MOTTRAM: Morning Minister, how are you?
WONG: Good morning Linda, good to be with you.
MOTTRAM: Thank you. What is wrong with saying that the era of entitlement needs to end?
WONG: Have a look at what Joe Hockey is really saying. Hes trying to suggest that we should be massively reducing our social services; things like the age pension, our welfare system. And perhaps the most bizarre part of his interview is where he says essentially that we should be hard in terms of access to things like pensions, but we should still be giving millionaires a tax break for private health insurance. Its a pretty odd set of philosophical priorities.
MOTTRAM: Well, in general terms though, is he not right to say that a new era is upon us; we need to revise, we need to look at what were doing, we need to pull the belt in?
WONG: The Federal Government, the Labor Government, has taken targeted measures to try and improve the fairness in our social security system and to make sure we continue to work to bring the budget back to surplus because we think thats in the interest of all Australians and in the interest particularly of ensuring that we give the Reserve Bank the flexibility to move should it wish to do so.
But the point here is Joes overseas, beating his chest again. This is a bloke whos never managed to get his costings right didnt get them right during the election campaign nor subsequently.
But the most disturbing thing about what hes saying is hes seriously telling the people that its a good thing not to means test private health insurance so millionaires can get a tax break for private health insurance a tax break funded by taxpayers but we need to go harder on our system of welfare.
MOTTRAM: Its tough for you isnt it, I mean, youre having to bring in this surplus that the Government is just now so locked into, despite a lot of criticism about it. Does that threaten your ability to continue to pay welfare?
WONG: Id make a couple of points. First, as Ive said earlier, a surplus is the right thing to do for the Australian economy and the right thing to do for Australian households. We see a lot of uncertainty in the global economy. A surplus gives us not only a message of confidence but most importantly a buffer in uncertain times and also theres always the issue in terms of making sure you give the Reserve Bank room to move.
But a political party says as much in terms of what it chooses to target for spending cuts about itself as any other decision, and weve taken the principle of fairness, which is a principle we hold dear, to our approach to spending cuts. For example, Ive spoken before about the private health insurance rebate. We have said we dont think its sensible to continue to subsidise wealthy peoples private health insurance. We have targeted the sorts of reductions in expenditure in a way we think is fair. Its the very opposite of what Joe is advocating.
MOTTRAM: So will you also target entitlements like diesel fuel rebates and subsidies on imported 4WDs and so forth ...
WONG: (laughs) I think now were getting into the world of please tell me what might or might not be in the Budget ...
MOTTRAM: ... Rule-in-rule-out ... and youre not going to play the game (laughs) ...
WONG: I was trying to find a different way of putting it because I was sure youd say something like that Linda. But obviously if you look at what weve done in the last mid-year review and the last Budget, and also our election campaign, we have offset all new spending.
Weve made decisions about how to prioritise, and some of those weve been criticised for. I mean, lets remember Joe Hockey after the last Budget came out and said that the Labor Party was playing class warfare, that we were saying that people on $150,000 were rich and that was an outrageous thing. He then ended up supporting that change and now hes saying actually, well, you should have gone further ...
MOTTRAM: But speaking of class warfare, Wayne Swan was the one who attacked the billionaires, the mining billionaires ...
WONG: I think if you look at what Wayne said it was very legitimate: that if were going to have a public policy debate, we need to make sure its balanced and that people who enter that debate who are speaking for their own interests are counter-balanced by those who speak for the national interest. Thats a different point.
I think the point here is that Joe after the Budget says its a dreadful thing that youre trying to tighten the means test on various payments, thats class warfare, now overseas hes saying actually you should go harder. I mean, which is the real Joe Hockey on this and clearly his primary proposition seems to be we need wealthy people to be subsdised for their health insurance.
MOTTRAM: Penny Wong, thanks for your time.
WONG: Good to speak with you.
ENDS