2GB Ray Hadley
E&OE
MINISTER MORRISON:
Good morning Ray and g’day to all the new listeners up in Queensland.
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah and Happy Australia Day to you as well.
MINISTER MORRISON:
And to you mate.
HADLEY:
Now, the movement of Social Services. I’ve read a bit about you while I was away. You attract some publicity, reading Samantha Maiden’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, there’s people within your own party who aren’t happy with you and want to knife you – the price of success can be costly sometimes, can’t it?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well look, politics is a rough game and people are involved, you know, but I’ve just got to focus on one thing and that’s getting the job done. I was very pleased with what we were able to achieve in immigration and I want to thank also all your listeners for their support over a long period of time, not just while we were in government, but over five years we campaigned to get the policy back that we knew would stop the boats, they have stopped the boats and the deaths at sea. All the children are off Christmas Island now, they’ll soon, I’m told, be out of detention and I think that’s all great. We achieved a lot there and that’s great but there’s a lot to achieve in Social Services as well and I’m looking forward to really getting into that now which I have been over the break.
HADLEY:
OK. It’s a job and a half. Was it your wish to go to Social Services as opposed to Defence?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well my policy on these things is that you never really have expectations around this because you do what the Prime Minister asks you do and you serve at frankly his pleasure. So every job in the Cabinet, every job in the Ministry is an important job. This is an incredibly important job; it makes up more than one third of the budget, $150 billion a year is spent in this space every year. It covers everything, from dealing with multiple ethnic communities through to ageing and childcare of course will be a very central component of what we need to do and particularly soon.
HADLEY:
One of the things we need to address is welfare, now get a lot of mail – emails and snail mail from listeners – about the National Disability Insurance Scheme and inefficiencies they see in the policies that will be there and on the other hand I get a lot of complaints about people getting welfare that don’t deserve welfare. So I guess it’s a balancing act. What we don’t want to do is disadvantage those that need it, but we want the bludgers back off it don’t we?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Australians support a welfare system that helps people in need. There’s no doubt about that, that’s who we are. It’s one of the things I think we celebrate on a day like today, the sort of nation we are. At the same time, we’re not mugs, and we don’t appreciate people who might be taking a loan of the system and you’ve got to get the integrity right on those things and you’ve got to have dignity for the people who really need it and you make sure you help them, which is why I’m a big supporter of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This is a scheme that at all costs we will need to raise 50% more of the money that is needed to fund this scheme. It is not fully funded, only 40% of it is fully funded by the Commonwealth for our contribution so we’ve got to make room for about $6 billion or more worth of expenditure there. But you’ve also got to make it sustainable so you just can’t keep raising things, I know particularly those on the aged pension and others would like more and I know a lot of Australians would like to do that. You’ve got to make sure that all of these payments are sustainable. I mean they’re increasing at a rate of over 6% per year in some cases and that just makes it very hard to make sure you can afford it not just for this generation but for generations to come.
HADLEY:
The one that appears to be abused the most is the DSP – the Disability Support Pension – which is perhaps the biggest growth industry in this country over the past 4 or 5 years. What do you do, do you just wind that up? I know that there’ll be designated doctors from here on in, and we mentioned that before Christmas, and that’s one of the things I said, we spoke about this before you came to the portfolio, about there must be a recurring theme with the same number of doctors, particularly in parts of Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, who just keep signing the same forms and getting the same sort of people on the DSP.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well we’ve already been rolling out the reforms that you’ve got to go to a government doctor to get on the DSP now. There is a lot of focus that has been placed on those who might be coming in but equally I think we need to look in all cases, doesn’t matter where you are in the system, if you can work more, if you have the capability to work more then that is what we need to encourage you to do. There are a whole bunch of reasons for doing that. Obviously, the more you are working the more you are engaged, the more you are contributing, the better it is for you. But it is also good for the taxpayer because people support the welfare system but we have to remember every single welfare dollar paid out has to be paid for by another taxpayer. I know that those who receive benefits have a lot of champions in the community and they do great work but the taxpayers have to have a champion too. They have to get what they are paying for and they want the people who need it most to get the support.
HADLEY:
Email – ‘how much does the Minister want the public to let him know who is ripping off the welfare system? We have reported people in the past, it doesn’t seem to make much difference’. I know we have a number here for Centrelink fraud – 131 524, but will there be a more fervent attempt to get these things under control?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well yes and thanks for reading out that number. Yes, of course we want to know and one of the things I will be looking to do over the next few months is how we can strengthen the compliance, enforcement and investigative capability of my Department and the Department of Human Services to make sure we do have a strong welfare cop on the beat. I notice over the summer some people have taken offence to me using that phrase well I make no apology for it. Of course the taxpayer has to have a strong welfare cop. That is not to say that there aren’t large numbers of people, millions of people who are necessarily supported by this system. They do not have to worry about anything but those who we all know are in the community who may be taking advantage of this system well they should look out.
HADLEY:
Ok that number again 131 524. Look I got shouted down in a discussion with the Prime Minister before I went on leave giving him I think a D in relation to achieving things as the Prime Minister. I spoke to a lot of knockabout mates over Christmas who are in the main are supporters of your government but really disappointed. They understand that you don’t have the numbers in the Senate to get legislation through but disappointed that you should as a government pursue these things in the knowledge you have to do deals with the devil to get them across the line and you have ended up with egg on your face as a government because we are going to do this, we are going to do that, we are going to do this, we are going to do that, without advising the Senate. You go to the Senate and they say chewie on your boot you are not going to do any of this. It makes you look silly.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Obviously we are going to have to work harder on the political management this year. We talked about what we achieved in immigration the boats stopping and the saving that flowed from that – $2.5 billion. But the carbon tax and mining tax did go, the introduction of government doctors for DSP that is in place. $3 billion or thereabouts of reforms went through in welfare that are savings to the budget. There are plenty of things that have actually happened but I think we would be unrealistic if we didn’t think these other matters sadly overshadowed what has been a year of very strong achievement. Now we need to work harder on that. I think we are very much getting the message about that, I am quite confident the Prime Minister is as well and I know our supporters in particular don’t want to see Bill Shorten come back into government. He was there in the last mess of a government. They know he doesn’t have a plan and know that he is just sitting back doing absolutely nothing. As a result we need to ensure we are out there performing well and most importantly getting things done because at the end of the day that is what matters in politics – you have got to get things done.
HADLEY:
We will talk to you next week, thanks for your time.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks a lot Ray.