So Bill Shorten’s speechwriter earns $310,000 a year. Nothing to see here

How much is a speechwriter worth? There were splutters of outrage last week when it was revealed that NDIS and Government Services Minister Bill Shorten has a speechwriter who is earning $310,000 a year (including super and entitlements).

It wasn’t reported that way, though. The full value of Julianne Stewart’s two-year contract was cited – the far sexier figure of $620,000.

Government Services Minister Bill Shorten and speechwriter Julianne Stewart.

The matter was raised in Senate estimates by Senator Linda Reynolds, hot off the heels of her private legal pursuit of her former staffer Brittany Higgins, and Higgins’ partner, for defamation. Reynolds asked a question about the contract between Stewart and Services Australia (the huge government agency that oversees payments for Centrelink, Medicare and the aged pension). She mentioned Stewart by name and read out the Sydney suburb where she lives.

Then NSW Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic picked up the thread. “Senators who work in this building get paid about $230,000 a year,” she said. “Shadow ministers get paid less than that. MPs in the government and senators in the government, on the crossbench and in the opposition, get paid less than the speechwriter that minister Shorten, it appears, has personally requested to write speeches for him.”

Posting afterwards on her Facebook page, Reynolds wrote: “Even after 10 years of Senate Estimates, I can still be surprised! During a cost of living crisis, it is inexplicable that Minister Shorten has a $620,000 speechwriter.”

It was a perfect gotcha story – a fat cat public servant overpaid by a spendthrift minister, who, by the way, is presiding over a sprawling National Disability Insurance Scheme, the very same scheme he created when in government, and which has blown out to a $44.3 billion cost to the taxpayer, and which is projected to blow out by a further $15.9 billion over the next five years.

The very same scheme that is being rorted by crooks to the tune of about $2 billion a year, according to separate revelations at Senate estimates this week.

Shorten spent the week defending the NDIS in the media, following reports of egregious fraud – some involving drugs and prostitutes being procured on the taxpayer dime. He assured the public he is being tough on those exploiting the system and the vulnerable people who rely on it.

As minister, he has put money and resources into compliance and policing the system.

In every interview, he was asked about his speechwriter. Patricia Karvelas of ABC’s Radio National said she had received “literally hundreds of text messages [from listeners] about this issue”.

It also lit up listeners of Sydney’s 2GB radio, and one of the strange, angry men who host a show on an after-dark news channel took particular delight in it. He scoffed that frontbencher and government whip Tony Burke was “on taxpayer radio” (I’m assuming he means the ABC), saying the speechwriter hiring was “about worker shortages”. “As if there’s no other person in the continent of Australia that could write a speech!” he chortled.

Grammatically speaking, he should have said “who” instead of “that” in that sentence.

Actually, most people can’t write an intelligent speech on a topic of complex policy. Writing well is a rare skill. Few people are capable of assimilating large amounts of information on complex issues and condensing it into quality prose.

When artificial-intelligence robots take over the world, skilled writers will be the only people left able to make sense of it for us, and may represent the last vestige of human ingenuity the bots can’t replicate.

The speechwriter in question has 40 years’ experience and has worked for both sides of politics, including a long stint in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, where she worked for Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. According to Shorten’s office, she has written, contributed to and researched hundreds of speeches, scripts, remarks and forewords, and she also trains staff within Services Australia.

It’s not fashionable to say so, but people who work for ministers generally work very hard, with unsociable hours and long stints away from home.

That’s not to suggest it was not a story of legitimate public interest. No journalist (or civic-minded non-journalist) is ever going to argue for less transparency with government contracts. But there is something icky about a well-paid, highly skilled woman being publicly flogged about earning something equivalent to her worth.

I am always wary of such stories involving women. Not because we should face less scrutiny, but because there is such a strong tradition in Australian public life of singling out females who are earning too much, or saying too much, or wielding too much power, and exposing them to disproportionate, onerous media scrutiny.

Just ask Brittany Higgins, Christine Holgate, Laura Tingle or even Linda Reynolds herself.

The whole issue was a distraction from the main game, which is the worrying cost of the NDIS to the federal budget.

The scheme, which Shorten has been involved with since its inception, is too important to fail. About 650,000 vulnerable and disadvantaged Australians rely on it, and it accounts for about 400,000 jobs, making it a bigger employer than the mining sector. It is imperfect, but vastly superior to the situation disabled Australians faced before it existed.

As a young journalist in London more than a decade ago, I remember interviewing an Australian family with ties to England who had moved their disabled child there because the care on the ailing National Health Service was better than anything they could get at home. They were the lucky ones.

The NDIS enjoys bipartisan support, but given the demographic pressure of an ageing population combined with a declining working-age population, that bipartisanship is not guaranteed forever. At some point, the shrinking taxpayer base will clash with the population’s growing welfare demands. Ongoing public support for the scheme will depend on how well-governed it is.

But these issues are complex and nuanced – exactly the kind of thing a good writer could unpick and communicate, if there was ever a market for that.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and regular columnist.