JONES:
Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
JONES:
PM, you had someone pointing a bone at you yesterday?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh well, these things happen. I am fairly calm about those sorts of things. We have made the right decision regarding ATSIC and Geoff Clark who, I guess, was associated with the pointing of the bone does not really speak for indigenous people. They want to be given a share of the prosperity and the opportunity that this country can offer and the best way we can do that is to better deliver employment and health and education opportunities to Aboriginal people and while respecting their particular culture, but not engaging in an endless debate about what occurred in the past. But recognising that what we owe to the indigenous people of this country is a fair future and if we can give them a fair future then we'll be doing the right thing by them.
JONES:
Good stuff. Well, that same fair future is sought by people with disability. I congratulate you. This is an enormous issue. I sometimes wonder whether people at the high level of Government understand the enormity of it. But you're talking about people with disabilities employed in what we used to know as sheltered workshops, they are now called business services?
PRIME MINISTER:
That's correct. A few years ago a move was made to pay these people a higher remuneration in accordance with what they did. The view was taken perhaps, they might be open to exploitation - I'm not sure that was a fair judgement but whether that is right or wrong is now irrelevant. What we're going to do is put $100 million into these sheltered workshops or business services and as a result I can give a guarantee that no person with a disability will lose their place as a result of the changes made in the recent years. It will provide time and financial assistance to phase in the wage increases up to four years if needed and it will...
JONES:
Just to interrupt you there, for the benefit of disabled people, you are talking about pro-rata awards based wages?
PRIME MINISTER:
Pro-rata award wages...
JONES:
So basically someone working on a sheltered workshop making things will be paid at the same rate according to the number of hours they work, as someone else?
PRIME MINISTER:
Exactly, yep and if it's proving difficult for the employer to sustain that position then this additional money will help the employer pay the higher wage in a way that doesn't imperil the viability of the business and result in the disabled person being dismissed. It's tremendously important to the self esteem of disabled people, the morale of their families that they be part of society, that they make a contribution according to their abilities and I think it's a tragedy when people who have been working in whether you call it a sheltered environment or not the reality is they're being helped to be a part of society that those jobs should be at risk. And when I heard sometime ago that some of these services were at risk, the Government made a decision that we would find what money was needed to stop that happening. Now, we have calculated that a $100 million injection will do the trick, that over a period of four years this additional money will mean that any disabled person who's now got a job who might be at risk of losing that job because of the phasing in of pro-rata wage increases will not lose....
JONES:
Good on you.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's what it comes down to.
JONES:
No, well it's about 50,000 per cent correct. Look, it's very rare that you get a chance to talk to a Prime Minister about this very critical issue which affects only a minority. Could I just take it a step further now and make an urgent plea to you and get your opinion on a couple of things in relation to those associated issues because just in New South Wales, a Upper House social issues committee report 18 months ago told the Government here that I quote: 'families and their applicants have widely reported that they were unable to access support until they reach a crisis point'. Now, these people are writing to me and I have to say your Kay Patterson is the first person to come to grips with this, that they aren't getting vital services like therapy, respite care or emergency accommodation until they're prepared to virtually abandon their children and make them homeless. Now, in Western Australia, 300 people urgently need accommodation and support. So this is the flip side of what you're saying today. They can't work, they are just chronically disabled. The parents need respite care, there's 450 of them. What can be done to alleviate their problem?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, Kay Patterson has had a discussion with me about this. We, in fact, discussed it over the weekend and she and I will be together today launching the programme I talked about a few moments ago. You are speaking there of a service that's normally provided by states. I'm trying to, sort of, play the blame game, I'm not doing that. I will talk to Senator Patterson. If there is a capacity for the Commonwealth in that area to do something, then we will.
JONES:
Could I just give you, for the benefit of my listeners as well as...
PRIME MINISTER:
And Kay, I understand, has in fact visited some people...
JONES:
Yes she has. I wrote to her and to her great credit, she did go and see these people. But just because you are the Prime Minister, can I just tell you about Owen, and just for any of us place ourselves in this position - Owen has cerebral palsy, leading to spastic quadriplegia, epilepsy, severe scoliosis, a vision impairment, profound intellectual disability, he's unable to speak, requires total assistance with feeding, dressing, bathing, toileting, and attending to all personal hygiene and medical needs. He requires ongoing everyday medical attention, 24 hours a day, seven days a week care, but the parents are getting older, they can't care for him, they've been struggling for years on their own. They applied to the Disability Services Commission saying we desperately need assistance. They were advised, Prime Minister, that although their case was deemed to be urgent, it wasn't critical and there was no assistance that they could provide.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's the Western Australian Disability Service Commission.
JONES:
That is. I have a 27 year old whose mother has written to me. He has Prada Willie Syndrome, flaccid muscles, intellectual impairment, lack of production of male hormones, obsessive compulsive disorder, obstructive sleep apnoea, obesity, diabetes. He weighs 115kg. He can't stand or support his own weight. He's incontinent. His parents have applied for a place in a group home eight times, but were turned down. Now these... this is a limited constituency and they're saying surely to God in a country as rich as we are, respite care and accommodation can be provided for these people.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, as I say, Kay Patterson has raised the generality of this with me already. You are talking here about services which under our arrangement are provided by the States, but I nonetheless accept the point you make that when it comes to this people are not interested in...
JONES:
No.
PRIME MINISTER:
... differences between the State and Commonwealth. They want it fairly fixed.
JONES:
I'm just grateful I can raise it with the Prime Minister, because the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has estimated that there are approximately 21,000 disabled people nationally who have unmet needs for accommodation, respite and day care programmes - 21,000. Now there are mums and dads out there getting older and older.
PRIME MINISTER:
This is the greatest tragedy of all. You have very elderly people who have cared for children with massive disabilities all their lives, and they come to... they might be close to the end of their lives, they don't know what is going to happen to their children after they go, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to look after them, and they are really in a very sad position.
JONES:
So if I could just... you will be taking that aboard with Kay Patterson. I won't pursue it here, but you do know that there are specific cases, the like of which I've outlined to you there, and some say... I mean I could give you a folder full of these, and these people are desperate and they don't know who to turn to and they'd be grateful that the Prime Minister has at least listened. But there has got to be a few bob somewhere for them.
PRIME MINISTER:
I will certainly discuss it with Senator Patterson.
JONES:
Mark Latham yesterday called for a redefining of multiculturalism. It is a subject that I have been talking about here this week in the light of comments made by Professor Ferguson, the Herzog Professor of History at the Stern School of Business at New York University. He admitted to me, he said look I'm not one of these raving right wing people, I'm actually regarded as a soft left winger, but he is saying that there are many intellectuals now saying there is a significant threat to Europe and the world's traditional culture, and they are referring of course to the onset of Islamic fundamentalism. Now in redefining multiculturalism, is this is a crisis in our country? Do we need to prevent multiculturalism becoming a policy that Mark Latham says separates people?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan all I can say is that if Mr Latham is saying that multiculturalism should be redefined, I can say to him welcome aboard to common sense. It's something that I have been saying and practising in the time that I have been Prime Minister. As you know, I'm a strong advocate of the benefits of our cultural diversity, but I have always been very strongly committed to what I would call the mainstream culture of this country, and that culture over the years has changed. It has changed under the impact of successive waves of immigration, but it is distinctively and overwhelmingly an Australian culture. And when I have talked over the years about the traditional Australian values of mateship, the core Australian culture, I have been derided by many in the Labor Party, and if Mr Latham thinks that zealous multiculturalism has too great a hold in this country, he can blame his mates in the Labor Party because they are the people who zealously promoted it. Now I have always believed that this country has benefitted enormously from migration. I think it has been one of the great success stories of Australia. But people come to this country frankly because they want to live in Australia, and by definition they overwhelmingly want to become Australians.
JONES:
And do you think our tolerance, our very tolerant society, enables some of these people who come here to practice things that they aren't allowed to do in the country they left behind?
PRIME MINISTER:
In some cases, yes. Of course. And there will always be some who will abuse the privileges that they are given, but people come to this country because Australia is an attractive country. They come here because of what we are - who we are and what we have.
JONES:
So how do you... what do you say to people who are listening to you now who think that our traditional Australian way of life is being progressively eroded and they want to fight to retain this. They say ANZAC on Sunday is a celebration of that. How do we secure that, rather than yield to the forces that seem to be overwhelming it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't think ANZAC has been yielded Alan. ANZAC is more deeply embedded in the Australian emotions... Australian emotions and the Australian psyche now than ever before.
JONES:
They fought for freedoms that we, many of our people listening to you, see being eroded.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well some people do that, but I would reassure them I don't believe those freedoms are being eroded. I can understand why people react very strongly against suggestions that we have to repudiate our past, we have to apologise for our past, we have to pretend that our past is, as it were, a litany of blemishes and failure. Now like any nation, we have made a lot of mistakes, but overwhelmingly this has been an incredibly successful, tolerant, achieving, open, harmonious society. Now that is a, I guess, a gospel, if I could say it that way, that I've preached for the eight years that I have been Prime Minister. And I have always believed that the cultural diversity of this country should never detract from the centrality of the Australian identity and the Australian achievement, which is distinctive and massive.
JONES:
Good on you. Good to talk to you.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay.
[ends]