Question and Answer session following Speech to the Committee for Economic Development (CEDA)
QUESTIONER:
Thanks Minister. Fiona Sharpe here from here Amaze Autism Victoria. I’m very interested to know what your roundtables are revealing around the barriers business are facing in employing people with disability and what is on the other side, listening to lots of our constituents and saying they would love to have jobs. I’m interested to hear what the barriers are?
FIFIELD:
Thanks Fiona. I guess there are two things I’m hearing from business. One is often business will think that it’s harder to employ someone with disability than it actually is. There’s not necessarily a high awareness of the range of supports that are available through the current DES arrangements through the employment assistance fund, which can provide workplace modifications, training for staff of about disability awareness, assistive technologies, those sorts of things. So I think on the one hand there’s a lack of awareness of the supports that are there.
But overwhelmingly what I’m hearing from business is that the DES model as it currently is, although it works in some quarters, isn’t meeting their needs. That the DES programme isn’t connecting adequately and often enough people who have the skills and experience that the employers need.
Employers aren’t in the business of looking to discriminate for the hell of it. They would dearly love to access the widest possible talent pool, but at the moment there’s not that connection that should be there. Just one example, the DES programme is primarily based on labour market regions and those labour market regions I think are essentially developed for statistical purposes. They don’t necessarily match where businesses are working. And some of the big national employers say, ‘look we just can’t find a provider who covers the nation. We really just want a one stop shop. We want to be able to pick up the phone and say we need some people today, have some people who are pre-approved and ready to go.’ So we need to look at having a different model for the DES that can meet the needs of large employers and small employers alike.
QUESTIONER:
Minister, while people are putting their hand up I just wanted, you mentioned in your presentation that there had been a reference from yourself and the Attorney-General to the Human Rights Commission looking at the inter-relationship between people with disabilities and the barriers to entering the workforce. And you have today announced the formation of a taskforce to essentially develop a new disability employment model. In terms of the timing of this and the inter-relationship between the expectation that you and the Attorney-General have in respect of the reference to the Human Rights Commission and their likely report, and the work of your taskforce. I’m wondering if you could explain that for us?
FIFIELD:
The timeframes should tie in well. The Human Rights Commission will not only be delivering their final report, but they’ll be giving interim reports as well. Your former colleague Susan Ryan, who is both the disability and ageing discrimination commissioner, is not shy in sharing with me the evidence that she’s collecting through the course of this inquiry. But the reference that the Attorney and myself gave the Human Rights Commission is very broad. It looks at barriers to employment of people with disability, it looks at discrimination, it looks at where there can be legislative responses, it looks at where there can be policy responses. So it’s a broad inquiry, the timing of that does tie in well with the work of my taskforce.
QUESTIONER:
I’m from the Barwon region. I’m a participant in the NDIS. Thank you for your talk, it was lovely. I’m just wondering with the taskforce for the disability employment model. Will you be including people with disabilities to put their say in as to what they need? A lot of these things that the Government put through I find whether it be housing, employment, whatever it is, there is never an open door for people with disabilities coming to say what they would like to see on board.
FIFIELD:
Absolutely, the door is open. As I mentioned there are I guess three obvious groups that we want to talk to and to seek the views of. Employers obviously, without employers there are no jobs. DES service providers because they’ve got a lot of knowledge and wisdom about what works and doesn’t work gained through painful experience. And obviously people with disability who want to work. As I indicated, I have an inclination, a strong inclination to at least have a component of, whatever the post 2018 DES arrangements are, at least have a component of what we currently spend that attaches to the individual for them to deploy in the way that will best help them pursue employment. So given the individual, I want them to be at the centre and increasingly in charge as is the case with the NDIS. We want to talk to people with disability to find out what they think are the barriers for them, what they think will help put them in the best position to get work. And we can’t do that unless we have people with disability intimately involved in this process in developing a new model.
QUESTIONER:
On that same subject Minister I think it’s fair to say that in the Federation in which we all reside that clearing responsibility between State and Federal Government’s sometimes co-exist and sometimes not necessarily going in the same direction. You mention the COAG process, in terms then of your taskforce, getting the States involved and on board. Do you see a role for them to be involved somehow ensuring that the responsibilities and accountabilities that they have is going to be factored into what your looking for as well?
FIFIELD:
I am Stephen, and I guess that’s what I was hinting at when talking about how the taskforce will take a stages of life approach to see what are the points at which the system, state or federal, fails an individual. Is it in primary school for someone who has a disability? Is it in primary school? Is it in secondary school? Is it in transition from school to work? Or school to further education? If you’re talking to someone like Stephanie Gotlib who runs Children with Disability Australia, if a child with a disability doesn’t get to the education to which they’re entitled, doesn’t get the support that they need in primary school, it’s going to make it harder down the track to help someone with disability who hasn’t been given the opportunities to achieve their potential at school. It’s going to be a lot harder to put them into work. So through taking this life cycle approach there will be some things that we identify that the states can do better, in education. But also particularly in transition from school to work. At the moment that’s primarily a state government responsibility. Some of that will fold into the NDIS. So that’s also a critical area, transition from school to work. So there will be some things that we identify, that we as a Commonwealth Government can’t do much about, but where the states can make a better contribution.
QUESTIONER:
Thank you Minister, it’s David Coles from South Australia. We are a DES provider and we certaintly take on board your comments. I certainly welcome your discussions about innovation and the opportunity that we have out there. And I also take on board the difficulty national and larger employers have. Do you see any opportunity within the current confides of the current contact to trial some of those innovations prior to 2018?
FIFIELD:
Absolutely. I mentioned honouring the contracts because in Victoria you can’t take honouring contracts as read, you’ve got to reinforce that these days.
LAUGHTER
But yes. As long as you’ve got two parties, the contractor and the Government who are prepared to look and trial different things, then absolutely.
QUESTIONER:
Before calling Professor Fels, the other issue here of course Minister. You talk about innovation and improvements in technology and so on. And when you’re talking about the development of the new disability employment model. With Australia adjusting as it currently is, the fact that new technologies are providing opportunities that we are only starting to think about now, and leaning very nicely into the fact CEDA’s next major piece of research coming down in June is on the future of work, particularly applying a lens of digital disruption. That future post 2018 we’re talking about clearly has to take into consideration those sorts of jobs that will evolve in Australia and people, able people as opposed to people with disabilities are going to be competing for those sorts of things. Will your taskforce and so on take into consideration those sorts of issues as well?
FIFIELD:
You’re right. Technology is going to change the way that people work. More people are going to be working from home. Technology also provides incredible opportunities for people with particular disabilities to work that may not have been there previously. So that’s incredibly important. Also as I mentioned, increasingly that the work task in different areas will be smaller, there’ll be bits of work, there’ll be parts of work, there’ll be things which need to be done which don’t constitute a job in and of themselves. But seeking to aggregate together enough of those individual tasks, whether it’s with one employer or multiple employers: Technology does open up that opportunity very much. We need to make sure that the DES model post 2018 is able to support people with disability in taking advantage of that but can also acknowledge and take account of, that employers aren’t just looking to place someone in a job for x-number of hours per week at the one location. So absolutely that’s stuff that will be front and centre of mind of the taskforce.
QUESTIONER:
Minister, congratulations of the employment initiative. I want to talk about mental health and in particular where it fits into the NDIS and work participation model you talked about?
FIFIELD:
Sure, thanks Alan. Well where does mental health, mental illness fit in to the NDIS. Well it fits in there a lot more now because of your work Alan, between the Productivity Commission’s interim report and their final report into the NDIS. The NDIS in its initial conception and the Productivity Commission’s interim work didn’t really envisage the Scheme having a role for people with mental illness. That has changed as a result of the final report and as legislated. The NDIS will have 460,000 people and support about 50,000 people with mental illness. The NDIS won’t provide what might be termed as clinical supports. But where someone’s mental illness is of a nature that impacts on their functional capacity, their ability to do daily living tasks, then yes the NDIS will provide supports to people in that circumstance. I mean as you know, the good news is that governments fundamentally take a recovery view of mental health. Most people with mental illness can fundamentally recover to a significant extent. So the NDIS won’t be the main provider of supports for people with mental illness, that will remain the health system. But for people who have issues with daily living tasks, it will support them, just as it does with people with any other disability. And one of the good things about the NDIS is, the NDIS isn’t really too fussed about what your condition is or your diagnosis or the label of your disability. It looks at what the effect is on your disability and seeks to support you with that functional impact. In relation to employment and mental health, I think that this is important for those 50,000 people. We have the opportunity of aligning the support that someone will get through the NDIS, the daily living supports with their disability employment service provider. And I think mental health is the perfect example of where it would be good in the post 2018 DES, that an individual and their families has more of a say over what component of the DES support that currently goes straight to a service provider, in fact goes to the individual, to be deployed by them.
QUESTIONER:
I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on a wage policy and what that might look like for people with disability, but also for people with intellectual disability?
FIFIELD:
The question is in relation to wage policy for people with disability. At the moment there are a couple of different approaches, with relation to wages for people with disability which primarily relate to people who have intellectual impairment. So there are Australian Disability Enterprises which were once upon a time known as sheltered workshops. The Australian Disability Enterprises or ADEs have come a long way from the sheltered workshops of old. And people who work in those Disability Enterprises are paid a pro rata wage based on the wage assessment tool, some of which have both productivity and competency components. There has been a tendency for people to isolate these hourly rates that these people get from those Enterprises. I think for people in Disability Enterprises it is more appropriate to look at the total package of support for someone. So they get the the hourly rate, they get some component of their Disability Support Pension, they get a health benefits card and they also receive the support of disability support staff who are paid for by the Government. So, obviously I would like to see as many people with disability working in open employment but there are some people for whom that is unlikely to be an option. So it is really important that we have Australian Disability Enterprises who can provide work for those people, about 20,000 people currently, because why – just because you might have a significant intellectual impairment – should you be denied the dignity of work. So, that’s one part of it. The other part is people who might be in the open workforce who have a disability and there is a supported wage system which goes to support them, which again recognises that there are some productivity differences for people with certain sorts of disabilities. But I think we need to have a continuum of employment options for people from supported employment in places like Disability Enterprises right though to support where it is needed in the open workforce.
QUESTIONER:
I have time for one final question and it’s mine. We were saying over lunch that if you take the NDIS as an example of public policy developed under a former Government but embraced with the support of the current Government, 2018, questions then beyond 2018, the financial concerns and so on that I think any government is going to be confronted with. Are you getting support from the current Opposition in the direction in which you are training your disability employment model? The emphasis on employment? The emphasis on perhaps looking to service providers more efficiency and effectively, whatever you want to call it is going to be delivered? Or are you finding that as with most, sadly public policy these days, there tends to be people looking for elements of difference rather than emphasis on delivering good public policy outcomes that will benefit the greater good.
FIFIELD:
Look, I’m not finding any opposition as yet in terms of the future directions for Disability Employment Services. But I don’t expect there to be any either. I think both sides of politics now, certainly in disability and in aged care as well, recognise that the individual has got to be at the centre and in charge. That the push for government services to increasingly be delivered via the individual in support of themselves is remorseless, unceasing and that trend will only grow in intensity. And part of the reason for that in both aged care and I think disability employment, is because you now have the NDIS sitting in the same portfolio and the same Department under the same Minister. And that concept of consumer choice that idea of the individual at the centre and in charge, being assessed, getting support commensurate with their need and taking it to the service provider of their choice I think is unstoppable and I don’t think the current Opposition would have in mind anything other than supporting it. But you make a broader and important point, which is you can actually achieve good things in public policy if partisanship is put aside. And one of the things I did when I was the Shadow Minister for Disability was essentially to put partisanship aside, to say that there were some areas of public policy that are so important that people quite rightly, have very little time for petty partisan point-scoring. They just want both sides to get on, do it and focus on the people’s business.
QUESTIONER:
Thank you and more strength to your arm Minister. Look, folks, we have come to the end of the presentation by the Minister and I think it can fairly be said that what the Minister sought to do was give us a very in depth look at the proposals that he is examining at the present moment. I think what the Minister has also indicated is that clearly he wants people involved in the sector, whether they be carers, whether they be providers and most importantly, people with disabilities themselves to come forward with the suggestions for their taskforce that has been established, the Government’s taskforce. And that quite clearly there are some challenges in the post 2018 environment. What the Minister indicated, I think, is very much a commitment around business support for people with disabilities. The fact that businesses should not in any way be denigrated about the attitudes that they may or may not display in respect of that. I think what he has indicated, obviously, is that any government, any government is going to be always subjected to competing ends for competing needs. However, I think what we’ve seen again as we did last year when the Minister was here in his other capacity in Aged Care, a Minister that has a plan, he is developing a better plan, if you like, looking to the sector to be involved in that and obviously I think everyone in this room Minister would hope that you achieve success with that. It is a difficult area, it embraces so many different things and again we were talking about some of those things with respect of mental health just over lunch. But with goodwill and good people and on both sides of politics or three sides, five sides, ten sides, I suppose I am not sure. I’m sure that the Government of the day is going to succeed in bringing forward just recommendations that the public, I hope that they sign up to this thing for the betterment of people with disability, their carers and people who have a genuine interest in this area. On behalf of CEDA, Thank you so very much.