Sky News – Richo and Jones
E&OE
ALAN JONES:
Welfare – you’re the minister for welfare. The welfare bill is going to up 6.1% this year, 35% of all your spending and about $150 billion, can we keep going? A 6.1% increase this year, can we keep going down that track?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well you just can’t continue to grow at that rate. It’s one of the highest rates of growth in government spending. I mean one in five Australians of working age are on some sort of payment and that is a lot of people. Now there are people in the system who need support and I believe taxpayers are happy to support those people who really need it but of the $150 billion we spend we need to make sure that’s targeting those who really need it, we need to have the integrity of the system that those who are taking advantage of it we are able to ping and be able to deal with but we need to make sure the system is sustainable. In a number of years we are going to have to absorb the NDIS, now that is only 40% funded by the levy for the NDIS and everyone believes – and I believe – that the NDIS is a good initiative but you know you can’t just make the money fall from the sky to pay for it, it’s just not a bottomless pit. I know that’s the way the Labor party spends money but that’s not how the Coalition spends money and we need to make provisions for it and we need to be able to fund it so it can help the people who really need it.
RICHARDSON:
But Scott, I think if I’m right, about one in three dollars in the budget is now in your portfolio. Welfare takes up one in three I think, isn’t it?
MINISTER MORRISON:
That’s right.
JONES:
35% is one in three – the point I made in the beginning, but don’t worry about it.
RICHARDSON:
Well I missed you because I don’t listen to you, you don’t matter. You’re the Mal Brough of the programme. But just getting back to it, when you fold NDIS into the 35%–
JONES:
Thank you.
RICHARDSON:
I tell you, I can’t believe it. When you fold that in, what percentage would you be then? It must just get bigger and bigger?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well we’ve got to find about another $7 billion a year or thereabouts to fund the NDIS on top of that so it’s just another big part of the system and that will continue to grow as time goes on.
JONES:
How much did you say? I understood it was $11 billion and by 2018-2020 it will go to $24 million.
MINISTER MORRISON:
What I’m talking about is the Commonwealth’s component of it that isn’t covered by the levy, so that’s the bit that not funded and that’s what has to be found and the Labor party is running around saying “oh it’s fully funded” and all this, and that’s just not true. It’s a very worthy programme which does have bipartisan support and what we need is bipartisan support to have the reforms that can enable us to absorb big important programmes like that. Now we’ve got range of things out there on the table at the moment that we’re trying to deal with. We’re trying to deal with the issue of young people coming out of school or are at a young age, under 30, and getting them into work. We’re trying to work on how we get family parents, particularly women, back into the workforce after they’ve had children and childcare is essential to that issue and then we’ve got an ageing population and that’s not a death sentence for a country, I actually think it’s a big opportunity and we need to be encouraging people, voluntarily, to be able to be working longer and having the opportunity to provide for themselves longer because we’ve got an ageing population but I think that’s an ageing boom that can actually be a very positive thing for Australia, not necessarily the doomsday scenarios that others put.
JONES:
This has all got to be put into an international environment, hasn’t it? Because we’ve just seen an election in Greece where they’re $440 odd billion in debt, they want to forgo that debt, the Syriza party ran a campaign saying we’re anti-austerity and the Greek people voted in favour of that. Spain is in exactly the same position, there’s another anti-austerity party there saying we don’t want to take this medicine, we expect someone else to pay the debt. Now Tony Abbott, the much maligned Abbott, said on Australia Day, if we aren’t capable of making tough decisions, this country, even this great country could succumb to the European disease and the point I’m making is without tough decisions, the risk is we’ll become a second rate country living on our luck. Now Shepherd in the Commission of Audit said we’d have to cut $70 billion of spending if we were going to get back on an even keel. Where do you get that money from? Where do you cut?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well particularly in the welfare sector you can actually get longer term savings by investing in each of the areas that I just mentioned and let me take childcare for example, and the way that’s been handled. What we’ve been doing, we’re spending $7 billion a year on supporting payments for childcare. Ten years ago it was around $1.5 billion and in a few years’ time it’s going to get up over $11 billion. Now that investment to date with the rebate – the Rudd government put it up from 30% to 50% – we didn’t get one person back to work as a result of that. I mean we’re paying this money out and we’re not getting a return of getting people back into the workforce. We’re also seeing the prices go up because we’ve got a rebate payment which works a bit like the first home owners grant and arguably is quite inflationary and so the government is paying more, families are paying more and I don’t think the country is really getting the dividend out of the system. So we need to undertake some reforms in that area that help parents, and particularly women, who are in those particularly middle to lower incomes, to help them make the decision to go back to work and not spend all their money on just paying for the childcare because why would they do that? If that’s the situation they’re in, they will go back to welfare payments and they will be on welfare for life. Now the other thing the previous government did on childcare – just let me finish this point Graham, sorry – but what they did on the cost, is they put in a quality framework, now I admit that that will have boosted the quality of care in a lot of these centres but at the same time, it has come at a real cost and they’ve locked up all of that framework, which has ratios of carers to students and teachers and so on, but it’s locked up in state legislation now which no-one can change, it’s highly inflexible and that cost is now built in. Now that’s a given in the system, but parents and the government will pay more for it. We’ve got to get the system under control and get to helping parents to go back to work so they can work and support themselves and their families.
RICHARDSON:
Look, everyone agrees with that but I mean the problem is that you argue against yourself. Here you are, that’s all very good, I agree with every word of it, but for the last eight months you’ve supported a scheme that was going to spend $20 billion on Paid Parental Leave and at the time you’re telling us that we’ve got to make all these savings, only yesterday did you get off it. I mean don’t you think you’ve been arguing against yourselves on things like that and Medicare co-payments and going to put all of that into a research fund that’s bigger than anything else in the world, I mean don’t you think that you’ve really got to sit down with Australians, have a proper conversation, forget all that stuff and say look we’ll stop the profligacy of our own before we start trying to cut you and you didn’t do that.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well Graham, I’m pleased that you support the government’s decision not to proceed with the Paid Parental Leave and you’ve just have to leave that one alone now because we’re not proceeding with that and we’re not proceeding with it for an important reason because we believe we need to put the focus on the support going into childcare because that’s what we believe will have the biggest impact on supporting families by allowing particularly mothers to go back to work and to be able to have two incomes which can support that family.
JONES:
Can we just go back though to the point that you made because sometimes though that’s overlooked. If I could just say to Graham I hate to give him any credit at all but I think it is true that government if they’re going to ask us to tighten our belts, must stop spending and I thought Tony Abbott made that point excellently yesterday. He said what is affordable has to be the propriety, you might like it ideologically to be sound but if we can’t do it, we can’t do it. On the other hand, the Medicare co-payment is something that the Bob Hawke government introduced in 1991 with bipartisan support, revisited now and Labor oppose it. But just come back to childcare, isn’t the simple statement that government – and these are both governments – trying to do the right thing, say the rebate will be up to $7,500, thinking they’re helping the parents, the parent gets the rebate and away they go to the childcare centre and the fees have gone up! The fees have gone up because they say “Mr and Mrs Richardson can afford more now for childcare because the government is paying more”. How do you stop this exploitation? How do you stop this happening, where, because the government pays more in a rebate, the childcare costs axiomatically go up?
MINISTER MORRISON:
The first place you have got to start is working with the stakeholders and the providers and working with families frankly and get an agreement on what we are trying to fix because if you go and put a childcare package in you will have a range of things people want to see happen but what I am finding is there is quite a consensus when I talk to those involved in early childhood education, when I talk to the childcare providers, when I talk to families they want the system to be simpler. They need the sense that we are putting a lid on the price pressures that are there and I believe the rebate and the way it is structured really does add to that. The way you make the payments can also be an issue. You may not know this but the majority of people who take the cash directly through the child care benefit don’t have it paid to the centre, they take it themselves – they are actually on lower incomes and then on occasions I notice that centres are having difficulties with bad debts and that puts the cost up. So the system needs to be simpler and it needs to be fairer.
JONES:
But Scott what about this national quality framework where the previous government said you have to have a virtual PHD to be a child carer. Shouldn’t there be a provision whereby the parent chooses and if the parent wants to say I am happy to use the neighbour to look after the kids while I am at work that is a parental choice and we will provide some support to that family rather than saying you have to plonk yourself in a child care centre with a PHD.
RICHARDSON:
I can’t believe it, you just made a good point. I agree with that 100%.
MINISTER MORRISON:
The Productivity Commission in the report they…
RICHARDSON:
I think Alan makes a good point. This idea that everyone has to be trained up to the nines to look after a two year old is nonsense.
JONES:
Yeah.
MINISTER MORRISON:
The previous government put that in place and they have locked all that regulation up now in state-based arrangements that basically if you want to change that you have go and join the Victorian Parliament. So that is not an option that is available to government but that said quality of child care is important but what we now need to address is how we deal with the price pressures, how we make sure the support – which is $7 billion a year – so that is a big bill to the taxpayer. We need to be getting the best outcome from that that we can. The purpose of it is to help families after they have had children for mum or dad, whoever was the primary carer, to get back to work as soon as they can. Because this is the risk – if they don’t go back to work and they are on payments sitting at home then they may never go back to work and that is a family on the taxpayer for a very long time and that is what needs to be changed. Now I am hoping – maybe Graham can pass this on to his friends in the Labor Party – but I am hoping that we can get to the same sort of consensus on a set of child care arrangements with the opposition that they are able to reach with us on the NDIS.
RICHARDSON:
I am happy to speak to them on your behalf – Alan you have one more go and then I have got to have one crack on leadership before he goes.
JONES:
I just want to say about what befuddles people out there, the Disability Support Pension, we are all in favour of supporting disabled people, the Disability Support Pension is costing us $16 billion a year. It is hard for Australians to believe there are 800,000 on the Disability Support Pension and 2,000 every week go onto it. Hasn’t there got to be some serious investigation?
RICHARDSON:
And some of them fight in Syria.
JONES:
Well yes some of them are Mr Monis. Hasn’t there got to be some serious investigation as to the eligibility of these people for this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
We have already taken action for those coming in and right now it is applying to those under the age of 35. They have got to go to a government doctor – a government approved doctor – not some mate who will sign something off. From 1 July it is applying right across the board. Those integrity measures deal with those looking to come onto the system. So where they are fair dinkum they will be able to come on to the system. The integrity of that is very important though. Under the previous government the number of people on the DSP went up by over 100,000. We need to get these sorts of growth in all of these areas/benefits under control. That means integrity of the measures, targeting of the measures and means that if you are more effective on the targeting you give actually more support to those who really need it and those who don’t then aren’t walking away with the taxpayers dollar because every benefit you pay is paid by a taxpayer. The money didn’t fall form the sky into someone’s lap. It is paid for by a taxpayer and a taxpayer has to have a voice in what they are paying for in a welfare system.
RICHARDSON:
Ok. We have got to go so I have got to ask the question and the difficulty you have got is you have had several backbenchers coming out tonight calling for Tony Abbott to resign. I don’t know what Mal Brough said, nobody else does either, it was incomprehensible. But one thing is for sure – a very senior member of your government told me today that there is no question now that Tony Abbott does not have a majority in your party room and that is now the message that has gone around to all of the journos in Canberra – the dogs are barking and the caravan is not moving on. Now one wonders given this total mess the only reason there is not a challenge on Tuesday is no one can work out who is going to be the candidate – whether it is Julie Bishop or Malcolm Turnbull both of whom are now trying to say they won’t run. It is a shocking mess, a terrible distraction. It is what destroyed Labor governments. What are you going to do about it?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I am just going to get on with the job of running the country for the purposes of Australian families and small business and growing the economy and keeping Australians safe. That is what the Prime Minister said yesterday…
RICHARDSON:
But how do you stop…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Graham it was probably the longest question asked today…
RICHARDSON:
No it wasn’t, nowhere near it. I will tell you what it is…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Let me answer the question…
RICHARDSON:
You are not answering the question.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well Graham you have not even let me get more than three words out so give me a crack and I will go to it.
JONES:
He does interfere like this.
MINISTER MORRISON:
What I am going to do is get on with the job that we started when we were elected. We have done the things we said we were going to do about stopping the boats and getting rid of the carbon tax and the mining tax. We have got the free trade agreements in place. Last year more than 500 jobs were being created every single day. That is three times what was happening in 2013. So we have got runs on the board and we need to continue to remind people of that but then we need to set out and have everyone understand the agenda we are now pursuing which is consistent with where we have been. It is exactly what the Prime Minister said yesterday – grow the economy, keep Australians safe, families and child care and small business.
RICHARDSON:
You are like your boss, you are in denial. You are sitting there telling me how wonderful…
MINISTER MORRISON:
No, no we have got a plan. That is what we have got and the Labor Party Graham doesn’t have a plan.
RICHARDSON:
If it is that good a plan why do more than half your own party room want to get rid of your Prime Minister and why in every poll do you trail so badly? Somewhere along the line the plan went wrong.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Graham you must be running the numbers, I am not aware of the numbers. If you are running numbers in the Liberal Party that is quite an interesting thing but what we are focused on as a government, today – we had a long session in our Cabinet today which was focussed on the challenges of growing the economy and dealing with the issues that families are facing and spending a lot of time on the challenges facing small business. Now that is what we are doing. I don’t know what Bill Shorten is doing. He is looking increasingly smug and cocky every day because he thinks he has got this thing in the bag…
RICHARDSON:
Your mess your mob are making of this, why wouldn’t he?
MINISTER MORRISON:
And he can just coast to an election win like he thinks has happened in other places but this is the issue – we have got a plan, people know what it is. If Bill Shorten has a plan, that is the price of admission to the national debate. Otherwise this guy is just skiting and getting cockier and cockier every single day.
RICHARDSON:
Until you sort out your own problems no one will even ask him what he is doing. This is the problem with the Liberal Party – you are the issue.
MINISTER MORRISON:
It doesn’t sound like you are about to ask him what he is going to do Graham.
RICHARDSON:
I beg your pardon?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I will certainly be asking what he is doing. I will be able to tell him what I am doing in child care and I would rather finish on this note, and I am quite genuine about this – I am keen to work on a childcare package that is bipartisan. Now if the Labor Party wants to be part of that then that would be great but if they want to involve playing political football with child care and the support that families get to help parents get back into work after they have had kids that is their call. That is what Bill Shorten and Kate Ellis were doing today. I would encourage them and invite them not to go down that path and be part of a solution in bringing their ideas forward.
RICHARDSON:
Alright I have got to say Scott I am happy to be a highly unpaid consultant to help you in this endeavour. It sounds like a laudable aim. Alright thanks very much.
JONES:
Thank you Scott.
RICHARDSON:
Always a pleasure to have you Scott. I wish you luck you are going to need it in the coming weeks, I wish it to you.
MINISTER MORRISON:
I will leave you guys to get back to it.