Thanks very much, Aunty Agnes, for your gracious Welcome to Country and thanks very much, Ara Creswell, for that wonderful and warm introduction.
Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for being here to help launch Carers Week. Thanks, everyone, for coming together in support of Australia's 2.5 million carers and the people who they care for.
It is a credit to us as a society that we do care for those who are caring for those who are most vulnerable in our midst.
I want particularly to acknowledge my parliamentary colleagues, the Assistant Minister, Mitch Fifield about whom I will say a little more later and Senator Zed Seselja, the newly-elected Senator for the ACT. It’s good to have both of you here.
I have two tasks today. The first is to help to initiate Carers Week this year. The second is to help introduce the panel discussion which will take place later on today here at the National Press Club, which I think will elucidate many of the issues which are important to carers and those they care for.
Most of all, though, it is my job to acknowledge Australia’s 2.5 million carers, those whose principal task – the task that they have set themselves in their lives – is to care for someone else, someone they love.
Carers, as we know, come from every walk of life. Every carer’s circumstance is different. But what distinguishes every carer from every other one of us is that each carer has said that his or her principal task will be to dedicate himself or herself to someone who matters; someone who needs help. This is a truly remarkable thing. It is a truly magnanimous thing.
Many of us make the decision at some point in our lives to be dedicated to someone else. When we stand up and make marriage vows or a marriage commitment, we dedicate ourselves in one sense to someone else. But most of us, when we do this, are dedicating ourselves to the good times that we are going to have with someone else. What carers do is dedicate themselves to the tough times as well as the good times, as Aunty Agnes has just helped to remind us.
Yes, there are good times in the life of every carer; times of intense satisfaction; times of intense love. But for so many carers, there are also times of intense difficulty and intense frustration. There is nothing romantic about most of the work that carers do. It often involves relentless toil and the inability to leave the person they’re caring for, even for a moment, without the risk of something terrible befalling that person.
It’s no wonder, under these circumstances, that there is such a high family breakdown rate for carers, such high rates of mental health issues, poor incomes. It is a great life, but it’s a tough life. It is a worthy life, but it is a difficult choice that the carers of this country have made and that’s why it’s so important that we acknowledge them on an occasion such as this. And yet it’s important to remember that whatever the difficulties that individual carers have and might face, carers themselves are so often inspirational leaders in our communities and in our nation at large. There would hardly be a person who comes into contact regularly with a carer who is not uplifted and inspired by the work that that carer does and by the life that that carer lives.
It is inevitably invidious to single out individuals, but on an occasion such as this, I think I should single out Helen Johnson whom I met on Pollie Pedal a couple of years ago, caring for Ben, her son who was born with very significant disabilities. People like Tania Hayes, caring for Warren, her husband, who has, as we've just learnt, very significant disabilities arising from some medical complications.
Helen and Tania are typical of the 2.5 million carers in our midst. They are fine, inspirational people. Not only do our carers save our society billions of dollars, but they are a reminder to all of us of our best selves. They are a reminder to all of us of that capacity that humans have to give and not to count the cost; a capacity which most of us are not called upon to realise, but which some of us are called upon to realise and do so often in full measure.
So, it’s terrific to be here today. I’m now the leader of a government. This is not the first time, though, that I have been in government and obviously those of you who have dealt with government have your own opinions about how government has handled the issue of caring and the issue of disability in our society.
I like to think that the former Howard Government in which I served had a pretty strong record when it came to carers and to people with disabilities. In the last four budgets of the Howard Government, we were able to give very substantial bonuses to carers. We were able to do that because good economic management had provided substantial surpluses that the government was able to distribute in this way.
There was, during the time of the Howard Government, a very considerable extension of carers’ payments and carers’ allowances and while the surpluses of those days are no longer there – we hope to have them again quite soon, but they’re not there for the moment – the commitment of the Coalition to carers and to people with disabilities is certainly undimmed and the challenge for the new Coalition Government is to at least match and, if possible, to surpass the commitment that our predecessor made to carers and to people with disabilities and obviously that starts with the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
I am proud that the last parliament, for all of its tumult, for all of its rancour – and, as you all know, even by the standards of Australian parliaments, it was a pretty rancorous parliament – but I am proud that one very good thing at least has come from the last parliament and that is the foundations of our National Disability Insurance Scheme, because despite all the difficulties of the last three years, despite all of the partisanship, we were able to come together and agree that the National Disability Insurance Scheme was an idea whose time had come; that a decent society owed it to our most vulnerable to give them a new deal and a better deal.
I’m pleased that the Coalition supported the National Disability Insurance Scheme every step of the way. We supported the proposed Productivity Commission inquiry when the new Opposition Leader, then the Parliamentary Secretary Bill Shorten, proposed this back in 2010. We welcomed and supported the Productivity Commission report when it came out. We voted through the Parliament the enabling legislation and we supported the levy which will substantially if not totally fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
The NDIS’ emergence from the last parliament is a sign that while our public life can sometimes be dispiriting, that even in the midst of things which most people don’t like, a lot of good work can be done. I hope that the people of Australia will draw encouragement from the fact that even a dispiriting parliament was able to produce something as a lasting monument. But there is a long way to go. There is a very, very long way to go. The legislation and the trials that are now under way are simply a start. They are a good start, a very good start, but that is all they are – they are a start.
There will be many valuable lessons to be learnt from the trials and the launches now underway which the Government will incorporate into the final design of the National Disability Insurance Scheme when it becomes fully operational in 2019. But I do want to assure everyone here, everyone watching right around our country, that we will make this work. We will make this work. This is too important for our country to fail this test. It is, nevertheless, a vast undertaking; an undertaking almost unprecedented in the life of our country.
Yes, there is much that we can build upon here. There is the Victorian Traffic Accident Commission and the work that it does. There is the work that’s newly begun under Lifetime cover in New South Wales. There is much that we can build on here and there is much that gives us confidence that we can get this right. I should say that there is no better person to guide the National Disability Insurance Scheme from little more than a dream to a reality than the Minister, Mitch Fifield, who is here with us today.
I’m blessed with a very good team, but very few members of my team worked as hard in their portfolio, worked as effectively in their portfolio as Mitch Fifield did with the disability sector. It's a big job, Mitch, but I know you're up for it, I know you’ll do it very, very well indeed and I also know that millions of Australians will be relying on you and us to get it as right as we humanly can. Don’t feel daunted, Mitch, please.
Of course, the National Disability Insurance Scheme will do much to help people with disabilities and will do much to improve the lives of those who are caring for someone with a disability, but it will never remove the need for carers. It will never replace the vital role played by people who are doing what they do, not for money, but for love; people who are doing what they do, not because they were trained to it from a relatively early age, but because they were committed to it by something that happened in their lives or something that happened in the life of someone they loved.
It is, after all, the real test of a person; it is, after all, the measure of a society not what we do for money, but what we do for love, not what we have to do, but what we choose to do because we see a need, we see an opportunity and we rise to the challenge, we grab the occasion, and that is what carers in their own way do.
I may not have spoken this way – if I may speak candidly with you – even a few years ago, because a few years ago I hadn't been brought into contact with the world of caring, as I have been over the last few years through Carers Australia and the Pollie Pedal which over the last two years has been dedicated to Carers Australia. The Pollie Pedal for those of you who don’t know is the annual charity bike ride that my colleagues and I have been doing since 1998 – you may have seen some news coverage about it in recent days – but over the last couple of years, we've been raising money for Carers Australia. We haven't just been raising money. In all of the towns and villages and communities along the way, thanks to the work of Carers Australia, we have been meeting with and mixing with carers and those they care for. It’s humbling because you realise the difficult circumstances that so many Australians face. It’s daunting because you ask yourself, “What would I do if I was confronted with something like this?” But it’s inspiring because you see how many people rise so magnificently to meet the challenges of life.
No one knows what the future holds. No one knows what fate has in store for us. We can be confident, though, that at some stage in most of our lives, we will need care or be a carer and that’s why it’s so important that we celebrate carers; that’s why it's so important that we remember carers at a time like this.
It’s good that carers have a champion in Carers Australia – a body that can speak up for them and can inform the wider world of the work that carers do, of the life that carers have. It’s also very fortunate that Carers Australia has Ara Creswell as its chief executive. It has been an honour to work with you, Ara, over the last couple of years and I look forward to working with you in all sorts of different capacities for many years to come.
Thank you.