allow them to walk across the border and put up a tent and we give them a bottle of water and some food aid. What we do is we get their kids into school, we give them English language courses, we help them find a job, we give them a house for the first month which is rented through the programme – they don’t get a Housing Commission house I should stress, there will be no impact on public housing waiting lists as a result of this change. There is already a private rental arrangement that has been put in place through the settlement services we provide. We take people and we give them a go in this country and we set them up to succeed and that is the fundamental difference between resettlement and hosting. There has been a lot of talk about what other countries are hosting and that is appropriate to their circumstances, but we are resettling people for the long term, for their lives and for their family’s lives in the future and you have got to set them up for success and that costs.
QUESTION:
How will your department fund those resettlement costs, those resettlement services?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well currently it costs us around $150 million a year to support the 13,750 that we resettle every year for the reasons I have just outlined and the sort of services that we provide. Our estimate, and while that is still being finalised, is that this programme will cost us approximately $600 million for those 12,000 over the budget and forward estimates. That is consistent with estimates for previous increases in intakes and that will have to be funded out of the Budget. That is why I continue to pursue savings across the board with a range of measures as the Treasurer does and as the Finance Minister does because you have got to pay for this and we will be leaving no stone unturned to ensure that we can – by stopping the boats we have freed up our programme to be able to cope with this and be able to make this offer but we also now need to go the further distance in achieving the savings to enable us to be able to support the programme.
QUESTION:
So you will have to find savings to make up this $600 million?
MINISTER MORRISON:
We already have, it is an increase in expenditure as when there are shocks to the Budget because of events that take place well then you have to seek to accommodate that within the Budget. There is nothing extraordinary about that, the same is true for our military involvement in Iraq and things of that nature, the increase in national security expenditure that we put in place over the last couple of years that has all had to be absorbed within the Budget. It is important expenditure, it is priority expenditure, and that is the job of the government, and the NSC, and the ERC to work through that but I think it just underscores the importance of the government’s Budget programme to achieve the savings that we have already got before the Senate, we have already got before the Parliament, and I think those savings measures take on an added importance.
QUESTION:
Minister Morrison we ask about family reunions, what do Iraqi and Syrian families who are already here and have families that are living either in refugee camps or outside of Syria or Iraq, is there any kind of link, will there be a special provision made for family members?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The short answer is yes, because under the Special Humanitarian Programme, there are two parts to our refugee and humanitarian programme, there is what is called the UNHCR mandated programme and then there is the Special Humanitarian Programme. The Special Humanitarian Programme particularly addresses those with links to Australia, which could be family or other connections and that is how people are identified. There is a large number of applications for that programme every year and there will be many coming out of the countries I have mentioned and that provides a ready pool of potential persons who could be coming under this programme. So under the previous government, the number of Special Humanitarian visas fell to around 500 that was the main consequence, that was where the main impact was of their failure to control our borders. Some 4,500 places or thereabouts got knocked out of the programme. They were the people in the queue who were missing out because of Labor’s failure on our borders. Now we restored that programme that is why I was able to increase the Syrian intake to 1000, more than 1,000 in that first year. Three-quarters and more of those places actually went through the Special Humanitarian Programme and they were the sort of persons that you are referring to. So that is how the programme works, that programme more specifically will be put to work in responding to this crisis.
QUESTION:
Some of them are still in Syria, so what will happen to those people?
MINISTER MORRISON:
It is a dangerous place to go and assess people and bring them out from, now similarly when we were trying to increase our intake of Copts out of Egypt when I was Minister that could also be a difficult process. The UNHCR will not term anyone a refugee who is still in the country of their nationality. They have to actually leave that country to qualify technically as a refugee. Our Special Humanitarian Programme is far more flexible than that and there are circumstances that you can work through that can permit that but the challenge there is not so much the rules, the challenge there is the logistics and the practicalities of physically getting people out of those conflict zones. The government obviously doesn’t send in military aircraft to airlift people out in these situations that would be far too dangerous. So that is a challenge for people who are in those circumstances. Many of those in Syria, and particularly persecuted minorities, simply leaving their town to get out of the country could see them killed. Equally people going into those towns to try to get them out could suffer the same fate. So this is a diabolical proposition for many of those communities and it does go across all faiths and religions, no doubt, but I think there can be no question about the fact that the persecuted minorities which are predominantly Middle Eastern Christians are those who face the bleakest long term prospects in that region.
Thanks very much.