E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
CANBERRA
MONDAY, 3 MAY 2021
 
SUBJECT: Tragic loss of Liam Danher; Morrison Government’s attacks on the NDIS; Stranded Australians in India; Labor’s climate policy.

BILL SHORTEN, MEMBER FOR MARIBYRNONG: Good afternoon, everybody. We've just had a Senate Estimates hearing, where a horrible story of life and death has been revealed. And it falls squarely at the indifference and lack of empathy at the Morrison Government. I want to tell you a brief story about a 23-year-old Queensland man, Liam Danher. Liam had epilepsy. Liam had autism. But on February the 5th this year, he died in his sleep of a seizure. But the circumstances surrounding the death of this young man qualify for what I think will be a - if it wasn't true - a Stephen King horror story of neglect by a heartless and uncaring government. See, Liam Danher and his family, his parents, loving parents, Kevin and Tracy, they've been fighting with the system to get this man who had been diagnosed with autism and epilepsy an assistive technology device called a seizure mat. In 2020, in the middle of 2020, the National Disability Insurance Agency asked the Danher family, could they provide an updated positive behaviour support plan? So, they asked for an update. The Danher’s, out of Mr. Liam Danher’s support package, paid for the report. This report by allied health professionals, the first of three reports, said that Mr. Danher needed a seizure mat. A seizure mat, that’s probably four hundred and fifty dollars. The whole deal, just north of two thousand dollars. So, the Government asked Mr. Danher and his family for an updated plan and they got back a request for a seizure mat, because that way, the family, when Mr. Danher was asleep, if he was having a seizure, the mattress would convey that information to his carers and his family and they could quickly come and treat him. But anyway, the Government decided not to give him the mat. Then the family got a neurologist's opinion, a report on the 31st of July last year, again saying give this man a seizure mat. The Government again said no. They deployed private lawyers, Mills Oakley, and the family had to go to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and start arguing. They've already provided two reports. And instead of the Government giving him a mat, which two reports said he needed, they decided to fight on. And then the Government required the family to do a new report, a third report, can you believe. And this occupational therapist, at the Government's request, an independent assessment, said, yes, he should have the mat. All the while, Liam Danher has autism and epilepsy, not getting better. But then tragedy occurred on the 5th of February. With his parents next door, Mr. Danher died of asphyxia, convulsions. Epilepsy. That's what killed him. But what I'm saying today and what the Danher family have written to the Government is it said, this young man did not need to die. He did not need to die. Three separate reports warned the Government, warned the Morrison Government’s Disability Agency, please give this young man a chance. Just get him a seizure mat.
 
And this Government took more effort than the mat was worth, to stop him getting the mat. And the man has died. And today we discover in Estimate's, no one from the Government, no one from the Disability Agency, has gone out of their ivory tower and contacted the family, acknowledged his death. No one has acknowledged to the family, who believe that if could been given the mat, he'd still be alive, we're sorry that we spent more money fighting you getting the mat than the mat was actually worth. In fact, the only contact they directly had from the Agency was after his death, they asked for more reports justifying the mat. This is a modern horror story of the Morrison Government. And today, Minister Reynolds showed no empathy. She said, we will not apologize. We do not accept any causation. And upon pressing by Senator Nita Green, we found out that there is no independent review, there is no remorse. There is no sense of anything except of washing your hands. Not our problem. And the family, Kevin and Tracy Danher, have written and they’ve authorised their letter to be public, saying to the Government, we want you to acknowledge his death. We want you to find out why this happened and to apologise. So, Labor says this Government should apologise for Mr Danher’s death. This is a Government who hates taking responsibility for anything, but the full horror of the emptiness of the moral code of this Government, where they take responsibility for nothing or no one, is that this Government spent more money fighting Mr. Danher getting his mattress, than it would have cost to give him the mattress. And this family, who’ve raised him ever since he was a precious little child, are firmly of the view the Mr. Danher, Mr. Liam Danher of Cairns, would be alive today but for the Government's stinginess and meanness, and horrific handling of a modest request for assistive technology. Happy to take any questions on this horrible, horrible, neglectful story.
 
JOURNALIST: Mr. Shorten, is there a process in place with the NDIA for them to offer apologies? Is there some sort of system in place?
 
SHORTEN: Since when have we needed a black and white code to tell the leaders who are paid nearly a million dollars to say sorry? Why is it that unless it’s in writing, and the Government has to have their arm twisted, they say, not our problem? Everything this Government looks at is through the prism of plausible deniability and legal liability. I want to put it very straight here. I don't think there is one in twenty five million Australians who, when they hear of a young man who died of seizures, whose family had asked for a seizure mat, will take the Government's done anything about them the wrong thing. The fact that they spend more time and effort stopping this epileptic autistic man getting a seizure mat, that when they had three reports saying do it, and yet this government can't even look at it to stuff up. Do you know, we didn't even hear from them saying that if given our time again, we do things differently. I think that's a fair question. Dear Minister Reynolds, dear Prime Minister Morrison, if you had your time again, would you, instead of arguing about the seizure mat, just have given his family the seizure mat, given him a fighting chance of being alive today?
 
JOURNALIST: Should there be benchmarks set for when decisions are made, would that help [inaudible]?
 
SHORTEN: There's no doubt that this is a government who's engaging in a savage and sinister, secretive crosscutting system on the NDIS. You know why they drag out every application? Because it means less money they've got to pay out to people. This government is on a bureaucratic go-slow to deny people with disabilities technology. There are many other stories like this. The problem is, in this case, someone's lost his life. Now, there’ll be some out there who say he would have died anyway. Well, you know what? I think it's up to the Government to prove there’s no causal connection. This family had three experts say, give him a seizure mat. But this Government, because it's just about ignoring the vulnerable, they would rather fight someone with epilepsy and autism to get modest assistive technology, than pay the cost. And instead you’ve now got a family with massive trauma, pain that will never, ever get healed, all because the government would rather fight the most vulnerable over a few dollars. I mean, maybe it’s a shame that Liam Danher wasn’t a billionaire company, getting JobSeeker payment, or the Australia Club at the big end of town. But anyway, the point about this is, there will be other people right now in the system who are arguing, fighting desperately against well-funded Government lawyers, for modest equipment endorsed by allied health professionals. And this Government would rather fight them in the be.
 
JOURNALIST: What does it say to you about the system as it is now that this is allowed to happen in this way? Are there broader problems?
 
SHORTEN: This Government doesn't fundamentally believe in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, it thinks it's too generous, it thinks too many people with autism are getting funded. We've uncovered its secret plans to have a razor gang, their Independent Assessments is designed to win back the number of people on the Scheme. I don't trust this Government with the NDIS, but this story in particular makes me angry. It makes me filthy. It didn't need to happen. You know what is going on in this country? What is going on in the Ministerial wing of this Government, when they would rather fight a young man and his family over a two and a half thousand-dollar piece of assistive technology and he dies, than just pay for the mat? I mean, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you are a feral abacus or the most economically rational person in the country. How on earth does it make good taxpayer value, to spend more money than the actual item being sought for, and in the process, in fighting for this mattress, a young man has died and his family are firmly of the belief this mattress, was the difference between life and death?
 
JOURNALIST: [Inaudible]
 
SHORTEN: Well, I don’t know, the Government got themselves in their usual quandary, I don’t know if they were lying or didn't know what was going on, but they answered in Estimates that there were no private lawyers in this matter. Yet the family made it very clear that Mills Oakley was contracted to deal with this matter. So here you are, you going to go to battling a family for the Housing Commission end of North Queensland, who’ve got to stump up against Mills Oakley and the Government. This Government is spending millions of dollars. Last year in 2020, the Government spent 17 million dollars on legal funding to stop disabled people accessing assistive technology and other entitlements they have under the NDIS. So, this is a four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar mattress. And with all the other bits and pieces, probably would have cost two and a half thousand dollars. The family, in order to get this piece of lifesaving technology had to use money out of their package to get the first report by our health professionals. They then had to pay for a numerologists report. Then the Government might then get a separate occupational therapist’s report. This in itself is thousands of dollars. I don't think that Mills Oakley is doing pro bono work for the Government just to help enough disabled people off the scheme. So I have no doubt that this government has spent - and of course, all the hours of the bureaucrats, the public servants involved as well in the agency - I have no doubt this Government who has spent more than five thousand to ten thousand dollars to stop the family getting a two and a half thousand dollar piece of lifesaving technology. How is that good value?
 
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten, just on another issue, we've learnt that Paul Kelly, the Chief Medical Officer, advised the Government in terms of the India ban. One of the consequences for Australians in India could be death. Do you think that the ban should be lifted as soon as possible, and Australians are allowed to come home?
 
SHORTEN: I'm not about to start criticising the medical officials involved in this. At the end of the day, the buck should stop with the Government. There's no doubt that they have to stop international flights from India. I’ve got no doubt about that and everyone in Labor has made it very clear that we've got to follow the medical advice. But I am appalled, and I put myself in the shoes of parents, husbands or wives or children. When you have Australian citizens stranded in India and this Government has no meaningful capacity to help repatriate them. The Morrison Government's been on notice of COVID since January of 2020. In that time, they could have built facilities to be able to adequately quarantine people caught up overseas. They were able to bring people back from the UK and the US. But somehow when it’s come to India, they are now going to put people in jail for coming back to Australia. This Government is definitely, in my opinion, losing its soul here. And whilst, of course, we need to stop the transmission of COVID in Australia [audio disrupted] why the Government is choosing to turn this into their political Tampa moment, where they're just seeking to show they're tough on borders, when there are Australian citizens at risk of death in another part of the world. And I don't care where they are, India, England or the US, this Government's lack of a plan for Australians overseas is alarming.
 
JOURNALIST: Mr. Shorten just to clarify, do you think [inaudible] which carries with it a 5-year prison sentence [inaudible] is unnecessary?
 
SHORTEN: They have the legal power to do it, but you've got to wonder how on earth did they let the circumstances get into this situation where they're just ramping up the rhetoric about jailing people? How on earth is the Morrison Government, after nearly one and a half years of COVID, looking so all over the place, all over the paddock? Now I'm getting inundated by people who've got family members overseas [asking] why can't they come home? And, you know, they're happy to pay for their quarantine, they're happy to be quarantined. I mean, the quarantine of federal government is 121 years old. It was in our Constitution, Section 51.9, yet this Government’s walking around like it's always getting hit in the backside by some brand-new news, as if I had no way of ever planning for it. I mean, some days, I think - and I don't mean to make light of it - but you almost think that Prime Minister Morrison wishes he knew someone who knew the Prime Minister who could do something.
 
JOURNALIST: Mr. Shorten, you made some mention there of the United States and the United Kingdom. Marise Payne, Scott Morrison, said his policy is not based on – that it’s not a racist policy. What do you make of that?
 
SHORTEN: I think it's a policy based on incompetence. The fact of the matter is, why is the Morrison Government so - why are they always surprised? Why is it that they haven't tried to build federal quarantine facilities in the last 16 months? And I'm sure they'll rush off and blame the states, but the Commonwealth, you know, they’ve got Christmas Island, they've got facilities. They could modify facilities. This whole problem, this shocking problem, is because Mr Morrison seemingly won the election but doesn't want to do anything with it except turn up for the good news stories. And, you know, sometimes that’s politics but in matters of life and death and returning back to the NDIS, this is just horrible. And a lot of ordinary people are caught in the slipstream of Mr Morrison’s negligence.
 
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten, the Government's just announced it's wrapping up the COVID Commission, the commission set up by Nev Power last year. Do you think it's the time to do it or is there more economic repair to be done?
 
SHORTEN: Look, if the Morrison Government thinks that everyone's out of COVID, they’re kidding themselves. I'm pleased that parts of the economy have rebounded so strongly. There are a lot of businesses still doing the hard travel agency industry, higher education, tourism. A lot of retail in the big cities of Melbourne and the like are doing it hard. But the Morrison Government just wants to move on and forget about COVID. And of course, how can anyone think COVID’s over, until we have vaccinations for everyone?
 
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten, Dan Andrews announced his emissions targets at the weekend, reducing by 50% by 2030, do you think that gives any impetus to Anthony Albanese revisiting a 2030 target at the next election?
 
SHORTEN: Well, as you know, I took a robust climate policy to the last election, unfortunately – lots of good things in that policy Rob, and some things which obviously made people anxious as well. Climate policy nationally has to be all about jobs. The reality is that taking action on climate, lowering our energy costs will improve the job market for a lot of people, but I don't automatically think you can translate propositions which we formed in 2015 and 2016 and hope that they [inaudible] the intervening six years. I mean, the lack of action by the Morrison Governments means that some of what we were proposing, I think is a lot harder now. And I don't expect Anthony to have the same policies, and Chris Bowen and others will further unveil our climate policy before the next election, whenever that is.
 
JOURNALIST: If he doesn't go to that marker though, that Victoria has set, does that not show that Federal Labor is not willing to go as far as the states, which is what Federal Labor has been accused of for elections?
 
SHORTEN: Well, first of all, I’m not in the business of hypotheticals and there was that beautiful word ‘if’ in your very well-crafted sentence. I don’t deal in hypotheticals, but what we do know is that Labor will always be better on climate than the Liberals. We know that
 
Mr. Morrison is now an outlier in the global community, not a place that Australia is normally used to being. We're seeing the dreadful damage done by Mr Morrison's reluctance to take action on climate, and it just means we’re passing on a worse deal to our kids. So, watch this space. I'm sure Labor will have more to say. Thanks, everybody.