Media conference, Sydney
Joint Transcript with:
Senator the Hon Marise Payne Minister for Human Services, Russell Matheson Member for Macarthur
E&OE
MINISTER MORRISON:
It’s great to be here with Russell Matheson, the Member for Macarthur, and Minister Payne, Minister for Human Services here at Campbelltown to make a very important announcement today about how the Coalition is going to reboot our welfare system by rebooting our out-dated ICT system. This is an ICT system that was developed when Peter Brock was winning Bathurst and it’s time for a very serious upgrade. This issue has been kicked down the road for years and years and years and the truth is that we cannot achieve the sorts of changes and improvements in how our welfare system runs but as Minister Payne I’m sure will outline how the very many other services whether it’s Medicare and others that Human Services supports so that offices such as this can function and operate unless we get the engine that drives this whole system right. It is out-dated, it is clunky and despite what I think is the fantastic efforts of the Department of Human Services to put a very good front face on the IT systems which I understand has surpassed traffic from Virgin and Jetstar now, with Centrelink, despite that there is a back engine to this which is in dire need of upgrade.
That is necessary to give us many, many tools: better policy, more effective changes that can be implemented more cost efficiently. This system will pay for itself over time, but what it will also do is pay for itself by giving those who work in our system to crack down on welfare fraud and on integrity issues, the sort of tools they need to be an effective welfare cop on the beat. They need that support and the technology and the systems that a new system will be able to deliver. They already make great strides in this area to crack down on welfare fraud using the tools they already have, but it is using very, very out-dated technology. So we need this system to ensure that we can provide better service, that we can ensure greater integrity in the services that we deliver to people who need them and to shut out those who want to take a loan of the system. Let’s not forget eight out of ten income tax payers go to work every single day in order to pay for the welfare system and the $150 billion bill that is there for taxpayers. Now they deserve, those taxpayers, deserve the confidence of a system that is efficient, that is a system that ensures we can crack down on fraud and ensure the integrity of that system so every dollar spent in our welfare system goes to people who really need it, because that’s what our welfare system is all about.
I’m going to hand over to Minister Payne who will take us through some of the details of this important announcement today; I want to congratulate Minister Payne who has really been driving this from day one. Plenty of other ministers in the past have kicked this down the road. Minister Payne has taken it up and really driven us to the process we’re announcing today. I also want to commend all of those in the Department of Human Services for the work they’ve been putting in to take us to the stage we’re at now. It will be a lengthy programme to go through this change but it’s a change that’s overdue, it’s a change that’s absolutely necessary and well done, Marise.
MINISTER PAYNE:
Thank you, thank you very much Scott, and Russell, thank you very much for having us here in Campbelltown in your electorate of Macarthur today. Ladies and gentleman, what we’re announcing today is about providing Australia with a welfare payments system that is modern and flexible and efficient that will match a welfare system that we as a government want to make sure is modern and flexible and efficient. So after 30 years of operating under the same system which has basically resulted in around 350 different add-ons to the process, so as policies have changed, as governments have changed over those decades, we haven’t done anything to the basic system except tack things onto it along the way.
That is no longer a viable way to go into the future as a large welfare payment system so we really do need to make this decision now and that’s why the government has done that and is here today announcing that particular change.
What we’ll be able to do for our 7.3 million Centrelink customers who, across the board, are in receipt of about $100 billion in payments, is completely streamline the payments process. Currently 40 payments and 38 add-ons, or thereabouts, streamlined so that, at the end of the process, our customers will be able to have any-time access to what they are involved with in government, whether it’s a Carers payment, whether it’s a Newstart payment or a Disability Support payment. Across all of those cohorts, we want to make sure that the access customers get is what they expect from any other service in the community – perhaps like a bank, like parcel delivery or something like that. You can’t actually do that at the moment and they’re issues which customers raise with us regularly.
One of the reasons for that, although we are calm on the top of the water if you like, like the duck swimming, underneath we are paddling very, very hard to make sure that the functionality is maintained to make sure that the delivery of the payments that we need to make occurs in a way our customers expect, and in fact in way that government expects.
But that is becoming much harder, much more complex and we are now at a point that this, which I call a piece of social infrastructure if you like, in some ways it’s going to be like building a very large new road, or other constructed piece of work in Australia.
This piece of infrastructure is absolutely vital as Australia moves through the 21st Century. It will be one the largest ever social welfare payments transformations undertaken in the world. So we have worked very hard on establishing a business case to bring to government and I am pleased to say that business case was accepted by government and that brings us to the point that we are at today. The ultimate outcome is going to be a better operation for government, a better operation for our customers and importantly a much less expensive operation for taxpayers who of course every day of the week foot the bill to make sure that we can support those most in need in Australia. I am very pleased to bring this here today and very pleased and grateful for the support of Minister Morrison in the last few months as we have made these decisions.
Customers will begin to see an outcome towards the end of next year when very simply for example one thing we can’t do at the moment is use your personal information to carry through a range of payments. So if you are on a Parenting Payment Single now and your child is turning eight and you have to change to Newstart because you are required to look for a job or to undertake study or whatever it might be, you actually have to start again at the beginning because we deal in payments now not around individuals. What we will be able to do just by the end of next year as this process is underway is institute a “tell us once” process. We won’t ask for all of those personal details again, we will be able to flow those through the system. I hope to see a lot more of those deliverables arrived at for customers in the very near future after that.
Thank you very much for being here today, again Russell thank you very much for having us and I am sure Minister Morrison and I are happy to answer any questions.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Sure, any questions?
JOURNALIST:
Minister Morrison you say that this will pay for itself, $1 billion is quite a lot of money can you outline the specifics of where the savings will be after this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
What we are doing today is starting a competitive process and so while the Treasurer rightly has put out that that is the order of expenditure that will be involved in this process that will also be contingent upon the process we go through with potential providers which the Department of Human Services will now engage in. We will be bringing the best in the world to engage in building this new piece, as Minister Payne rightly says social infrastructure. Obviously the efficiencies and improvements in the way we do things will yield their own savings. Like any IT system in any business anywhere in the world you do it because it improves your processes. We have 500 people come through this office every day in Campbelltown. There are 28 staff, just under 28 fulltime equivalent staff who are here supporting that process. One of the things that happens when you move to a better system like this is people will be able to manage their own payments and processes more remotely from home, using the IT systems that are available to them, smart apps, all of these sorts of things. This re-engineered system will make that a reality. At the moment it is being done superficially effectively with a very difficult back end and when you connect that together, we were just chatting to Josh inside who says that once people can come in and see how these systems work then they are better able to manage their own payments. Now this system will do that even more.
So I think the areas of savings and efficiencies are fairly obvious. They will be achieved over a long period of time. I think it is important with all the changes we are pursuing as a government that we take people with us and what Minister Payne has made the point very well about is this system will be focussed on the person not on the government. The person’s needs, the person’s payments, the person’s engagement with the system and managing it around the actual individual rather than a whole range of other bureaucratic processes. There is just far too much paper shuffling that goes on in the system at the moment and that paper shuffling over the period of the implementation of this initiative will see that dramatically reduced.
JOURNALIST:
Minister Morrison should NSW be worse off considering WA has a GST problem?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I will come to other questions on other matters today, we are here talking about this important initiative in Campbelltown today. I know Russell Matheson would be pleased that his constituents who have access to this system will ensure that they will have a more seamless process. When you are dealing whether it is welfare or Medicare or what will soon be Jobactive, or things of this nature, childcare benefits, you want to be able to get through it as quickly as possible. You shouldn’t have to be spending all your time filling out forms constantly whether online or on paper and they are the things that we have to reduce. People lead busy lives, families lead very busy lives and the less time they spend filling out paper work for the government we think the better.
JOURNALIST:
Can you outline the cost and how long it will take to roll out?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The cost here the Treasurer has already indicated is in the vicinity of around $1 billion but that will be subject to final agreements that come together with the providers who will be part of this project and we don’t want to pre-empt that because we are looking for the best value for money, for the best value outcome. So that will become clearer as we work through those processes. This will be a process that from start to finish that at least at this stage the indications are of around seven years but we will see the first changes upfront with the interface with customers. That is the thing we need to focus on because when you make an IT system change, first people you have got to be able to convince about that are those who are going to use it so Marise Payne has ensured that the customer benefits are front end loaded into this process.
JOURNALIST:
What about managing the data? What are the issues there and will you have to outsource some of the work?
MINISTER PAYNE:
Thanks very much. In terms of the ownership of the system and the management of the data that all remains within government control, that’s an absolute assurance. In terms of the timeframe of the build and delivery of the new system I think it’s important to look at that in components. If we start today at the get go, 1 July 2015 that is when we go into the market and start talking about the tender process and what organisations and companies come back to us with. Once we do that we then go into the design phase. Then the design phase shifts to delivery and build. The build itself is estimated to take about three years. Then of course we have to move into transition. We’re transitioning the information of Australians and their payment receipts. That is a very careful and work intensive process I think would be the best way to put that. After we do the transition and have the new system up and running, obviously you can’t cancel the old system while you are still building, we then have to decommission the old system. That’s spread over about seven years. It’s not like going to JB Hi-Fi and buying a new Surface Pro, it’s remarkably more complicated than that. Putting all of that together will take that amount of time. We are going to be very careful to make sure we get each of those tranches right so we are making sure we are building on the positive results of the previous tranche every time we move forward and that is very much built into the business case and the approach we are talking.
JOURNALIST:
So are we cutting out a lot of face-to-face meetings?
MINISTER PAYNE:
Potentially yes. For example if you are a carer right now there is actually no way that you can engage with us in the online space, to register as a carer, to receive payments, to update your circumstances and so on. For some carers who are in very labour intensive situations it is very difficult to get into a service centre or to sit on a telephone and wait until a service officer can come to you. We think that, for individuals in that case, it’s a really good example of where this will be an enormous help to them, to streamline how they do that very valuable task in our community, and that is just one example.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Face-to-face contact in offices like this we want to make sure is focused on those who need that intensive engagement. There is a lot of routine face-to-face contact which currently happens in Centrelink offices like this all around the country and, like in many other consumer facing operations, you want to spend the quality time of face-to-face contact with those who have more complex cases and within the welfare system in particular there are the most complex of cases of people with incredible needs whether it’s relating to people with disability or disadvantage or other circumstances. One of the things we are working very hard on in a policy sense is getting the connection between those things. That’s why this system is important because it gives you the flexibility that is needed to tailor support in what is quite a broad array of situations. That is why Patrick McClure when he released his report earlier this year called for exactly this reform. Today’s announcement is very much a response to what Patrick McClure called for. It was already in train. Patrick was absolutely right, you need this engine to deliver the reform this country needs in this space.
JOURNALIST:
Will customers see any results in this current term of government?
MINISTER PAYNE:
I certainly hope so. There will be some front end outcomes very soon for them. Exactly the example I used earlier which was about how many times you have to tell us your personal information or identify yourself. If you’re just changing payments or applying for a review we want to make sure that people only have to tell us once. That’s the best example I can give you now of the new system being rolled out that customers will see a real difference. At the moment we have all of those payments, 40 payments and 38 add-ons, all of which clunk through the old ISIS system, all of which require you to identify with the payment and not identify as you the individual customer, and that is a core change for customers in this process and they will see that streamlining.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Don’t forget that this is about a generational improvement for those who deal with the system over the next 20 or 30 years. The system we are now dealing with, as I said, began when Peter Brock was winning Bathurst. We haven’t had the generational change in the ICT system that is needed. This will benefit today’s generation, but it will also benefit tomorrow’s. We need to look at changes in the welfare system not about who benefits in the next five or 10 minutes but what will be the benefits for a future generation of people who will be dependent on this system and I think this delivers for both.
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask you another technology-related question?
MINISTER MORRISON:
If there’s no other questions relating to Centrelink we can move to other issues.
JOURNALIST:
Can you just summarise what the benefits are for customers?
MINISTER PAYNE:
Anytime access to your information, a much more streamlined system, a much straighter contact, end-to-end digital contact to Centrelink. At the moment it is a very blocky contact if you like and we can’t streamline in the way that we need to and would like to. So I think it is a valid comparison to use internet banking for example, where most of us are now engaged in an online environment with our financial institutions but you can’t do that in quite the same way with government. Yes, we can do it on the surface and we do, we have over 6 million users of the myGov account already in Australia but behind that someone behind that is manually taking that information and re-entering it, literally. The cost to government is extraordinary, the cost to the taxpayer is extraordinary and it makes us less able to adapt to customers’ needs. So I think across the board, government, taxpayer, customer, they are all winners.
MINISTER MORRISON:
For the taxpayer, the efficiency and integrity and the tools that will be available through this system for the crackdown on fraud and on welfare cheats, that will be an important benefit for taxpayers. It will cost less over the longer term and it will ensure that we can have a system that Australian’s can have greater confidence in and the integrity will be maintained. If we move to other issues, I’m sure Minister Payne and Russell would join with me in saying this, we were very sad to learn on the way here of the passing of Richie Benaud. As a young fellow, listening to him on the World Series World Cricket, was as much about Richie Benaud as it was about Dennis Lillee and Rodney Marsh and all of those great heroes of the game. He was someone that all Australians will miss terribly and it will be a very different summer without Richie Benaud and our condolences to his family and to all Australian’s today who will be missing his presence.
MINISTER PAYNE:
Perhaps we should have a National Beige Jacket Day?
JOURNALIST:
Minister Morrison, are you a Netflix subscriber and would you support a tax on this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well, I’ll leave that to the Treasurer seeing as it is a revolution in the way people access content now and in many, many platforms that’s always good for consumers but these things do present challenges for government’s as well, as we want to ensure that those who earn an income in Australia, pay a tax on that income. We are dedicated to that, the Treasurer is a leading force on that at the G20 meeting. It requires international engagement to ensure that you’re getting these arrangements consistent with other jurisdictions. It isn’t a matter of releasing a press statement. It’s about engaging with people around the world and that’s the approach the Treasurer’s taking and it’s going to have implications for so many different areas in the digital space, whether it’s Netflix or other places, you need to get it right and you need to work around the issues.
JOURNALIST:
What do you think of reports today that senior Labor officials are calling for an investigation into how Bill Shorten was elected leader?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well they are really issues for the Labor Party I think to respond to. It’s not for the Liberal party to respond to what could be seen as fairly serious allegations about the fraud in that process. That’s a matter for Bill Shorten and Sam Dastyari to respond to and not us.
JOURNALIST:
Will NSW be punished if WA gets the biggest slice of the GST pie?
MINISTER MORRISON:
As the Treasurer said yesterday and the Prime Minister said, this is a matter for the State’s to sort out, these are their arrangements and the movements in the way the Commission’s formula delivers for all states and it’s now time for these states to now come and resolve that matter amongst themselves. The federal government is not seeking to impose themselves at this point because we want the states, who are all affected by this, both in a positive and negative way, to come together and agree on this themselves. It’s a challenge to the states to actually address this issue. They don’t need to push it to another level of government, it’s their issue and they will all be effected by it one way or another and it’s for them to sit down and put aside their political differences and sort out an arrangement that is fair to all states and territories.
JOURNALIST:
There is to be a $4 million telemovie that is to deter asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat, as a former minister in this area do you agree with this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I think it’s a good initiative, it’s one that continues the very strong communication that made Operation Sovereign Borders so successful and I will let Minister Dutton discuss this throughout the week. Nobody should misunderstand that just because the boats stopped, which didn’t happen easily and people said it couldn’t be done. But it has been done by this government through the strength of will and resolve that we’ve applied and have turned back the boats when safe, which the Labor Party continues to oppose. But it was also done through the co-operation and communication all the way up through the smuggling chain and whether it was an ad or direct communications or innovative ways, like this proposal, it all sends one message, don’t try this on with Australia. The rules have chained, it won’t work, you won’t get through. Ok thanks.
MINISTER PAYNE:
Thanks everyone.