ABC Melbourne
E & O E - PROOF ONLY
HOST: The Prime Minister of Australia, she joins us from Tasmania where she's just signed the historic forestry agreement down there, but all eyes on DisabilityCare. Prime Minister good morning to you.
PM: Good morning Jon.
HOST: Are you politicising the introduction of what you describe as nation-building? Why pose a challenge to Tony Abbott, why not just get on with it?
PM: We have been getting on with it, Jon. We've been getting on with it now for years. Let's be very clear about what's happened so far. We asked the Productivity Commission for advice.
We announced that we would respond and accept many of the recommendations of the Productivity Commission report, but we actually wanted to get on with building DisabilityCare a year earlier than they recommended-
HOST: But why turn it into a challenge to Tony Abbott?
PM: Jon, you've asked me a question, let me answer it. We have been getting on with this work. Productivity Commission report; decided to start a year earlier than they recommended; made a billion dollars' worth of space in our budget to fund launch sites around the country including in Victoria and in Tasmania where I am now; brought the legislation to the Parliament to create DisabilityCare.
It's gone through the Parliament, now we're working to secure agreements with states and territories for the full rollout of the scheme. I've just signed one with Tasmania and I am asking people too to put this as a priority for the nation by agreeing to put the Medicare levy up by half a per cent.
That's the work, long-term, methodical and patient, that I've done. The only question before the nation now is do they want to see the Medicare levy go up to fund DisabilityCare?
There's two ways of answering that question securely for the long term. Either we can have bipartisan support for the proposal, or in the absence of bipartisan support the Australian people can settle the question at the next election.
HOST: Why look for bipartisan support, is my question. You've got a majority on the floor of the Parliament. Tony Windsor says this will romp it in, and he'd know, so why not just do it even if they don't wholeheartedly support it?
PM: Well Jon, let's be practical about the nature of our democracy.
Are you seriously suggesting to me that if the Opposition comes out today and opposes the levy, that it would be a secure thing to do for the future to try and get it through the Parliament on the votes of others and then if government changes at the next election, then of course an Opposition opposed to it would take it away. That would be a crazy process to go through.
HOST: Yes, I am seriously suggesting that you are the Prime Minister, you have a majority on the floor of the Parliament, you pass laws for now and then wait and see what the future holds.
PM: Jon, we are talking about a Medicare levy that starts on 1 July 2014. This is too important to be hostage to political games going one way or another.
The thing that secures this for the long term is not the playing of tactical political games. It is people of good heart and good spirit saying this is important and giving it long term bipartisan support or the Australian people clearly indicating their view as they vote in the next election.
That's the way that secures it for the long term rather than it becoming something that gets tossed into the Parliament one day and tossed out of the Parliament the next.
I'm not going to put an issue I feel so passionately about, because it's about the lives of 410,000 people with profound disabilities and all of the Australians to come with profound disabilities, I'm not going to put it in that kind of political game.
It's exactly the sort of thing that should attract bipartisanship. If it doesn't then I'll campaign to get it done.
HOST: I fully expect the Liberal Party will say, and they're holding a phone hook-up pretty much as you and I are speaking now, I fully expect them to say ‘look, we don't trust this government's figures, they keep announcing a bigger and bigger deficit as we get closer to the budget day of reckoning, they're not being upfront with us and we can't rely on anything they're saying so we're going to hold back our support for anything until we see the budget'.
PM: Well that would be a nonsense position for them to take.
HOST: Why?
PM: Because the costs for the launch sites are already factored into the Government's budget. That's not what they're being asked about.
What they're being asked about is the long-term costs as we move to the scheme being in full operation around the country in financial year 2018/19.
So the question you've got to ask yourself is how do we fund this scheme for the long term? That is not a question of ‘can I have the figure today?', it is a question of your values and whether or not you're prepared to make the choices necessary to get funds available for that long term.
Now, the Opposition has at its disposal what DisabilityCare is going to cost as it moves towards full operation. It's had figures since the Productivity Commission first worked on this and of course figures have been made available by government.
It has at its disposal what the Medicare levy increase would raise - we made that transparent yesterday when we announced the Medicare levy increase and so it becomes a question of what do you value and what are you prepared to do. Nothing more and nothing less.
If the Opposition can't answer that question, then frankly Jon, they say they're up to leading the nation and they can't answer that question, really?
HOST: Alright, it's universally being described in the Murdoch tabloids as a tax, not a levy. The front page of the Herald Sun headline ‘Vote for my tax', the Advertiser ‘Care tax cost fight' and so on. Is it a tax or a levy?
PM: The Medicare levy has been referred to through the ages as a levy so I'm just using the title everybody knows and everybody understands. You wouldn't expect me to rename it, since it was first put in place by Labor in order to create Medicare.
It's been known as the Medicare levy and I want the Medicare levy to increase by half a per cent.
HOST: But it's effectively an increase in most people's payments of tax, because the Medicare levy comes through your tax return, through your tax system.
PM: Absolutely Jon, let's not mince any words here. I'm asking people for money that would have been in their pocket to put into DisabilityCare. So they would have had it to spend, I'm asking them to not have it to spend and to see it go to DisabilityCare. Absolutely right.
HOST: Well let's move on and in an hour we'll find out from Tony Abbott what his position on this particular strategy will be, but to other things-
PM: Jon, I am going to pull you up there. It's not a position on a strategy, it's a position on better care for Australians with disabilities and how you fund it. And I think everyone has got the obligation to say how they want to see something as big as this funded.
Now I'm saying that in part, it should be funded by all of us sharing the burden-
HOST: Got that, we've only got three minutes until the news interrupts us, so while I can, will you be, in the budget, doing anything to rein in the cost to revenue to negative gearing?
PM: Look I'm not playing the rule-in rule-out game, but you would be aware this has not been on our agenda. We have not been in a discussion about it.
HOST: No, but you've said all things are on the table now.
PM: Look Jon, I'm not going to start some silly scare campaign about negative gearing. You're smarter than that. I'm smarter than that. Let's not play a stupid game about the budget.
HOST: But if you want to reform the tax system, there was the Henry review blueprint-
PM: And Jon you know that we have not been in the business of working on those kinds of questions, so let's not play the silly game, not interested.
HOST: But why not? Because it's middle-class welfare of the most profound kind and it's bleeding the country dry.
PM: Well I don't agree with any of that and I'm not playing the game.
HOST: Is there class warfare? The conservative side of politics is saying that what you're doing is pursuing a class warfare agenda of one kind or another.
PM: And what do you mean by that Jon? Point me to a specific measure that I've announced that you think properly bears those words. Let's not sloganise, let's deal with facts.
HOST: Well they're not my words, I'm-
PM: And yes, the Opposition runs round with all sorts of slogans. You tell me one government policy which would properly be described in those words. Just one.
HOST: Well, describing the superannuation changes and saying that people who are well-off and who are the rich being asked to give something up and a lot of people who don't regard themselves as rich say, ‘hang on, that's going to potentially catch me and I don't regard myself as being one of the top one per cent in the community. I'm not wealthy'.
PM: So you're saying any time a government says that there should be a progressive system, for example our progressive tax system, that it's properly described in those terms, are you?
HOST: I'm not saying it, I'm trying to find out whether you concede-
PM: I'm just putting to you the absurdity of this kind of stuff. We get lots of silly slogans thrown around in the public debate and then there are the facts. And the facts are these.
Yes, in superannuation we've disproportionately got tax concessions going to the upper end. For the sustainability and fairness of the system we've announced some changes. They're the right thing to do.
So they can describe them how they like, but they are progressive changes that recognise that people who have superannuation nest eggs measured in the millions are in a different position from other Australians and that if you are looking for the sustainability of the system, then it makes sense to make a change at that upper end.
HOST: As so often happens, the time disappears and vanishes in front of us. We need the chance to have you in the studio for a longer chat one day soon. Thank you for your time this morning.
PM: Thanks Jon.