Blitz on welfare to fund national disability insurance scheme

SCOTT Morrison has declared that savings will have to be made on welfare spending to ensure that the NDIS is delivered.

SCOTT Morrison has declared that savings will have to be made on welfare spending to ensure that the national disability insurance scheme — the “holy grail and jewel in the crown” of social security — can be delivered and paid for in the years ahead.

The newly sworn-in Social ­Services Minister has pledged to restore “integrity” to the welfare system so that people receiving benefits and those paying taxes to support the system are treated with respect and have faith in the system.

“This system is there to help people in genuine need and those who aren’t in that situation and don’t need to be on it and may be taking a lend of it are the only people who have to be worried about me being Social Services Minister,” Mr Morrison said.

There had to be changes and streamlining in the social security system, but it was all linked and the time had come for Labor in the Senate to be called to account if it supported the implementation of a sustainable NDIS.

“The system should be there for people who need it, particularly for the Age Pension, where people have paid taxes their whole lives, they have earned their retirement,” Mr Morrison told The Australian in an interview yesterday.

“But for those who don’t have to be on the system, could be off the system, should be off the system and can be off the system then that is what we need to achieve.

“To relieve the burden on the system it is about getting people off welfare and into work, and to work as much as they are able. Everyone has a dividend from that result; the individual has a job, the people who depend on the system can rely on it more because it has less of a burden and the economy, of course, has the additional ­contribution of someone in the workforce.”

The minister said there were people for whom the safety net was “absolutely essential” and the opportunity to remove them from welfare was “very, very limited”.

There were people with profound disabilities “who we have a moral and public duty to support as a government”.

Mr Morrison said that, in this context, the prize for welfare ­reform was the NDIS.

“This is the goal we are working towards. I would hope it is a goal the opposition shares. They support the NDIS, but are they going to support what needs to be done to fund it?”

The NDIS was proposed by the Gillard government and backed by Tony Abbott as opposition leader in 2013. Although there are pilot programs under way, the national scheme will not be near full operation until 2017-18 and beyond.

“Everyone supports the NDIS, but making it work is the hard part. It will cost $10 billion a year,” Mr Morrison said.

“The NDIS can’t just fall from the sky. You have to embed it at the heart of the system. To achieve sustainability of the safety net — of which the NDIS is the holy grail — you need sustainability in other parts of the system,” Mr Morrison said. While committing the government “absolutely” to the NDIS, he said it could not be rushed. “One of the fears I have held around the NDIS is that we cannot over promise and under deliver in this are.”

Almost everyone was touched in some way by disability; Mr Morrison has a family member suffering from MS, and to “over promise” was “cruel”.

“For people who need a safety net, I want them to know I am committed it and to its sustainability. I don’t just want it there for the next three years, I want it to be there for the next 20 years, the next 50 years,” he said.

Mr Morrison said Bill Shorten had worked in the disability area in government and earned some respect, and he urged the Opposition Leader to work with the government to reform the welfare system.

“The NDIS has bipartisan support. People wanted to see people stopped drowning at sea, it’s a goal everybody agrees with, but it’s of no value to anyone if it doesn’t turn up,” he said.

“The thing about disability is that we all have an association with it and a genuine sympathy, but I want that to be a practical sympathy that translates into a system that delivers what it says.”

Mr Morrison dismissed his critics and Labor frontbenchers who said he lacked compassion and would “overreach” in making savings on welfare, saying he concentrated on outcomes, such as stopping children drowning at sea.

“I measure my contribution in those terms, I have never been one to seek the praise of the latte set on this issues. “ I just want to get the outcomes.”