Insiders
E&OE
BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER:
Now we will go to our program guest and the Social Services Minister Scott Morrison joins us from our studio.
SCOTT MORRISON, SOCIAL SERVICES MINISTER:
Good morning Barrie, good to be with you.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
I’ll start with the pension story – I don’t expect you to go to Cabinet discussions, especially when they’re almost a year old. How do you feel about the leaks? There seems to be a steady stream of them and seem to be designed to reflect poorly on the Prime Minister.
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well I think that’s a bit of a beat up Barrie. This is a story about something that happened a year ago. I think this has a big use-by date on it. The great revelation here is the Government decided not to do something and they had a discussion about a range of different options. I wasn’t on ERC at the time, I really don’t think there is anything in that and I think frankly it’s a bit of a beat-up.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
But it was only a week ago there was another leak about this idea on waiting six months for the dole. The Prime Minister overruled some ministers on that. It’s happening regularly.
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well Barrie the story today is over a year old, I suspect it’s been sitting around in the door for some period of time. If journalists want to connect dots between these things to make points, I’m sure they will. But the Government’s getting on with good government.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
What about the story then that the Prime Minister considered unilateral engage in the in Iraq. Did you get a whisper of that?
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well now, I was on the national security committee at the time Barrie, I can confirm what the Prime Minister said. It is completely fanciful. I think these sorts of stories are now getting quite ridiculous. What’s next? Are they going to suggest the Prime Minister had some plan to put a manned space mission to Mars or the moon? I mean it is really getting quite silly. The notion this was put about I think is just complete nonsense.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Committing 3,500 Australian troops unilaterally, this would be a foolhardy exercise, surely?
SCOTT MORRISON:
That’s my point. I was on the committee at the time, there was no suggestion of anything like this. I think it’s complete nonsense and fanciful as the Prime Minister has suggested.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Let’s talk now about the Productivity Commission report on childcare. It is just that at this stage, it is a report. But can you at least commit to a new single subsidy scheme and one that is paid directly to the provider?
SCOTT MORRISON:
The Productivity Commission I think has done some excellent work. It is delivering on a Coalition election commitment to have such an exhaustive inquiry and I want to pay tribute to the Commission and also all the people who participated Barrie. There was a lot of people, parents, providers, professionals who all contributed. And they’ve made some excellent recommendations which we will now have to work through as we frame our package.
But the points you make about a simpler system, the points you’ve made about the Commission talking about a direct payment to the providers themselves, I think this is feedback I’m picking up directly as well and we do want a system which enables families, particularly middle to lower income families sitting around the kitchen table trying to decide ‘Can I go back to work, can we both stay at work, to provide for our families?’
We want to make that decision easier than it is now.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
And if all of this is going to be revenue neutral and you want it to be, and you want to improve the lot for lower income earners, that does necessarily mean, doesn’t it, taking some of the benefits away at the top end?
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well the Productivity Commission has framed their recommendations around a largely budget neutral position and to ensure that greater support goes into the area where the economic issues are far more prevalent and dominant in the decisions made by families, then that’s a natural consequence of that Barrie.
And that’s why I make this point; I wrote to Kate Ellis a week or so ago. We’re meeting next week. If we want to do more in this area, if we want to spend more in this area, then there has to be some agreement on the sorts of savings and offsets put in place. I hope we can agree on those and I hope we can agree on a package – as we did when we were in Opposition and we dealt with the NDIS and the aged care reforms and changes to family tax benefit payments where the Opposition… when we were in Opposition, very supportive of what the government was trying to do at that time.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
You would think you would get Labor support, given that this is income redistribution in a way; you’re taking from the rich and giving to the poorer.
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well how far the package goes and what we’re able to will be very much a function of what can be done with their support for measures in the budget. That’s why it’s an open invitation. We issued that invitation. I’m pleased that Kate and I will meet next week. Hopefully we can get to a similar place that when we were Opposition we were able to do for the previous government on aged care and the NDIS.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
This is means testing, isn’t it? There are sliding scales of benefits, but you’re means testing those sliding scales?
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well there is already a means testing along those lines. You have the childcare benefit and rebate. When you put those two systems together, you have a system not unlike what the Productivity Commission has recommended, so I don’t think there is any real change there. The question is whether the subsidies taper off to zero at any one point. The Commission hasn’t recommended that. The current system doesn’t provide for that.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
One issue providers have raised, they are saying you have to set a medium price. If you do that, then by definition, there will be some people who pay significantly above the medium price; there’ll be some who will pay less. Those who now pay above the medium price will end up being worse off, no matter what their income?
SCOTT MORRISON:
Well what the Commission has recommended is a benchmark price. Currently the way the rebate works is you get 50 per cent back on whatever the fee is. This I believe has had an inflationary impact on the price of child care and where you’ve got taxpayers paying subsidies for Zumba classes – which was the famous anecdote that came through the various inquiries. That’s not something I believe taxpayers want to pay for. What the Commission is saying is you need to set a benchmark price which deals with the core cost of providing childcare, because what we need to do is put downward pressure on the rising cost…
BARRIE CASSIDY:
That’s the same as a medium price, isn’t it? A benchmark price?
SCOTT MORRISON:
They have suggested a benchmark price. There are a number of ways to set a benchmark; they’ve put forward one option. But we’ve got to put downward pressure on the rising cost of childcare. I mean it went up by over 50 per cent on the previous government, they made changes to increase the quality of childcare, and that’s a good thing, but it has come at a price. We now have to address the affordability, because families want quality childcare, but they also want affordability childcare. We don’t want a gold plated system that no one can afford.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Sometimes it is not because of the gold plated system that people pay above the medium price because they live in inner city areas or high demand areas. Sometimes that’s what drives the price and those people will be worse off.
SCOTT MORRISON:
There are issues around the supply and price of childcare in different areas, but I make this observations from if Commission’s report; it was found in the area of most disadvantaged areas that actually private sector providers were providing lower prices to families in those areas. But the Commission has always also suggested that over the top of their general subsidy system, that you need to address the pockets of disadvantage right across.
And it’s not just limited to inner city areas or remote or rural areas. There are pockets of access issues, it’s not widespread and to say there’s a general access or universal access problem, the Commission didn’t support that view. It is far more specific.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Have you got a time frame on this? When do you hope to deliver?
SCOTT MORRISON:
We hope to bring this package together over the next few weeks and months in the lead up to the budget. It will be a standalone package. It will be the first instalment of the families’ stream of measures that we are looking to introduce.
There is a jobs package also, there’s a small businesses package and of course there’s a family stream of initiatives which are all designed to do one thing, and that is to help families stay in work, get back to work, particularly for those who for this is not a choice, but an absolute necessity.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Just a couple of questions to end up on, but Peta Credlin, the Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister, is in the news again this weekend. She will be again tomorrow. And yet the Prime Minister is absolutely steadfast, he is sticking with her. Should he do something about that situation?
SCOTT MORRISON:
I don’t run commentaries on staff Barrie. I mean, what the Prime Minister does is his business. He doesn’t lecture me on my staff, I don’t lecture him on his. Because it’s not relevant. What’s relevant is the work we are doing.
I mean this week we had the major report on childcare from the Productivity Commission. Earlier in the week we were dealing with issues around deeming rates, which was giving additional support to people on part pensions.
We’re getting on with the job Barrie. I know others are going to want to go into the days of our lives type commentary of things happening with staffers. Frankly I’m not interested because I’ve got a job to do, the Prime Minister’s got a job to do. And that’s what the Australian people expect us to focus on and I suspect they suspect the media to focus on the job the job that needs to be done too.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
But it’s not about staffing, it’s about how government operates, does the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff have too much clout, too much authority?
SCOTT MORRISON:
That’s not my reading of the situation. The Prime Minister’s the Prime Minister, he’s the one in charge of this Government. He’s the one directing the traffic and calling the shots as it should be and the ministers are doing the same things in their portfolios every single day of the week. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what my colleagues are doing and that’s what the Australian people would expect us to do.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Is there any possibility of the leadership question being revisited before the budget?
SCOTT MORRISON:
I don’t believe so and I don’t see why it would be.
What we are doing is getting on with the job of good government that we’re elected to do.
And in our first instalment over the first year and a half we have had major successes. Stopping the boats being one of course, but also on the issue of expenditure, we’ve reduced the real growth in expenditure in the last budget from over 3.5 per cent under the previous government to an average of one per cent over the budget in the forward estimates. Now we’re getting Labor’s reckless spending under control. We will continue to do that, but we will do this in an incremental way which takes the families in particular of Australia with us as we deliver for them, but deliver against the enormous budget task and the mess that we’ve been left by Labor.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
So those behind the New South Wales election are comfortable enough with the Prime Minister staying where he is, with the election weeks away?
SCOTT MORRISON:
Of course, we’re all out there campaigning with our State colleagues and Mike Baird is doing a fantastic job here in New South Wales. He’s a real vision for the future of New South Wales. And I think that is being embraced by people right across the State.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
And yet the awkward situation you have is that MPs on the public record say that they will revisit it at some point, that judgments will be made about the Prime Minister beyond the budget depending on how well he sells it.
SCOTT MORRISON:
I’m not feeling any awkwardness. What I’m feeling at the moment is the need for us to put a families package in place, a childcare package in place, which helps families make the decisions they need to make about their budgets so they can go back to work when they need to and they can provide for their families. That’s what I’m focussed on, that’s what the Government’s focused on.
BARRIE CASSIDY:
Minister, thanks for your time this morning.
SCOTT MORRISON:
Thanks a lot Barrie, good to be with you.