Subjects: 2016 Federal Election; company tax cuts; Medicare; Labor’s changes to negative gearing; Game of Thrones; Eddie McGuire; Bill Shorten & Fair Work Commission unfair dismissal claim; housing affordability.

 

EO&E………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

JONATHAN GREEN:
In politics, well Medicare or is it Medi-scare? Still in the spotlight, claims of scare mongering and/or hypocrisy from either or both sides. We have got together a couple of frontbenchers from the major parties and we are demanding answers which is just what the doctor ordered. Scott Ryan, Minister for Vocational Education and Skills joins you, and Nick Champion the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing. Welcome to you both.

SCOTT RYAN:
Good evening.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Both seen Game of Thrones last night?

SCOTT RYAN:
I have not seen it and so I am putting my fingers in my ears, even for the intro!

JONATHAN GREEN:
No spoilers?

SCOTT RYAN:
No spoilers.

JONATHAN GREEN:
What’s it worth?
(Laughter)

JONATHAN GREEN:
Welcome both. Nick to you first, why is Labor continuing to tell us that the Coalition is going to privatise Medicare?

NICK CHAMPION:
They have got form on this, haven’t they? With their health cuts and then prior to that a long hostility to universal health care in this country going right back to the 70s with Medibank and post-that, with Howard in his first iteration as Opposition Leader opposing it.

JONATHAN GREEN:
But they say black and white, pretty robust language that they are not going to do this.

NICK CHAMPION:
Well, they have form on this. Three decades of opposing universal health care and trying to slowly but surely turn it into a system where you pay upfront for your health. And Labor has been resolutely over that time defending universal access to health care.

JONATHAN GREEN:
What does privatise Medicare even mean? This is a Government system for making payments to doctors. The only way you could privatise it is to abolish it?

NICK CHAMPION:
Well, we have seen it in action. We have seen it in action since the 2014 Budget. First we had the $7 dollar co-payment, which wasn’t just $7 for GPs, but $7 every time you have a blood test, or a scan. 7 times 7 times 7 as we like to say. Then we had their treat from that, up to five different retreats at any one time, different systems. Most recently we have seen they went back to sort of hacking into the doctors’ rebate – co-payment by stealth. So, that is the form of the Government.

JONATHAN GREEN:
None of which amounts to a privatisation, an abolition.

NICK CHAMPION:
It does.

JONATHAN GREEN:
How?

NICK CHAMPION:
It certainly does. If you institute a co-payment at that front end then that forces people into the EDs, and then if you cut hospitals then you make sure that those EDs are unmanageable. And then that forces people into the private system. That is what the Liberal Party has always been about. (inaudible) of the public system of the universal system, forcing people to pay into high-cost private health care, a la the United States of America.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Scott Ryan, is the Government feeling this scare campaign? You have run up the white flag here, you have ruled out privatising – outsourcing if you like – the back end payment system in Medicare which you were considering.

SCOTT RYAN:
And just as the Labor Party was considering it, and it admitted today in the newspaper that you use external providers for information technology. Nick there was quoting Gough Whitlam, I am not sure if he was born then. I was born in 1973, it feels like I should quote Arthur Calwell at him to vote Labor. We have made it very clear, everything that Medicare pays for and does now, Medicare will continue to do and pay for. Bulk billing rates are higher now than they were under Labor.

JONATHAN GREEN:
The health system grows, that’s how it works.

SCOTT RYAN:
The health system grows, but bulk billing rates have gone up and down. They were under 80 per cent under Labor, they are at 85 per cent now. The policy that he talked about – freezing rebates – that was Labor’s policy that we have actually continued. This is nothing more than a desperate Labor Party that does not want to talk about the future of Australia or its plans. It just has nothing left other than an outrageous lie-based scare campaign.

JONATHAN GREEN:
But why backflip on outsourcing the back-end system? The office system? That would have saved money. This has angered business groups, health experts. Where is your conviction on this?

SCOTT RYAN:
The matter never came to Cabinet. The matter never went to Cabinet.

JONATHAN GREEN:
It was a submission to the Cabinet.

SCOTT RYAN:
There was never a Cabinet discussion on it…
(Interrupted)

JONATHAN GREEN:
There was $5 million to Price Waterhouse Coopers.

SCOTT RYAN:
There are always things that go on at departmental level. But the Prime Minister has made it clear that it didn’t come to Cabinet. And quite frankly, we have a series of plans for the country, ranging from health to the economy, and this is not going to be a distraction. Labor’s lie-based campaign here, in a desperate attempt to distract from the real issues of this election. Because all of this, everything Nick just alleged has been ruled out.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Nick, why doesn’t Labor agree that the Medicare system should be modernised and approved? And why wouldn’t outsourcing be part of that and the back-end office systems?

NICK CHAMPION:
I guess it is who voters trust to preserve Medicare, to protect universal healthcare in this country and we would argue…
(Interrupted)

JONATHAN GREEN:
With respect there, that wasn’t the question. Why wouldn’t Labor agree that there could be some modernisation and efficiencies?

NICK CHAMPION:
There can be moderation without privatisation. There can be modernisation without outsourcing. And there can be a protection of Medicare, but it will only be done by a Party who truly believes that. And you know, Scott talks about Calwell, well Calwell was in favour of universal healthcare through a National health service. So we can look right back through history and you see an absolutely rock-solid commitment to this from the Labor Party. And of course, from the conservatives around election time they make their peace with Medicare but after the election you find they resort to the old tactics and that is like cutting an onion. A co-payment here, an outsourcing there, a privatisation committee here and before you know it, they have turned it into an American system, which is their aim.
(talking over the top)

 SCOTT RYAN:
Nick, bulk billing rates are now higher than they were. More people are being bulk billed now under the Coalition than was the case under Labor.

NICK CHAMPION:
Well, Scott…
(interrupted)

SCOTT RYAN:
Nick, just let me finish. You have been alleging a series of nothing less than fabrications there. The point is, under John Howard extra money was put into Medicare and bulk billing rates increased after they dipped in the early 2000s. Under this Government, bulk billing rates are higher than they were under the Labor Party and nothing that you have said has in any way been a thing other than ruled out by Malcolm Turnbull. Nothing at all.

NICK CHAMPION:
Let me give you a fact. If, in the 2014 Budget, your $7 co-payment had got up, if it had been passed by the Senate, there would have been a million people who hadn’t visited the doctor last year and instead some ended up in an ED. Even a quarter ended up in the ED it would have wiped out the entire savings. So, that’s a million people…
(Interrupted)

SCOTT RYAN:
We have made it very, very clear that there will not be a policy like that introduced, unless you are accusing Bob Hawke of privatising. Because Bob Hawke tried to introduce that as well! But we have done nothing of the sort, the Medicare rebate…
(Interrupted – talking over the top and inaudible)

JONATHAN GREEN:
The substantive issue here is being used as both the excuse for the scare campaign and that has been backed away from is this back off from privatisation. And Nick, this has long been considered. Chris Bowen looked at fifty submissions from the private sector when he was Human Services Minister in 2009. Isn’t this an efficiency and modernisation work being undertaken?

NICK CHAMPION:
He might have looked at them, but I guess the public would trust Chris Bowen to look at them and consider them…
(Interrupted)

JONATHAN GREEN:
Isn’t that just what has happened again…
(Interrupted)

 NICK CHAMPION:
…with a view to protecting Medicare. But as you point out Jonathan, they have raised the white flag. This has been the most ungracious retreat since the charge of the Light brigade.
(Interrupted)

 SCOTT RYAN:
It is a desperate Opposition.
(talking over the top)

JONATHAN GREEN:
I’m not sure the Charge of the Light Brigade was a retreat, but we will let that slide.
(talking over the top)

NICK CHAMPION:
A charge and a retreat.

SCOTT RYAN:
A desperate Opposition Leader with nothing to say about the economy.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Scott, there is an issue of trust here isn’t there, for the Coalition? I mean the scare campaign is fairly scanty and yet, no matter what you do, no matter how many times Malcolm Turnbull promises not to touch Medicare. We have the spectre of Tony Abbott: no changes to Medicare, no changes to…you know the rest. Is there a trust issue there that is really hard to overcome?

SCOTT RYAN:
I think Labor is trying to confect, as we heard from Nick there, everything from 1970s through to today. Malcolm Turnbull black and white, absolutely rock solid said this will not happen. And Labor, as Nick has just admitted, are refusing to even accept that he said it in a desperate attempt to convert the campaign from other issues that are equally and more significant. This is a desperate Labor Party with nothing to say about the future of the economy, the transition of the economy, as it simply tries to run…this is not a scare campaign based on an argument about the impact on a policy this is nothing less than lie.

JONATHAN GREEN:
And yet, Scott Ryan and to you Nick Champion as well, at least Labor has had the nerve to put up some sort of coherent tax reform plan – that being around negative gearing – and Scott, today that was today again the target of a scare campaign from the Treasurer.

SCOTT RYAN:
There is a big difference between arguing about the impact of a policy. Whether it is Labor saying they are going to get rid of Temporary Protection Visas and we say the impact that will have on border protection. We are arguing in this case about the impact of Labor’s stated policy to remove negative gearing. What Labor is asserting on Medicare is that we are going to do something that we are explicitly saying that we are not doing. There is a difference between arguing about the impact of a policy.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Aren’t you running a scare on negative gearing?

SCOTT RYAN:
No, we are simply pointing out, as many economists have pointed out, as the Urban Development Institute of Australia has pointed out today, that the consequence of Labor’s policy will be increased rents, falling house prices. Labor has put out no modelling, no advanced assessment of this. They have just made an assertion and we know through lived history in the 1980s when Paul Keating did it and revered it, what the impact will be.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Do we have, Nick Champion, modelling? Can Labor give an exact figure of what will happen to real estate prices? To rents? Without negative gearing.

NICK CHAMPION:
There won’t be falls to real estate prices. It is ridiculous to argue that there would be.

JONATHAN GREEN:
We take you at your word on that?

NICK CHAMPION:
All of this, sort of, we are having this sort of debate I guess, and you referred to it before, Labor has put its policies out there so that people can see them and talk about them and debate them. Whereas, no matter how many times the Prime Minister says ‘I’ll protect Medicare’ ‘I am not going to privatise Medicare’ nobody really believes the Liberals because of that three decades of hostility. So, we are putting our plans out there and we want to give more support, we do not want a situation where people get more support to buy their seventeenth home or their twentieth home than they do to get their first. Everybody knows that housing affordability is the big issue out there. We have to start actually making some decent decisions, and tough decisions, for the country and we are doing it and putting it out there for people to talk about and debate. But the idea that your rents are going to skyrocket and your housing prices are going to go down is just hysterics from the Liberal Party and their know it.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Talking politics with Nick Champion, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing and Scott Ryan is the Minister for Vocational Education and Skills. Scott, is there a point in that? Nick mentions housing affordability. This campaign has been on generality, big on gestures, big on slogans, if I will don’t actually go to the meat on how we might change something like housing affordability. To say that we will grow the economy isn’t really a response to that is it?

SCOTT RYAN:
Nick can’t have it both ways. You can’t be saying it is going to make housing more affordable – that is an admission that it is going to reduce prices. It is a circular argument.

JONATHAN GREEN:
It could be a good thing.

SCOTT RYAN:
He is trying to say that it is not. And the Labor Party is trying to say that it is not. We have had a lot to say about housing affordability, and like every piece of research that I have ever seen shows that in the country with high population growth – and we are a western country with relatively high population growth – that actually housing development and building new housing stock is the prime driver of this. And there are lots of regulatory barriers at the state and local level, and releasing land and making it easier to build houses is the biggest driver of housing affordability given the population growth that we have, and where the pressure is, which is mainly but not exclusively in Melbourne and Sydney.

JONATHAN GREEN:
What did Malcolm Turnbull mean last night on Q&A when he said if you don’t like my company tax cuts you can chuck me out in 2019?

SCOTT RYAN:
I think it was refreshing frankness. Because by the next election after this, if we were to win this election, the company tax rate would be 27.5 per cent and that lower rate would apply to companies with turnover of up to $50 million. So while we have a fully costed tax plan over the next four years, we have outlined the ten year plan to get the tax rate more competitive with our nations in our region. And he said ‘well, if you don’t like it after three years you always have the opportunity, we have elections every three years’.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Nick Champion, the ABC reporting today a receptionist in Bill Shorten’s office brought – and has now settled – an unfair dismissal claim against him. That is not a particularly good look as a man selling himself as the champion of the Australian worker?

NICK CHAMPION:
I don’t think you can isolate one single case, which is covered by a confidentiality agreement, so we are bound buy that. I don’t think you can take one case and say that we will make a general point. I think you look at the generality. Labour has had decades of defending wages and conditions, penalty rates and other things around the place. And that is why people trust us on industrial relations, the same reason they trust us on Medicare. What the Liberal Party have degenerated to in this campaign are over rehearsed ads by people who may or may not be tradies where they sort of plead for just three more years, just a little while longer to lead the nation. It is pathetic. Considering Malcolm Turnbull came to the Prime Ministership with such hope and rhetoric of being out there and persuading the people that we are going to have this great new era, and now we have this pathetic (inaudible) Party pleading with the Australian people for three years because they have no achievements other than Tony Abbott’s.

JONATHAN GREEN:
What do you both think about Eddie McGuire and Caroline Wilson? The Collingwood Board is meeting as we speak, with the President – Mr McGuire. Is enough being done to censure Mr McGuire’s comments Scott? Your view on that?

SCOTT RYAN:
I think those comments demonstrate to me a failure of empathy in the sense that when you say something publically, particularly when you’re a public figure – I am sure Nick would agree, while we are not as more senior politicians – you have a leadership role.

JONATHAN GREEN:
(Inaudible) Eddie McGuire (laughter)

SCOTT RYAN:
Definitely. Ask yourselves, would you like that said about your wife, your mother, your daughter, your friend? What struck me about them was that when I listened to the audio, I thought the tone was slightly more mincing than when I read it. I am glad the Prime Minister called it out, I am glad that Bill Shorten called it out. And I am glad that the community has called it out.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Bipartisan agreement on that Nick?

NICK CHAMPION:
Indeed. Indeed. We have to watch, I guess, that we don’t… we have to be careful with language, every public figure does and every celebrity or footy club President across the country has to be careful with this. We are coming into… society is getting into a better place on this sort of stuff. And it is important that we have relapses of poor language, or poor decision making, that it is quickly exposed. And an apology is appropriate and people have got to rectify what they do. I think there is bipartisan condemnation, if you like, of these sorts of events. What is important is contrition and trying to fix it up in our, not just that one event, but the culture of it in football and indeed in the broader society.

JONATHAN GREEN:
Thanks you two, 11 days to go. We are almost there.
(Laughter)

SCOTT RYAN:
Thanks Jonathan, thanks Nick.

NICK CHAMPION:
Then Game of Thrones watching can commence.
(Laughter)

JONATHAN GREEN:
Scott Ryan is the Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, Nick Champion Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing.

 

(ENDS)