Disability Support Pension, Disability Services

Wayne Swan - Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services

Doorstop Interview

Transcript, - Parliament House, Canberra 16 May 2002

SWAN: You don't have to cut a person's pension by $52 a fortnight to give them a helping hand. Yesterday Amanda Vanstone told everyone that could hear that she was dismayed she wasn't being showered with chocolates and champagne because she had done such a great job for people with disabilities. Well people with disabilities will not be thanking Amanda Vanstone because they're on the breadline and $52 a fortnight is a really big hit to what they have on the kitchen table.

The problem we have with Amanda Vanstone is that she only knows what is going on around at the restaurant table not the kitchen table. She simply doesn't understand that when you take $52 a fortnight off someone it means they won't be having fish fingers, they won't be having cheese or many of those items they depend upon on a daily basis. So that's why people with disabilities won't be sending Amanda Vanstone chocolates or flowers or anything like that. They couldn't afford to do that with their total pension, let alone with a cut of $52.80.

JOURNALIST: What about people with bad backs, couldn't they sit at a desk and do some work?

SWAN: Amanda Vanstone, Treasurer Costello and Mr Howard are engaged in a smear campaign against people with disabilities. They're out there trying to say that there are many undeserving people out there receiving the Disability Support Pension and they throw in the smear that "oh, they're all malingerers with bad backs". Well yesterday in the Parliament I asked the Prime Minister whether he would guarantee he was going to keep the disabled pension for people with paraplegia, for people with rheumatoid arthritis, for people with severe disabilities.

The Prime Minister would not guarantee that people with severe disabilities would not be pushed onto the dole queue. As a result of the decisions they have taken in the Budget 200,000 disabled people will be pushed onto the dole queue receiving $52 a fortnight less. Food for the kitchen table taken away by the Howard Government and to cover up what they are about to do they are conducting a smear campaign against people with disabilities because they don't want the Australian people to know that as a result of their policies they are going to push disabled people - people with severe disabilities onto the dole queue and to add insult to injury they are going to tae $52 a fortnight.

Look if they want to give people a helping hand all they have to do is to provide them assistance. Why do they have to cut their pension?

You see the Howard Government thinks you only give incentives to the wealthy and you give out financial punishment to the poor.

I just want to make one more point. This morning Alan Jones highlighted one of the most difficult problems we have in this country; and that is the inadequate amount of money in the Commonwealth State Disability Agreement. This is money that goes to respite care; this is money that gives families a helping hand when they are caring for a severely disabled person or a helping hand to a severely disabled person who is trying to live independently.

Alan Jones talked about some cases on television this morning and the absolute despair of the parents and the relatives. Now why this is relevant is that in the Budget Amanda Vanstone claimed there was hundreds of millions of dollars more for disability services. There is not one new real dollar in this Budget for the next five years for disability services. So what we're getting from the Howard Government is increasing disrespect, vilification of the disabled as they try to make the political case to cover up the cuts in the Budget. And that's sad because it's not the Australian way to use people with disabilities as some sort of political shield for a political strategy. That to me is just obnoxious.

So that's why this morning I've brought out these goods just to demonstrate the impact a cut of $52 a fortnight would have on 200,000 Australians, many of whom who have worked all of their lives for this country and then when they're 45 and over some have gone onto the disability support pension because they have disabilities. For the Government to go out this morning and conduct the smear campaign they are against these people is just sickening because if the Government wanted to help them it doesn't have to cut their pension to do it. It doesn't have to take the fish fingers and the cheese and the vegemite from their kitchen table to give them a helping hand. They could stand up in the Parliament join with us and say we all support and respect people with disabilities in our community and we resolve here today to help them not to cut their pension.

JOURNALIST: Is that $52 worth of food?

SWAN: That's $52 worth of food I will just read through some of the items. There's cheese, fish fingers, frozen peas, spread, skim milk, noodles, pasta and I'll just read the prices because $52 a fortnight is a lot of money if you are on a low income - a lot of money. Cheese: $4.50, fish fingers $5.79, peas $3.66, spread $1.25, noodles $0.63, pasta $1.65 and so on.

JOURNALIST: Isn't blocking this measure going to damage the Budget, like damage everyone in Australia?

SWAN: You don't defend your country by attacking some of its poorest citizens. That's not the Australian way.

JOURNALIST: But do you defend future Budgets by making smaller cuts now?

SWAN: These measures in the Budget are not about the surplus they are about the long term agenda of the Howard Government cutting a gaping hole in the Australian social safety net. Let's get this right. This is an agenda Senator Newman put back in her bottom drawer three years ago because we blew the whistle and the Government backed off. There was a big campaign against it. They've brought it out of the bottom drawer for this Budget. This morning on radio Patrick McClure who conducted the McClure Review, which is supposed to be the blueprint for welfare reform in this, country said that the reforms in the budget were not the reforms he suggested. Yesterday in the Parliament the Prime Minister tried to claim these measures were about reform. They are about cutting a gaping hole in the Australian social safety net.

The Liberal Party since Fightback in 1992 has had the agenda to cut Disability Support Pensions. I have produced the documents before and I'm happy to do so again today. What we are seeing is the culmination of a decade long campaign from the Liberal Party to cut a huge hole in the Australian social safety net. It's got nothing to do with the Budget bottom line this year, last year or next year. It is the Liberal's longstanding agenda to cut up the Australian social safety net. Patrick McClure blew the whistle on that on Radio National about ten minutes ago.

JOURNALIST: the Australian Democrats (indistinct)

SWAN: The Australian Labor Party runs its own race and we'll be announcing our approach to these Budget measures through our Leader Simon Crean. We have had a longstanding position here in terms of Disability Support Pensions and welfare reform. We welcome welfare reform. For the Prime Minister to go into the House yesterday and claim there was some support in my submission to the McClure Review for these measures was simply a lie, an outright lie.

As I said at the beginning of this doorstop, you don't have to cut someone's pension to give them a helping hand. That's the great smokescreen, cover, smear whatever you want to call it that the Government is running. If they want to help people with disabilities, help them! Don't cut their pension. And for Amanda Vanstone to run this Parliament House as she was yesterday saying, "Oh me oh my no-one's applauding my Budget where are the chocolates, where is my champagne, where are my flowers?" Well she's cutting the cheese, the vegemite and the bread from the tables of Disability Support Pensioners. As I said the other day she spills more in red wine than she's taking from the Disability Support Pensioners and it just shows how out of touch Senator Vanstone, Mr Costello and Mr Howard are.