2GB – The Ray Hadley Morning Show
E&OE
Subjects: Citizenship; NDIS; Cashless Welfare Card
RAY HADLEY:
Well, it’s a bit of a mine field – the National Insurance Disability Scheme – and there’s all sorts of arguments about how it’s going to be funded, which we won’t be discussing today.
But the $22 billion NDIS was introduced by the Labor-Gillard Government in 2012. By the time it’s finished being rolled out across Australia in 2020, it will be supporting around, almost 500,000 people with disabilities.
But there are grave concerns the NDIS is causing less experienced, less qualified staff and even dodgy operators to pour into the sector – and I’ve mentioned that to the Minister previously, and we’ve had a whole range of discussions about that – and it’s a bit like the BER, or even the school halls fiasco – the Building Education Revolution – on steroids. The pink batts, even, on steroids.
Disability providers are being told the only way services can continue on budget is to cut the staff costs including training and supervision. Now, it started the conversation with Daryl, in May, who self manages his NDIS, rather than relying on a provider. Now Daryl was really reasonable, his son has cerebral palsy – he said he’s never been asked for receipts when claiming – and we’re not talking about a couple of hundred dollars, we’re talking about tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. He asked why, and was told – well sometime you may be audited.
Now that was ringing the alarm bells for me given what happened with the rorting of the pink batts. We had blokes going round with vans with pink batts and throwing them into the roof, disappearing into the ether and claiming the money – and we’ve never caught up with them.
The man responsible for the NDIS is Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter, and he joins me in the studio.
Minister, the first question has to be – have you checked your ancestry?
MINISTER PORTER:
Yeah, I’m very happy to say I have a very un-exotic, several generation, Australian family. So I’m not in any jeopardy there.
But it is obviously a set of circumstances no one would have anticipated. And every government has challenges they anticipate, and those that they don’t, and this is one that wasn’t seen.
RAY HADLEY:
Just away from the NDIS, which is why you’re here – but there’s just been an announcement on Sky News that Nick Xenophon, because of his Cypriot background, I understand he’s now checking with the British Home Office about his standing, and invariably when that happens the next thing is, he comes out tomorrow and says – by the way I’m referring myself to the High Court. And I have no doubt that there will be people from the Labor side of politics who have time to think about it and check things and by next week we’ll have another couple there, and maybe some more from your side of politics. Legally it’s a bit of a mine field – I looked at that decision back in the 1990’s when they looked at a Liberal and a Labor candidate in Victoria…
MINISTER PORTER:
[INAUDIBLE] This is the Sykes and Cleary decision. There was a Greek person and someone from Switzerland.
RAY HADLEY:
You’re 100 per cent right. Your legal background comes in handy.
The thing about it is, there was – William Dean, was the dissenting judge in the High Court – I think it was 3 – 1 majority. And he said no, he said no. these people can’t be expected to trace back to their fathers, mothers, uncles…
And then you’ve got the other thing which I mentioned to you off-air, one of my staff’s mum, born of a British mother and Australian father, and until 1983 the difference was, if the father – like Fiona Nash – had been British, well by descent she’s a British citizen, but because it’s mum, she’s not. That’s sexist in its purist form.
MINISTER PORTER:
Indeed.
RAY HADLEY:
I mean, we can’t second guess the High Court, but you’d like to think if someone had the time, or the inclination, to go back since federation and see how many members of Parliament – that’s probably not relevant to the debate today – ministers, or even prime ministers were actually dual citizens without knowing it – unknowingly – it’s a really complex area.
MINISTER PORTER:
Now, as you point out you can go onto the internet and try and find these things out, but in 1952, that was a somewhat more difficult process.
We’ve got a process in place to deal with this, and that sits now around the referral that we, the Government, have undertaken through Parliament for the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce to be before the High Court to have the matter fully settled. We’re very confident that in the circumstances that he finds himself in, that he won’t be excluded from sitting in Parliament, but that’s something that we want clarified by the High Court.
But that process will now allow anyone who has this question accompanying them, whether that’s Nick Xenophon or someone from Labor, or someone from the Nationals or otherwise, to be a part of that process – and simply have clarity around it which is the best I think you can do in all the circumstances.
RAY HADLEY:
Given your knowledge of the legal system – people have said why don’t they all just say “check me out” – all of them?
But every case is different, that’s the problem with it. Barnaby’s different to Fiona to a certain extent given one’s New Zealand and one’s Great Britain. Larissa Waters in entirely different being born in Canada, Ludlam again from New Zealand, Canavan of Italian decent. The whole system… is there one size fits all for all of this? Can we make an adjudication based on one case and say “that’s the precedent, that’s what happens” or not?
MINISTER PORTER:
Well you can have the rule, but you need to apply it to different factual circumstances and the High Court can hear several people in the one matter and consider what the rule is and how it should be interpreted and apply it to each individual in the one matter. So there is an opportunity to have all of this sorted out in that one High Court hearing.
But you’re right, they’re all different. The two people in that case that you just mentioned, one from Greece, one from Switzerland, who lost elections but were arguing the toss – they both were born in respectively Greece and Switzerland, they knew very well that they’d had citizenship, and the question was whether or not they’d taken reasonable steps to denounce their citizenship. As you point out, the situation with the Deputy Prime Minister and Fiona Nash is very different because I don’t think anyone disputes their bonafides – that they simply did not know.
RAY HADLEY:
Then you’ve got Larissa Waters, and you mightn’t agree with the politics but being born in Canada to Australian parents who were over there studying and one week it’s opting in and one week its opting out. I wouldn’t expect, even if she was pre-warned about it, but it’s a complicated thing if you’re a child and you leave there when you’re under one and you come back to Australia – the expectation is you’re an Australian.
MINISTER PORTER:
I agree. It’s different, yet again, from someone who wasn’t born in a country and had a citizenship conferred by a process that they’ve had nothing – no knowledge about. But nevertheless you point out that Larissa Waters situation was not as straight forward as everyone considered it was when she revealed it and made the announcements around it. And you might argue that perhaps she was a bit premature in the course that she took.
RAY HADLEY:
OK, back to the reason you’re here, the NDIS.
Now we had a yarn about this – I’m still getting complaints.
I offered my listeners the opportunity to send me emails yesterday knowing we were talking today, and they’ve all come in. And strangely enough, most of them are about cystic fibrosis.
Now, I declare an interest, I’m an ambassador for cystic fibrosis, so through my involvement with a couple of very young people who’ve now passed, this is typical from a parent – a mum. Why do children with CF lose their HHC at age 16, when in fact CF is a progressive disease and its get worse with age. Past age 16 is when we need it most – the NDIS has come in but doesn’t cover our kids/adults with CF. They say that CF is not a disability, it’s a chronic illness.
You’re talking about people, parents with children with cystic fibrosis – they’ve got the drama of a child perhaps not living beyond their teenage years – that’s point one, unless they get a full lung and heart transplant – double lung transplant, possible a heart transplant as well. And then having to deal with their children, as adults, relying upon them in every possible way throughout their existence – and depending on the degree of it, there are some people with CF who lead, what we’d call normal lives, but the vast majority don’t, they have to be treated in a certain way. They’ve got to take drugs, they can be hospitalised on a regular basis – is there a reason why cystic fibrosis doesn’t come under the NDIS umbrella?
MINISTER PORTER:
Well someone who has cystic fibrosis can be an entrant and transition into the NDIS, but the short answer to your question is that it depends on the severity of the outcomes for the individual. So, as you noted, it’s a progressive disease. When we assess people to transition into the NDIS, there is a list of conditions which effectively grant you entry into the NDIS by virtue of your condition appearing on that list, and then there are other conditions, like cystic fibrosis which are progressive, so it would depend on the severity of the impact on the individual at a point in time that you would be considering moving them into the NDIS.
I can get precise numbers for you about how many applicants have had cystic fibrosis, how many of those applicants have been accepted – but the rough answer to the question is – that in the more severe cases of cystic fibrosis, they would move into the NDIS. In the earlier stages of the disease, when its less severe, they are part of the mainstream health delivery service in Australia that’s obviously operated jointly by states and territories.
RAY HADLEY:
But the point the mum makes is at 16 they’re not getting better, they’re getting worse. So I think we’ll go A about T – if you’ll pardon the coarse expression – we should be looking after them more as they get older, not when they’re younger. I mean it’s difficult when they’re younger, it’s more difficult when they get older, because progressively they’re getting worse.
MINISTER PORTER:
That’s correct, but that type of looking after, for people in the early stages of the disease, would happen inside the normal GP and hospital settings. So it would be through the normal run of health delivery services, rather than the NDIS specifically.
But with any individual matters that you’ve got here, obviously if you’re and the person are happy to give us the details, we can go and drill down into each individual case, double check the way in which they have been assessed and make sure that it’s in accordance with all the principles and standards that we apply and try and consistently apply to a high standard.
RAY HADLEY:
These are really particular, and I’m sorry to give you these without notice, and I don’t expect an answer today…
MINISTER PORTER:
It’s alright; I’ll do my best with them…
RAY HADLEY:
But I will pass the emails on and, you know, they’re legitimate complaints.
This one from a mum in the ACT – my son is eight with a permanent and significant disability of genetic origin. Expected to pay the NDIS rate of $310 a day for a school holiday program – when A. other children pay the standard $70 a day and B. my son does not receive NDIS funding to cover the expense. His current NDIS plan was cut by $14, 000 – the cost of 12 weeks of school holidays – the service has continued to charge us the NDIS rate.
So, I think what she’s saying is – $310 a day because he’s got special needs, that’s what she gets charged by the program, but she doesn’t get compensated and they’ve knocked $14,000 off the top so that she’s stumping $14,000 for the boy to go to this special program during the 12 weeks of school holidays, even though the other children are charged $70 because they don’t have special needs. So we can’t be expecting the mum, in those circumstances, to stump up $310 a day can we?
MINISTER PORTER:
That’s not an uncomplicated one, and I’d like to have a bit of a good look at it, but, I would say that the essential principles there are that there are – say for instance a school holiday retreat or camp is being run, and it’s open to people who do not, and some who do, have a disability. It would often be the case that the cost per person is going to be lower for the people without a disability because they’re not receiving the intensity of support and attention and care and medical treatment that might occur. So that would explain why the costs would be higher for the person with the genetic difficulty who has a disability.
Now, generally speaking, if someone has come into the NDIS, an amount will be calculated for what’s the necessary and reasonable level of funding that should go for things like that school camp. Now it may be that the person in question thinks that that assessment has been too low, and obviously that’s something that we can have look it.
But this I think goes back to your overarching point – that the way in which a very large scheme like this, which will eventually expend $22 billion has to be kept in check to ensure that there isn’t overspending, that there isn’t price gouging, that there isn’t fraud – is that we are very careful that we only allocate to each individual who comes into the NDIS the appropriate amount for everything.
RAY HADLEY:
You’d need the wisdom of just about every person on earth to make sure the rorters don’t get what they’re not entitled to, and the poor buggers who deserve what they…
I mean she goes on, this mum, recently the same school holiday program announced it was closing down, effective immediately. I now have no care for my child during school holidays. The NDIA’s advice, I should use a support coordinator to find him alternative care arrangements; however our support care coordinator funding has also been removed from our son’s package. As a single, full-time, working mother, no family support, life is difficult. In some cases, the NDIS has made our lives even more so.
And that, you see, that’s the problem Minister. Every time we’re talking about – and I spoke to your Treasurer about this for years and years and years, and think you were in on some of this, immediately you find an opportunity to help the community, we’re overwhelmed by the rorters and the thieves, and the decent people seem to miss out because they’re not as productive in coming up with rorts to rort the system.
MINISTER PORTER:
Well I guess, two things – we’ve moved now, 100,000 people into the NDIS in a very short space of time. There’s a central tension between moving people in swiftly, but also making sure they’ve got high quality plans and proper support. So it is a massive venture. The last quarterly report came out, and well over 80 per cent of people who’ve had the experience of being transitioned in are either happy or very happy with the experience – but I’m not pretending that that doesn’t mean there are individuals out there who haven’t had perfectly, and high consistently good experiences, and so we need to look into those, like the one you’ve mentioned – which I will – but on the side of trying to have this run stringently and fairly, the two sides to that coin are that I often meet with service providers – because we fix the price for a service, and that will happen for the next three years as we transition people in. We do that to stop price gouging and practices of that type. So I meet with many service providers and they say – you’ve set the price for the service too low and it’s hard for us to deliver it at that price, and then you will speak sometimes to the people who receive the service and they go – well the service price is too high. So you’re always trying to balance those two things to find that right point where the service provider can properly provide a good quality service and be financially sustainable, and the person who has the monies allocated to them, to purchase that service, can get a proper service for a good price.
What happened previously of course, and why I think Ray this is a superior system, is none of us had any idea how much it was even costing to deliver these services before, because all the money just went to the service provider in a block grant and you – depending on where you lived, you would be getting your service from whatever grant provider there was, and no one had line of sight onto any of these things at all. So at least this is bringing out all of the pricing into the open, we can have a look at it and make the best determinations around it.
RAY HADLEY:
I’ve got one here, ask the Minister if they want to increase funding for the same NDIS that wastes billions on people who are abusing the system – what do you think about those who shouldn’t?
Now, I’ll give you an example to illustrate what my listener in Sydney is talking about. I had a discussion with your Treasurer about cashless cards given to people on other payments, be it Centrelink or whatever…
MINISTER PORTER:
It’s a great program by the way.
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah, and I know you’re aware of this, but I think he spoke to you about it.
So, on the South Coast of New South Wales, there’s a bloke with a card – let’s say it’s worth $200 – he goes to a fast food outlet, he orders $200 worth of hamburgers. They start to cook them, he said “I’ve changed my mind, I’ve got to go”. So the poor kid behind the counter says to the manager “what do I do?” Give him $200 back? Because they’ve got a card there for $200 they’re going to cash with you. The bloke walks out with $200 across the road to the bottle shop, cigarette shop, gets his grog, gets his cigarettes and off he toddles.
The point I’m making is, as difficult as you might make it, even the NDIS – there are people out there who make an art form of rorting the system. And when I told the Treasurer this story, probably 12 months ago, he was gobsmacked – so what I did I had a connection with the fast food outlet, I said can you prove this happened? Spoke to the manager, spoke to the owner – 100 per cent.
MINISTER PORTER:
And that story that you relayed to us got down to the local DHS, and that practice was pretty swiftly shut down.
But you’re right. Before politics I was a crown prosecutor, and the thing that I learnt is that people’s ingenuity and skill and devising work-arounds for systems, whether it’s tax or welfare or whatever it might be – criminal law for that matter – is limited only by human ingenuity.
And I’ll give you this example, when we put the cashless welfare card into Ceduna – and it has been a very substantial success – people are spending more on fresh food, clothes for their kids, less on drugs, less on alcohol, less on gambling – it’s a huge success – but in the first several months we did notice as we tracked a whole range of issues that the amount and number of taxi fares was increasing, and we worked out that was because people were getting in a taxi and paying $80 for a $40 fare and getting $40 in cash back.
RAY HADLEY:
Doing a deal?
MINISTER PORTER:
Sure.
But, we closed it down. And you have to be continually vigilant. One of the things that is now on our side, in something like the NDIS is we monitor massive amounts of data right down to the excel spreadsheet level. So literally, when we notice that people are applying too much of this, over an estimate or that there are elevated rates of things occurring we can get on top of it in a way which is far quicker than what we could do, even several years ago because the data management is better.
RAY HADLEY:
I spoke in the first hour to Warren Mundine, for the article he wrote about Andrew Forrest’s video – have you seen the video?
MINISTER PORTER:
I have yes. I’m very familiar as a West Australian with Derby. I’ve prosecuted cases up there.
RAY HADLEY:
Yeah I know.
The thing about it is, the horrific sexual assault of children is one thing and that has to be stopped immediately and these people have to be prosecuted and there has to be an end to that behaviour, and Warren agrees as a very proud Indigenous Australian, we can’t tolerate this.
But then the cashless card comes in and the Greens are saying – oh no, dignity is removed. Have they got IQ’s the size of cumquats these people? For God’s sake!
MINISTER PORTER:
My close friend, and my companion Minister, the Minister for Human Services, Alan Tudge, who is responsible for the welfare card said quite accurately, I think, that the card could cure world peace and the Greens would be against it because they have an ideological objection to the notion that a person’s welfare payment should be limited by decision of the government to represent the taxpayer. But, the reality is the two trial sites – the way the card operates has been co-designed with the Indigenous community, they wanted the card. It was co-designed with the Indigenous community, which is one of the fundamental reasons why it is actually working. The interim report says that it’s working very well. People are consuming less alcohol; they’re spending less money on gambling. A key police officer in Kununurra recently said that the children are better fed and better clothed. Simple things like that.
This has been done cooperatively with the Indigenous communities. And all of the money that we spend in these areas, some of it does some good, some of it does little good – this has demonstrable effects to improve individual human lives on the ground and we’re now budgeted for another two sites and Alan Tudge will be announcing shortly where they will be. But, it is a real way forward for us to improve human lives.
RAY HADLEY:
You’ve seen the worst of it as a prosecutor. But the figures that are revealed in that video are horrifying. The number of children – I mean more than a third of the children in that town are the subject of sexual assault. 36 men charged, another 150-odd are on the radar for the assault of children, I’m not talking about just sexual assault of children – paedophiles – is that surprising in a community that small?
MINISTER PORTER:
For people who are involved in law enforcement or in prosecuting or an on-the-ground service delivery, unfortunately they probably wouldn’t find that very surprising. And the links between that type of offending and alcohol consumption are very, very strong.
Again, what we’ve seen in Ceduna and the Kimberly is that as alcohol consumption comes down, once the cashless welfare card operates in a way that limits cash for the purchase of alcohol, you’re also having decreased presentations at the emergency department, you’re having less people picked up by the local patrols that pick up alcohol affected people in the street.
So it has a very significant and important ripple effect throughout the community that much of the offending that is based around excessive alcohol consumption can actually start to come down. So again, I think that speaks volumes in favour of the card and again, ideological objections should be absolutely secondary to the primary question – does it make people’s lives better and is there measurement to show that that is the case? And the answer to both those questions, with the cashless welfare card, is yes and yes,
RAY HADLEY:
Ok, my staff will get to your staff all the CF emails, the other emails specifically about the mum from Canberra, and all the others – so for people who went to all the trouble of sending them, fear not, the Minister will get to see it. We just can’t spend them time on all of that today.
MINISTER PORTER:
And you can go online and report fraud or any practices that you think are sharp, and that very much helps us to get on top of these things at the earliest opportunity.