E&OE TRANSCRIPT

SUBJECTS: NDIS legislation delays; Peter Dutton’s son; portfolio change speculation. 

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Minister, thanks for your time. You say the delay in voting for this bill is $1 billion. But the Committee says it wants to hear more evidence. It's a big change. Is it fair enough to hear some more evidence?

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS, AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: The Libs and The Greens are just making stories up now. This Senate Committee investigating the bill. Has heard more hearings on this, has had more public hearings and received more submissions than any other matter in the life of this Parliament. The bill isn't changing everything in the NDIS, but it needs to turn off the tap of some money which is getting wasted. I actually think it's an obscene waste of money. It shows the coalition are out of touch on cost of living. As for the Greens, they've never been in touch. It's $1 billion in money, which, if we could pass the legislation this fortnight, would be saved. That could look after 60,000 kids on the Scheme. That's the equivalent of 54,000 taxpayers annual taxes going just to be wasted on a vanity exercise here two days of public hearing. Let's look. This is what the debate is about. The Greens are never going to vote for this bill. Uh, hopefully the Liberals will.

CONNELL: Well, have they told you that? Have they said we're going to vote for it? 

SHORTEN: No. The Greens the Greens have got more complaints-

CONNELL: The Liberal Party I mean,

SHORTEN: I get the vibe they will. But the point about it is what is two days of public hearing going to change?

CONNELL: And have you felt maybe a meeting and go look let's figure this out?

SHORTEN: Yeah. We have. You know, the Lib Senators on the initial Senate report, which took 12 weeks, didn't oppose the bill. They were cranky. And I mean, the great irony is the Liberals are talking about there needs to be co-design. I mean, the Liberals think co-design is a furniture factory at DFO, words I've never heard that matter in ten years. The truth of the matter is we have 23 co-design groups in the NDIS. Three are meeting today as we speak. The objectives- they haven't got new objections. Their objections are over inflated. We're happy to move amendments. But for Pete's sake, $1 billion. That's $1 million every hour until we get this dealt with in August. What a waste of money it makes you sick. 

CONNELL: August being the next sitting to clarify for our viewers. As for the bill itself, so it gives power to the Government to define who gets the NDIS. Can you spell out what cohorts won't be getting it?

SHORTEN: No, it's actually not about eligibility for the Scheme. At the moment this bill does a couple of things which are pretty important. One is at the moment we've got a problem where if someone spends- they get an annual personal budget. If the personal budget is spent in six months, not 12 months, there's almost a defacto automatic top up. Now, that's not realistic. In some cases, it's meritorious if the money's run out, the wheelchair's broken fair enough. But at the moment there are some disability plan managers who get paid by the volume of the plan. So they're encouraging people to spend the money and you just get a top up.

CONNELL: So you want to stop that but in terms of the eligibility, I know there's been a lot of speaking about, it's around if people no longer need it, they can be transitioned off.

SHORTEN: We want to start -. 

CONNELL: Is that all that would happen? It's not a changing of who gets on it in the first place? 

SHORTEN: No it's not. Exactly. There's two other things. One is we want to set up the scaffolding so in the next 18 months we can do better needs assessment to see what people actually need because at the moment it's a very adversarial process. But the other thing is the changes we want to make to Section 10 mean that you won't be able, in the future to buy just a free washing machine off the Scheme, or you won't be able to just get tickets to Wet n' Wild and the Liberals have been complaining about waste. And let's be clear, if they delay this legislation every rort that happens between now and whenever we pass it is on them.

CONNELL: I'm interested in the roots and sort of how it plays out. There was this issue of the $73,000 car, which I know happened before Labor came to power. 

SHORTEN: Under the Liberals. 

CONNELL: So someone - what happens there? A family puts in an invoice and they just get cash back and then buy the car. What's the actual process? Does the car dealer cheques from the NDIA? 

SHORTEN: We fixed up that rort anyway. 

CONNELL: But a rort of this size. I'm just interested in literally how it happens.

SHORTEN: Okay. I'll explain.

CONNELL: Does the NDIA pay it? How does it even happen?

SHORTEN: Before we got into power, they had a payment system where basically of all the invoices submitted daily, about 20 would get checked before they were paid. In fact, between 5 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. under the Liberals, you can put an invoice. It will never get checked. So this car invoice was put in. It was paid. No one checked it. When I came in, we started auditing a lot of the claims. We found it. The great- the ironic thing is the Liberals went all hairy chested and King Kong and Empire State Building say "this is scandalous about a car being paid for". It is scandalous. The only problem is it happened under them and we caught it.

CONNELL: It was yeah, it was 2021. But in that situation, does a car dealer get cheques or a payment from the NDIA?

SHORTEN: No. I think it's invoiced to the family.

CONNELL: Yeah. So they get cash basically to buy whatever that thing is of the day.

SHORTEN: I want to tighten this stuff up. And the Liberals. Well, I think they've lost the plot at the moment. They're out of touch. They've been trying to beat us up and say, we're not running the Scheme properly because we're discovering these problems. We're discovering the problems that were already there and we're fixing them. They sort of want to punish us for identifying the problem. And they say, if you found a problem, must be your fault. But more importantly, we now want to close the gate on some of the rules. And the Liberals are now playing with the Greens up in the Senate. It is obscene. I, I it is oxygen stealing that these guys are complaining about consultation. I've done-I've met thousands of people, hundreds of organisations all over Australia ever since I became Minister. I've never run into a Liberal limousine in front of me, causing a traffic jam on the way to meet people with disability. So now all of a sudden, they're converts to consultation. This sounds more like grumpy senators thinking politics is a game. It may be a game, but not when there's $1 billion which could help 60,000 kids on the Scheme. Or it's the hard earned taxes of 54,000 average taxpayers in Australia.

CONNELL: A couple other quick issues before we go. Peter Dutton's son in the news after a post on Snapchat. What have you made of the coverage of that story?

SHORTEN: Tom Dutton's not on the ballot paper. I've been with Peter Dutton's been as leader of the opposition. His kid, you know, he's got nothing to do with- i don't think it changes anything in politics. Uh, I think all of us, and if you've got when you have teenage kids, you'll discover it. Just say to kids, what do you put up on Snapchat will be used against you. But how do you teach teenagers not to put silly things up on Snapchat? But I don't judge Peter Dutton by this, and I just hope his family gets the privacy to deal with it. And they've got to deal with.

CONNELL: Um, I'm sure you keep an eye on what Kieran Gilbert, Andrew Connell, my colleagues say they keep talking about you. Someone of your stature and experience maybe needed in home affairs. Would that be something you'd be keen to take on?

SHORTEN: I'm so focused on the NDIS and Government Services. I'll tell you what will make me happy when we're answering calls quicker, paying people's payments more and when people on the NDIS feel they're getting a consistent deal,

CONNELL: Is it a portfolio that needs continuity? Is that what you're saying?

SHORTEN: Oh the NDIS? No, I'm saying the NDIS is important.

CONNELL: But does the portfolio need. You wouldn't want to change the Minister? Is that what you're saying?

SHORTEN: Everyone's replaceable. Let's be clear. But my answer to that evaluation by your colleagues is I really like what I'm doing and I think what I'm doing okay is not the most important job. But I can't think of any other job which is any more important. 

CONNELL: There's - this has sort of become a sport the speculation in your future. Do you want to just put it to bed and say you're running in Maribyrnong again?

SHORTEN: I want to run in Maribyrnong at the next election.

CONNELL: Are you going to?

SHORTEN: I love it. I love this job and the most important thing I love about my job is that I want to help people.

CONNELL: Not tempted by the warmth in France? It's June at the moment.

SHORTEN: (laughs) You can feed the chooks all you like. What I do want to say, though, is that for the Liberal and Greens senators who think that delaying this legislation, which is not going to hurt people, but just going to help save some money and get better outcomes for people with disability, please don't waste a billion dollars on a vanity exercise.

CONNELL: Minister. I appreciate your time. Thank you.