5AA with Leon Byrner
E&OE
LEON BYRNER:
Scott, thanks for joining us today.
MINISTER MORRISON:
G’day Leon.
BYRNER:
Now tell me who will be eligible and what are the criteria to get the assistance?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well the primary criteria is that you are for any number of reasons, unable to access the mainstream childcare services; Long Day Care, Family Day Care, those types of things. People who are often shift workers, emergency service workers, police, nurses; those types of occupations can be quite unpredictable, working irregular hours. You also have families in rural and regional areas for whom there are just not the services available. There’s also particular needs for those families who have children with special needs, whether that be autism or some other form of disability which makes it difficult to access proper services so that is the primary qualification for accessing these services. It’s not a replacement for Long Day Care or other forms of more mainstream childcare, it is a supplement for those who currently need to work, who are in work and often working in very important jobs in our community, are able to get the same support that others working in more traditional jobs do.
BYRNER:
Who do they talk to, to get it?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well this will be worked through my Department, the Department of Social Services. The subsidies will be provided to a service provider who is providing the nanny, so you can’t just go and find your own nanny, a mate or something like that, and qualify for a subsidy. That’s one of the reasons we’re doing a pilot because there can be all sorts of integrity issues. I think last time we were talking when I was in Adelaide and we were talking about some of those in Family Day Care and we don’t want to repeat any of those instances. So there will be tight controls about the service provider, they have to be registered, the nanny has to be over 18, they have to have first aid qualifications as well as working with children qualifications but they won’t have to be teachers, like as required in many of the childcare centres, that will be a matter for parents, whether they want that.
BYRNER:
When does this start?
MINISTER MORRISON:
It starts in January, it will run for two years, it will support 10,000 we estimate children across the country and that’s through the provision of around 4,000 nannies, subsidised support. The level of support will be tapered off by your level of income but as I said the first qualification is, you’ve got to be in a position where you’re not able to access those mainstream services, it’s not an either or type proposition.
BYRNER:
As the Social Services Minister, there’s a lot of feedback coming out of Canberra already, that we should expect more crackdowns on welfare, can you give us an idea of where you’re looking to do this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well for a start I wouldn’t call the childcare subsidies welfare, because this is about–
BYRNER:
No, no I’m not calling them that at all, I’m just asking you as part of your portfolio is this other issue which I’ve raised today because it’s out there in the news and people want to get some idea of where you’re thinking, that’s all.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well those things will be released in the Budget, Leon, I know you had the Treasurer on earlier today and you may have talked about some of these things but in terms of integrity measures, I mean we already have a set of rules, it’s particularly about enforcement of those rules and having the capacity to enforce those rules and getting the resources where we can have more people looking at those things to crack down on what already needs to be cracked down on and we’ve uncovered say in the childcare area some $70-$90 million worth of rorts that were taking place…
BYRNER:
Sure.
MINISTER MORRISON:
there with the special unit we set up last year and we want to do more of that type of work right across the welfare space and we’ll be saying a bit more about that in the Budget. We’ve also committed to completely rework the Human Services computer system which was developed when Peter Brock used to win Bathurst, and it’s been a long time between drinks [inaudible].
BYRNER:
Yes.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Now that technology is really important because one of the ways you really crackdown on welfare fraudsters is through the use of the data and the systems and our data and systems technology isn’t up to that task as much as it needs to be so…
BYRNER:
Have you got some idea as to how much the taxpayer is being rorted to actually make you want to do this?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well on any issue of rorting, whether it was in my old portfolio of Immigration or welfare, it’s a bit like how long is a piece of string, so long as there is a set of government regulations, whether it’s the tax system or immigration system or welfare system, there will always be those grubs who seek to rort it.
BYRNER:
Sure.
MINISTER MORRISON:
And you’ve just got to try and make it as tight as possible and you get to a point where you can be spending more in enforcing it than you are in collecting it and you’ve got to make some sensible judgments around that. In the main, most people do the right thing, but that said, there are people who don’t and you’ve always got to have a strong welfare cop on the beat and that’s what we are.
BYRNER:
Now another question, I’ll put it to you from your perspective, because one of the things that I know worries many in the community is the inability of mature workers to actually get a space for employment. What can you contribute to that?
MINISTER MORRISON:
We already have wage subsidies for those mature age workers who are going into the system and wanting to be in the system. I think one of the other things we’ve got to encourage people to do is think about their longer term working patterns earlier in life, don’t wait until you’re 60 to start thinking about things about what jobs you might want to do later in life, you’ve got to really be thinking about it in your early 50’s and there’s been a really good idea put forward by a former Labor Minister actually, Susan Ryan, who is championing this idea of a, if you like, a career health check in your 50’s, to think about the sort of training you might need to move into another period and the government has got a range of programmes which supports all of this both on training as well as wage subsidies and incentives for employers to take on older workers but my message to employers and I think there is a lot to be done in the business community. People who are particularly post 60, post 55, have a lot to offer, a lot of loyalty, a lot of experience, a lot of dependability, some qualities they might be more critical of in younger groups I think on occasions and trying to break down some of those perceptual barriers from employers is really important as well.
BYRNER:
One other question I need to ask you and that is, are we likely again to further tighten the criteria for a disability support pension?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well we already are doing that and we would like to do more on that. These things don’t always produce savings though, Leon, because I’ll give you the example, if you’re trying to get someone off a Disability Support Pension, then you’ll take them off that and unless there’s a job for them immediately to go into, they’ll go on to the Newstart Payment and then they will also activate a whole range of employment services to help them get into a job and so there isn’t just an immediate saving that comes from that. You’ve actually got to spend quite a bit of money to get people off the DSP. So they’re the issues the government has to work through and that becomes a spending issue, not a saving issue in the short-term but we already have tightened up the criteria for being on the DSP we’ve pretty much slowed the flow of people onto the DSP now. It was growing very strongly under the previous government and that has levelled off now but we still do have a very large cohort of people on it and for some who have been on there a long time, going back to the grandfather arrangements of 15 years or so ago, there work skills now have deteriorated and the ability to get them back into a job now is expensive.
BYRNER:
Scott Morrison, thanks for joining us.