No Jab, No Pay; Energy policy
E&OE
Subjects: No Jab, No Pay; Energy policy
KIERAN GILBERT:
First though, the Government ramping up its No Jab, No Pay policy, with new laws to dock welfare payments by $28 a fortnight for parents whose children don’t meet the immunisation requirements.
I spoke to the Minister Christian Porter.
MINISTER PORTER:
Part of the Government’s policy is to endeavour to move away from this old-fashioned welfare system, where we used to push taxpayer’s money out the door without expecting terribly much of people. And one of the basic things we expect is that if you’re receiving welfare that you should be vaccinating your children. The no pay part of the first formulation of this policy occurred at the end of the year in the form of a supplement. We’re strengthening up the process so that you stand to lose $28 a fortnight per child if you’re not doing the right thing and having your kids vaccinated. Now the theory behind that is that if you make the consequence of not vaccinating more immediate and more regular that will actually do even better than the good results, in fact very good results, we’ve had so far in lifting up vaccination rates to what the doctors rather unglamorously call heard immunity. But when we reach 95 per cent, we have a very high guarantee of eradicating diseases.
KIERAN GILBERT:
So that’s the crucial number, 95 per cent of the population? So this is also going to bring in- or bring back into the system, those who receive payments but earn upwards of $80,000 a year, because they had lost their end of year supplement, therefore they’d lost the capacity for the Government to apply the stick if they didn’t have their kids immunised.
MINISTER PORTER:
Yep, that’s essentially right, although the policy is still applying because those people haven’t lost the supplement yet; but had we not made this change, they would’ve dropped out of the system. And there was no good reason to think that we should be treating a family differently because they were under or over an $80,000 income threshold. So this allows us to keep all of those people inside the system. And the results we’ve had: so there are three key age groups, and we’ve lifted them up to 93.8 per cent, 90.86 per cent, and 93.55 per cent; which were significant increases. So we’re edging very close to that magic 95 per cent.
KIERAN GILBERT:
That’s encouraging. Why are families still not having their kids vaccinated? Is it the false argument, the propaganda put out by anti-vaxxers which is resonating, or what’s the reason?
MINISTER PORTER:
It’s twofold, and we’ve had 210,000 families – who previously were not vaccinating – now vaccinating, which is an outstanding result. But there are two groups of people that it appears aren’t vaccinating; people who buy into that utter rubbish around vaccinations. I mean vaccinations are safe, and they are absolutely, well and truly in their best interests.
KIERAN GILBERT:
And those arguments have been debunked completely.
Uphill and down dale. Even still, that group, many of the anti-vaxxers on those sort of grounds have changed their mind when they are looking at the potential loss of a payment. But there were many, many Australian families whom I think the fear of disease had somehow drifted away from their lives, and in the modern world…complacency.
MINISTER PORTER: Effectively, yes. And that group has shown very strong response to the fact that if you stand to lose a payment because you don’t vaccinate your children, you are better off vaccinating your children.
KIERAN GILBERT:
But the problem is though, a lot of the cohort of anti-vaxxers aren’t on welfare.
MINISTER PORTER:
No, that’s correct, although many anti-vaxxers who specifically registered as conscientious objectors have changed their status because of this policy. So yes, we’re not hitting everyone, but you know, there are…
KIERAN GILBERT:
It’s having an impact on families?
MINISTER PORTER:
…there are millions of families on Family Tax Benefit, and as I say, we previously have had an old fashioned welfare system that pushed money out the door, taxpayer’s money, without expecting anywhere near enough. And this, and other things that we’re announcing today around the deductibility of rent, and then things like the cashless welfare card, and then policies like trials on drug testing; we are moving away from a system with low expectations, to one where we say if you receive taxpayer’s money, there are certain basic things that we’ll expect from you.
KIERAN GILBERT:
Finally, as a member of the Turnbull cabinet, I’m interested in your view when it comes to energy policy. Because it seems to me that there are some within your party room that regardless of what Josh Frydenberg comes up with in terms of a response – whether it’s called a clean energy target, reliable target, whatever it is – that they won’t cop it. And one of them, of course Tony Abbott who’s addressing the climate sceptics forum in London next month, there’s nothing that is really going to placate the likes of Mr Abbott and co.
MINISTER PORTER:
Well look, I can’t claim to know Tony Abbott’s advanced dairy, so I’ll take your word on that. But look, Josh has a difficult job, but what he has clearly as a goal here, is to structure a policy that obviously can be moved through our party room after endorsement by cabinet, and then is capable of rallying a level of bipartisanship. Because the great failure in energy policy has been because the two sides of politics have been unable to settle on a middle ground. There hasn’t been the certainty of an investment scenario that has allowed large companies to invest large amounts of money in large baseload generation. That has essentially been the failure in energy policy. And that’s a failure that as a Coalition Government, we are seeking to remedy.
Now if you’re putting to me, Kieran, that that is far from the easiest of talks, while I think historically your argument is a fair one. But that doesn’t make that task impossible. And I think also, when you look at people from both sides, there is going to have to be some give. And as a government, we are not for or against any particular energy source particularly. What we say is that we have to have a certainty around the framework for investment. And that’s what, I think, is largely at the base of Finkel’s recommendations, but particularly the 50th one around a clean energy target.
(ENDS)