Federal Budget 2004, Youth Guarantee – earn or learn, pneumococcal vaccine Simon Crean - Shadow Treasurer, Deputy Manager of Business in the House

Radio Interview

Transcript - Radio 5AA - 14 May 2004

BYNER: Well the Shadow Treasurer is Simon Crean, he is on the phone now. Simon, good to talk to you.

CREAN: Good Leon, how are you?

BYNER: Before I talk about your official reply to the budget. We're discussing this morning the parlous shortage of obstetricians. And of course, we've got five now that have left in one hit at the QEH hospital, in the Western Suburbs. A lot of women now are thinking I've got to go somewhere else. Federally you know we've got to look at the way we're educating people. You can't force them to be obstetricians. If you were the Treasurer and you were sitting with the Health Minister, what sought of things would be saying about this?

CREAN: Well you have to be providing places to train the people in the first place. And obviously the facilities and incentive to get people to undertake as jobs. This is one of the those things, Leon, where no one Government can do it alone. You really need the partnership between Federal and State Governments.

BYNER: Yeah.

CREAN: And the best way to do it, is to get more money for hospitals by taking the pressure off them because they have to deal with people who can't find bulkbilling doctors.

BYNER: Yes, see I had a caller ring in, Merv, a few minutes ago who is in terrible pain. He is on pain killers, and lord knows how many other like him, has got to wait because there is the huge waiting list.

CREAN: Well I just think it is a disgrace. And the reason you've got the waiting lists in the States has got a lot to do with the fact that hospitals get congested in their Emergency wards with people going there to get a doctor that bulk bills. Now if what we can do is to put the bulkbilling back into the community, and make health affordable again, through a GP, through better incentives there, then you do start to ease the pressure on the hospitals. Of course, what we would want is a commitment from the hospitals then to undertake to use that spare capacity to provide the services, reduce the waiting lists. But if they've got shortages, train medical people, well that's just an outrage.

BYNER: We bring them in from overseas because we can't get them here.

CREAN: Well unfortunately that is a problem that has occurred over a long time with this Government.

BYNER: It pre-dates them. It goes back to yours as well.

CREAN: Well that's true. But we at least had a strategy to address it, Leon. We were the ones that built and developed a new training regime and incentives for us to train our people so that you overcome this skills shortages. And that's really what's behind this Youth Guarantee that Mark announced last night.

BYNER: This Youth Guarantee, as I understand it, some media outlets are saying it's a plan to force young people into work and training. Is that an accurate reflection of what you think it is?

CREAN: What it is, is saying is you either earn or you learn - there's no third option.

BYNER: Earn or Learn?

CREAN: Earn or Learn, not unemployment. You can't sit around collecting unemployment benefits doing nothing. Now this comes back to the philosophy we have. It's a values statement, Leon.

BYNER: Can I ask you this though. We've got a significant number of long term unemployed people on the books, Simon, and they are the ones that I guess you'd be concerned about. They can't earn because they're in many respects unemployable. Are they going to learn?

CREAN: Yes they are. And we can never give up on these people. But you've got to have resources and you've got to find the new gateways, the new openings, by which we can do that training. Now what we've announced last night is, we will pay the fees for TAFE courses in schools. Why is that? Because too often people who become long term unemployed, drop out in school - school is not relevant to them. We've known in the past that Year 11 and 12 offering vocational choice is a good thing. Why not introduce it earlier? Why not give them the option earlier and that's what our fees, our paying of TAFE fees are designed to do. So if school doesn't suit certain kids, give them another option. That's us committing the resources to help them learn. What we're saying is, they then can't chose not to follow it. If we're making an investment in them, they've got to make an investment in themselves.

BYNER: Are you is a sense really saying that, I mean technical schools have really disappeared. And the NSW Government have in a sense brought them back and quite successfully. Are you saying that we're going to do that across the board?

CREAN: We've got to offer that choice. We've got to offer that range of choice. Now it's not just offering them a choice. The other thing that you've got to do, because you talk about long term unemployed, there's got to be a range of, we used to call them ‘case managers', call them mentors, but it's the one-to-one attention. These people, there are lots of individual reasons why they can't get into the workforce. We've got to understand that, tailor programs to meet them. Again, this is assisting them. Giving them the leg up, not giving up on them. And I just make the point, that this initiative we announced last night is a fantastic one, a Youth Guarantee, because we believe in investing in our youth. And its not just good for them, in giving them career opportunities, its good for the nation because our future depends on us maximising the training potential of our young people.

BYNER: Is Labor going to get into the business of any tax cuts? Or are you saying that we're holding the horses on that, and we're not sure what we are going to spend some of that money elsewhere, like in what you've just discussed?

CREAN: We we're certainly holding our horses to get the figure right, Leon. You know this was a huge budget spend on Tuesday night - $52 billion. Yet not one person, taxpayer earning less than $52 000 gets a cent, and 4 in 5 families and singles don't get one cent in tax cuts and 3 out of 5 of them don't get one cent in either tax cuts or family benefits – they're the forgotten people and that's why we're going to target the forgotten people.

BYNER: I tell who else has been forgotten, and that is the people earning $6000 a year, which is half what you get on welfare and we tax them. Would you change that?

CREAN: Well I think that certainly the design of the tax system needs to be changed.

BYNER: Are you going to change that?

CREAN: Yes. Well that's the other thing that we want to look at system that work for people not against them.

BYNER: Are you saying you will lift the tax threshold that starts from 6 to 12?

CREAN: There are many different ways in which you can address this problem.

BYNER: How will you do it?

CREAN: Well I can't tell you that today. I'm honest with you. I'm saying that we've got to consider that and it's just one of many different options. But we want to have the system fairer so its not just one in five getting the tax cut, and we're going to make it work for people and not against people. We want to reward effort.

BYNER: When will you have some detail on this, so that you can outline what you're going to do?

CREAN: Well soon as is possible, Leon. But it's important to get the figures right. I mean the Government's been working on this for six months. You can't expect us to come up with a solution over night.

BYNER: No I'm not expecting that?

CREAN: Peter Costello is you see. And I tell you what, the other thing about Peter Costello.

BYNER: What?

CREAN: $52 billion - that $52 thousand million dollars - and he can't find $300 million to invest in vaccines for young kids who are dying from pneumococcal disease.

BYNER: I think if you put a lot of pressure on him, he'll find the money.

CREAN: But Tony Abbott wanted to find the money, and Peter Costello blocked him, because Peter Costello does not value this for us as a caring society. We've got to protect our young people. If we don't look after them, who is? But Peter Costello had the choice and he said no. And that's, I think, a very important statement about Peter Costello's values. He talks about the need to provide essential services to families and then he will give the tax cuts, but he doesn't think pneumococcal dieses vaccination is an essential service.

BYNER: One more question for you, as a possible Treasurer in a new Government, what will you do specifically for South Australia?

CREAN: Well as you know, Leon, and we've talked about this before, we've always had a South Australian package. We're still developing that. We will announce it in due course, but just as we had to wait to see what the figures were in the budget on Tuesday night, we have to assess it. And I make this point also Leon, every spending announcement we've made, we've costed and funded. In other words, we don't make the expenditure unless we can find the savings. The Government has really done a lot of bad spending on bad policy. We're going to get the policy right and turn it to good spending and we've found $8 billion of savings so far, so that why we've put no further pressure on the surplus or upward pressure on interest rates. We're going to continue to do it that way, the budget we got on Tuesday night gives us the opportunity to reassess all of those figures again, and you can be rest assured South Australia will be a key focus for us in the coming election.

BYNER: Thank's Simon. Simon Crean replying to the Federal Government's Budget.

Ends