Afleveringen
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Navin75/Flickr, Australian Marine Conservation Society, ANU
The anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd has called a halt to its famous missions tracking the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean.
For the past 12 years the groupâs boats have engaged in annual high-seas battles with vessels carrying out Japanâs self-described scientific whaling program. But Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson has admitted that Japanâs use of military-grade technology such as real-time satellite tracking has left the activists unable to keep up.
Watson also criticised the Australian government over its response to Japanâs whaling program, despite a global ban on most whaling.
Read more: Murky waters: why is Japan still whaling in the Southern Ocean?
Scientific whaling is technically allowed under the International Whaling Commissionâs treaty, and countries such as Japan have the right to decide for themselves what constitutes âscientificâ in this context.
Australia is not the only government to be accused of reluctance to stand up to Japan. But in 2014, Japanâs pretext for whaling was finally discredited when Australia won a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. And, for a year, the Japanese whaling stopped.
This episode of Change Agents tells the back story of how that happened through the eyes of two key players, ANU legal academic Don Rothwell and Darren Kindleysides, who was then campaign manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. They worked on a strategy to provide both the legal argument and the political will for Australia to take on Japan in the courts.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Amee Meredith and Caterina Politi turned the worst day of their lives into a campaign for meaningful law reform. AAP/The Conversation
The death of Melbourne heart surgeon Patrick Pritzwald-Stegmann has again focused attention on the fatal consequences of so-called âone-punchâ attacks.
In response to this form of violence, Australian states and territories have enacted quite different laws, often following campaigns by family members seeking justice for a lost loved one.
On this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd speaks to two of these campaigners. In Victoria, Caterina Politi campaigned successfully for ten-year mandatory minimum sentences following the death of her son, David Cassai. And in the Northern Territory, Amee Meredith lobbied for tougher sentences after the death of her husband, Brett, who was also a territory police officer.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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David Buchanan and Fr Paul Kelly have spearheaded pushes to abolish the gay panic defence. Forbes Chambers/ABC/Supplied
The gay panic â or homosexual advance â defence has allowed people literally to get away with murder. Itâs given them a way to convince juries they were provoked to kill because a homosexual person propositioned them.
In an alarming number of cases, juries were convinced that an advance by a gay â or supposedly gay â man was sufficient provocation for killing him. Juries have opted instead to convict the defendant of the lesser offence of manslaughter.
Over the past 14 years this practice has been abolished across Australiaâs states and territories; Queensland is the latest state to do so. In this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd speaks to Catholic priest Fr Paul Kelly and Sydney barrister David Buchanan, SC, about how they did it.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Lucy Haslam and Alex Wodak helped convince the public and politicians that the time for legalised medicinal cannabis had come. AAP/Alan Porritt
In 2016 three Australian states and the Commonwealth passed laws to legalise the growing of medicinal cannabis. It was an extraordinary result for a campaign that struggled for decades to gain traction.
Suddenly the push had taken off in the public imagination, prompting state and then federal politicians to agree to the cultivation and prescription of cannabis for people suffering from a wide range of conditions.
In this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd speaks to Lucy Haslam, who launched the grassroots campaign in New South Wales after her son Dan was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Alex Wodak, the president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation. Together they convinced the public and politicians the time for change had come.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Stuart Morris QC (left) and Leonie Hemingway (formerly Leonie Burke) led the Labor and Liberal governments' attempts at reforming local government. Andrew Dodd, CC BY-ND
Victoriaâs council reforms in 1994 remain Australiaâs most radical restructuring of local government.
The changes under the Kennett government reduced the number of councils from 210 to 79 through amalgamations.
In this episode of Change Agents, Andrew Dodd brings together Stuart Morris QC and Leonie Hemingway (formerly Leonie Burke), the two people who respectively led the Labor and Liberal governmentsâ attempts at reform.
They speak for the first time publicly about their successes and failures on the road to this overhaul of local government.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Susan Alberti (left) and Debbie Lee were pivotal to the formation of the national women's AFL competition. Melbourne Football Club
When it kicks off in 2017 the national womenâs football league will include eight AFL teams from five states, with at least another five likely to follow soon after. The national competition is the culmination of decades of work by womenâs football associations around Australia. These have steadily grown and overcome ignorance and discrimination to gain greater acceptance.
On this episode of Change Agents Andrew Dodd talks to veteran footballer Debbie Lee, who is the community manager at the Melbourne Football Club, and businesswoman Susan Alberti, the vice president of the Western Bulldogs, about how they made the national womenâs league a reality.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
Special thanks to the Melbourne Football Club for providing the photo of Susan Alberti and Debbie Lee, taken at the announcement of the national womenâs football league, June 15, 2016.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady were both instrumental in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Alan Porritt and Julian Smith (AAP)
This is the first program in a new podcast series, Change Agents. It will focus on examples of ordinary people who have brought about profound social, political and cultural change, celebrating their success and explaining how they did it.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is the biggest social reform in Australia this century. By 2022 it will help half a million people access comprehensive disability support at a cost of around A$25 billion.
On this program, two of the NDISâ founders explain how they developed something so radical and comprehensive and then won support for the idea. Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman and Rhonda Galbally is a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, the body that implements the NDIS.
You can read the transcript below.
Andrew Dodd: Hello, Iâm Andrew Dodd and this is Change Agents, a series about change and the people who make it happen. Today, the birth of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is Australiaâs biggest social reform this century. By 2022 itâs estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, itâll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy.
Today weâll meet two of its founders: Bruce Bonyhady is the chairman, and Rhonda Galbally is a board member, of the NDIA, the agency that runs the NDIS. They told a forum at Swinburne University that the idea has been around for a long time, as far back as the Whitlam years.
Bruce Bonyhady: Whitlam, following the introduction of Medicare, wanted to have a national compensation scheme. A similar scheme was introduced in New Zealand, but covering just people with disabilities who acquired that disability through an accident â so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now.
But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workersâ compensation or motor vehicle compensation schemes and apply that to disability more generally dates back to then, and in fact is part of a movement that started in the 1890s when the first compulsory workersâ compensation schemes were developed â in fact in Germany.
AD: Am I right in saying it was on the books at the time the Whitlam government was dismissed, and that the Fraser government decided not to carry through with it?
BB: Yes, it was due to be debated in parliament on November 11, 1975, and then Fraser decided not to carry on the reform.
AD: So obviously then there wasnât the bipartisanship that characterised what happened with the NDIS later.
BB: No, there was no bipartisanship around that, and in fact there was no bipartisanship at that stage around universal health insurance either.
AD: Iâve read that it was scuttled in part because the insurers saw that it was against their interests to support something that would undermine their business models. So, they were opposed to it.
BB: I donât know that detail. I think the point about the NDIS, though, is that it provides insurance where there was no insurance before. There is no private insurer who will insure someone who was born with a disability, or acquires a disability through a progressive medical condition, and will insure catastrophic risk.
This is a classic case of market failure â there was no insurance available. And itâs a classic issue to which insurance applies â because the whole population is at risk. The consequences of major disability on those directly affected and their families is enormous. And so if we all pay a small amount, then we can insure us all â and it is the most efficient and effective way, as a society, to support people with disabilities.
And in fact, if you go back to the work of Kenneth Arrow in the 1960s, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on insurance, he, in his work, where he demonstrated that universal health insurance is the most efficient way for communities to support the risk of adverse health outcomes, he also had a category for what he called âfailure to recoverâ â in other words, permanent disability. So, already in the 1960s the academic work had been done to demonstrate the veracity of this scheme.
Rhonda Galbally: But, what was missing then was that the disability rights movement hadnât started in Australia. And there was no mobilisation or interest. In America, it started â really, for the world â with the Vietnam veterans coming back and just not putting up with being put in institutions. They said âno wayâ and started the independent living movement.
Ours wouldâve started just in tiny little seeds towards the end of the 70s. And then in the early 80s they had a small voice, but they were responsible for the deinstitutionalisation movement. But then, by the time it came around for the NDIS, that mobilisation possibility was just as important as the idea â because if the idea had been there, which Bruce designed, without the possibility of the mobilisation then weâd be back to where we were with the Whitlam era. So I think thatâs a very important part of the question of: âhow come?â
AD: One of the people who deserves a lot of credit in bringing about the NDIS is the former deputy prime minister, Brian Howe. Itâs said that back in 2005 he went back to the Woodhouse report â this report that had been commissioned by the Whitlam government â pulled it off the shelf, had a look at it, and started thinking about an insurance scheme that could address some of these issues. How fundamental was he to this?
BB: He was certainly fundamental to my involvement. In 2005 I was just starting to be interested in disability reform. I was very conscious that there was chronic underfunding; that many people were not getting the support they needed â either not enough support or were missing out entirely.
I was on a board with Brian at the time, and I said to him I wanted to talk to him about disability reform. And what he said to me was âyou have to stop thinking about disability policy as welfare, and start thinking about it as risk and insurance and investmentâ. It was one of those lightbulb moments. So, it became a catalyst for me to start to explore how insurance could be applied to people with disability more generally.
I very quickly came across the work of John Walsh, who had developed a whole scheme for anyone who was catastrophically injured â not just those who were catastrophically injured in motor-vehicle or workplace accidents. I said to John âcould we do this for all of disability?â, and he said âof course, we just need the dataâ. Both Brian and then John were incredibly important to how we got to where we are today.
AD: You were, at that stage, chair of Yooralla. And you came into this sector because of a personal family connection to these issues.
BB: Yeah. Iâve got two adult sons, both of whom have cerebral palsy. Prior to them being born â my older son is now in his 30s â I knew nothing about disability, so I became involved on the boards of disability organisations.
Initially my focus was on those organisations and their governance. In 2005 I started to think more broadly. The trigger for that was going to an early intervention centre that Yooralla was running near Dandenong and sitting down with the mother of a disabled boy. She said to me: âWhy canât my son get the early intervention services he needs?â. And I went into this long explanation about how we were doing the best we could with the funding we had, and then I went away appalled by the answer.
Here I was, with all of my connections and education, and I was defending the status quo. That was really the trigger for me to go and see Brian. I thought it was shocking, so that was how it started.
AD: Letâs go forward from 2005 to the election of the Rudd government. The parliamentary secretary for disability services, Bill Shorten, was appointed in 2007. He became very important to what ensued.
RG: Well I think Bill was really the important catalyst in a way. And I think he really was very striking from the very first time I met him in that he didnât characterise disability as a sad tragedy or misery. He characterised it as an outrage, a real abrogation of human rights, and it was sort of like a non-welfare approach to it, and also a waste: he characterised it as wasteful of peopleâs potential.
There was a charitable view of disability. People were very happy to talk at length about raising money for poor disadvantaged people, but nobody was talking about it being an absolute outrage. That was Bill, and behind Bill was Jenny Macklin, who was very seasoned, and he had a view of especially mobilisation.
The sector was in complete disarray. And because it had been a charitable sad story, the media was characterised by burden. There were very important programs which probably helped the case but were really fragmenting, because youâd come out of it feeling like cutting your throat as a person with a disability because there you were, youâd ruined everyoneâs lives and the families were in tragedy and so people with disabilities organisations didnât get on at all with carersâ organisations, and both were united â probably quite rightly â in being highly critical of the services that hadnât changed in about the last 50 years.
AD: I think I read something you wrote that said that these sectors were effectively at war with each other.
RG: They were at war. And they were at war in every country in the world. I can remember reading a Guardian article by the head of the Disability Rights Commission in the UK, and she said we will not make progress in this country until the carers organisations get together with the people with disabilities organisations and build an alliance.
AD: I want to find out more about how you did that and weâll get to that in a second, but I want to go to the 2020 Summit now, because that also is very important to this. Iâve heard snippets of this story but I want you to tell the full story, Bruce, about how you got this issue on the agenda of the 2020 Summit. I donât think you were even a delegate, were you?
BB: No, I wasnât a delegate.
RG: Thereâs a club for them, for non-delegates.
AD: Are you in that club?
BB: I got together with Helen Sykes, who is the chairman of the James Macready Bryan Foundation, and one of my closest long-time friends, John Nairn, who was a director of that foundation. None of us were invited to the 2020 Summit so we got the list of delegates and we wrote to everyone and contacted everyone on that list that we knew.
We knew that no-one was going to take our idea to the summit as their top idea, so we knew we were going to be at best their second idea at the summit. So we figured that going into the Summit we were somewhere worse than position 1001, but somehow it emerged as one of the half-dozen big ideas of the summit. And â on reflection â it was undoubtedly the big idea of the 2020 Summit.
AD: How many of them put it as their second idea, do you know?
BB: I donât know. Certainly a number of people I know well pushed it.
AD: How did you get people to say âOK, I will put your idea down as my second ideaâ at this big summit?
BB: I think it was a compelling case. Everyone knows someone with a disability, or theyâve got a relative with a disability, and they know how broken that old system was. Here was an idea which made reform affordable, and people responded. And I think we had some luck.
I think some of these things are: you work hard and you put all your effort in and you get some lucky breaks, so we obviously got some lucky breaks for that to happen.
AD: So it emerges as a big idea and â as you say â probably the big idea of the 2020 Summit. And then you were asked by Bill Shorten to look at the feasibility of the scheme and actually shore it all up with the right numbers behind it.
BB: Well weâd already started on that process. So a group of us, chaired by Ian Silk, worked for 18 months on this report. When youâre asked to recommend reform to governments youâve got a choice â you can have a long shopping list of ideas, or you can essentially say âweâve got one ideaâ, and thatâs what we did.
We said: âWeâve got one idea and we think itâs a big idea and we think it requires further examination by governmentâ.
AD: And I think this is about the time that Bill Shorten says to you and to the various groups: âcome together and start working as a teamâ, and you led this group that became the alliance.
RG: There was internal-to-government and then there was external-to-government, and I facilitated the external-to-government coming together of the three and in fact it was very moving.
I think about it now in terms of the maturity of being able to think about what it was like from somebody elseâs point of view. I can remember the first time we came together with carers and I was thinking about it from my motherâs point of view â how it had been for her and her life when I was disabled as a tiny baby. It was that expression and then them seeing it from the personâs point of view, instead of just from the familyâs point of view, that made it quite a profound connection.
Internally to government, because the carersâ networks had been so powerful through the 1990s, there was a view that there should be a separate carersâ council. But because weâd mobilised and come together on the outside, it just didnât make sense. So that was a persuasion job with Bill and Jenny, because the bureaucrats were pretty convinced that they should be separate.
I remember [the bureaucrats] saying âbut carers look after old peopleâ and I thought âwell youâre not a carer of someone old until theyâre disabled, actually, otherwise youâre just a son or a daughter â you donât play that carer role until theyâre disabled tooâ, so the topic is still disability.
So they then agreed to it being set up in joint services and carers, and then Bill insisted on putting business and unions on. I was very opposed and I said âOh no, it should just be consumersâ and he was proven to be right; they were tremendously valuable â they opened it out, they took it back to their networks, to the business council, to the AICD, to all sorts of places that had never heard of these issues, and the ACTU. It was really valuable, that move to broaden that group out.
BB: I think the other thing that we need to give Rhonda credit for is the alliance was her brainchild. This alliance outside government â itâs a world-first. This is the first time anywhere in the world that, the sector having split, as part of the disability rights movement, as a sign of its maturity came together to prosecute the case for big reform. You only get big reform when youâve got unity and a single voice and a single point of advocacy to government and the community.
AD: You were saying earlier that some were pushing to include education in the campaign and other aspects of disability reform that were required, and it was about narrowing it down to one achievable â admittedly ambitious â but one achievable goal.
RG: Yes, and the trouble also was a matter of us â Bruce and I â thinking that the NDIS should be the focus, but also we decided to only work on something we could agree on. Education is still reasonably controversial in that some of the carers felt special education was good, and the people with disabilities organisations didnât agree with that, so we put it off the agenda instead of having another war about content. On the NDIS, everyone agreed.
BB: The NDIS was and is a unifying idea because it says the support you will receive is based on your need. Itâs no longer based on where you acquired your disability, when you acquired your disability, how you acquired your disability, or what your type of disability is: whether youâve got autism or cerebral palsy or spina bifida.
It says need is the determinant, and that the support you receive is commensurate with that need. So, we were able to work through that â because even within that there was still a lot of debate in terms of language and other issues that we had to get right before we could agree that this was the single issue that we were going to pursue above all others.
AD: Can I ask you about the mobilisation, because at one stage â in fact you still have these kind of numbers â 150,000 people reachable by email who then have the flow-on effect of contacting others. The alliance didnât have a lot of money but it had this incredibly powerful tool at its disposal: the people involved.
RG: They were very hot, and still are very, very hot contacts âŠ
AD: What do you mean by hot?
RG: I mean theyâll take action. I mean theyâre not just a contact list where half of them are old and you havenât cleaned it. I mean this is a hot where people have kept up-to-date, where theyâre vitally interested.
AD: How have you harnessed this resource?
RG: It was absolutely instrumental in getting the scheme. Wouldnât you agree Bruce?
BB: Yeah.
RG: Very, very important. And itâs watching â itâs a marvellous check and balance, and itâs watching and anything that would not make the scheme happen in the way that everybody thinks that weâve signed up for, itâs there, and itâs never before been in my experience, in my life, that Iâve ever seen disability be a really political issue, a hot political issue.
It was in America, but that was the Vietnam veterans that did that and they made the American Disability Act thatâs a really powerful act. But in Australia itâs never been but now it is, and I think itâs not going to go away â I think itâs just there, and itâs a really important instrument for all of us.
AD: Is it true that 120 House of Representatives MPs were visited by people with disabilities and carers in the lead-up to key decisions being made?
BB: I donât know whether it was 120 but it was certainly of that order. People went to see their MPs, they wrote to them just prior to major COAG meetings; thousands of emails were sent to the prime minister and the premiers âŠ
RG: Disability teas, do you remember those?
BB: Yes. This was a very active group. Itâs worth remembering that at about the time the NDIS campaign â the Every Australian Counts campaign â was running, the miners were also running a campaign against a mining tax. They had millions and millions of dollars. What the NDIS campaign had were people. This was an old-fashioned â in many ways an old-fashioned grassroots campaign â mobilised through social media very, very effectively.
RG: I was chairing a hospital at the time and hadnât mentioned it to my hospital â to the board or the staff â that they might have had any interest â I shouldâve â but they came to me and said they were having a disability tea. And so they were everywhere, they were in hospitals, in local governments, in NGOs, in businesses â a lot of businesses had disability teas.
There were state co-ordinators that were part of the Every Australian Counts campaign â they did a lot of that work. There was Kirstin, there was John, and then there were the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations, and Carers Australia â a very powerful and important organisation. Theyâd get it out to their members and theyâd all have disability teas so it wasnât just that 150,000 very warm email contacts of citizens of Australia. They werenât organisational, it was also all the organisations.
BB: And then there were all the people who just told their stories, without any sense of self-pity. They just explained what life was like as a person with a disability, or someone caring for a disability â frankly and openly â and those stories resonated with the Australian public, and the statistics also supported those stories.
When we found that in the OECD area, Australia ranked last in terms of people with disability living at or below the poverty line, people said: âIn the midst of this great mining boom, weâve got this?â.
So, the sense of, not just shame, but that it canât be allowed to continue, just spread out from people with disabilities to the community as a whole and culminated in that moment when the government put forward the proposition that the Medicare levy should be increased to fund the NDIS, and 85% of the Australian population said: âweâre happyâ. Never before has a tax increase been approved overnight.
AD: You referred to John Walsh before, and I donât want to skip over that because this guy deserves enormous credit. This is somebody who worked at Pricewaterhousecoopers; he was an actuary. He had an accident at the age of 20 when he was playing rugby and became a quadriplegic, and focused as a result on this special skill he had as a number-cruncher and you guys used him throughout the process to shore up the numbers to convince the politicians and the departments that this thing was achievable.
BB: This scheme would not have been achieved without John.
RG: I agree.
BB: His analytical capability, his enormous intellect to apply the actuarial principles to disability as a whole, to get the data, to do the analysis. He was a member of the disability investment group, he was then the other commissioner with Patricia Scott on the Productivity Commission, heâs now on the board of the NDIA and chairs our sustainability committee.
His contribution is giant. He worked not just in Australia but in New Zealand so he understood the accident compensation scheme there, heâd worked on most of Australiaâs workers compensation and transport accident schemes. His significance is enormous.
AD: He came with you both, I understand, to dinner at The Lodge, with Jenny Macklin and Bill Shorten. Have I got that right? How did that dinner go and what happened?
BB: We were at a point where this scheme needed true bipartisanship at the tops of all parties âŠ
AD: I should say when this happened Julia Gillard was the prime minister âŠ
BB: She was the prime minister. The Productivity Commission report had been presented and a number of us got the opportunity to have dinner with her and put the case for why the NDIS should be a priority for her government. Because, at the end of the day, big reforms need prime ministerial approval.
AD: Did she need much convincing?
BB: I donât think so. I think she got it. But I think it was very important in the sense of hearing from people who had been deeply involved with the development of the idea.
The dinner was not conclusive; we didnât know what the outcome was. We really put our case. It was actually quite short; the business part of it probably only took about 45 minutes for the key points to be made, and then it went to more general chit-chat. But all of the key points were made.
We then waited. Soon thereafter she said: âweâre going to get this thing doneâ.
RG: It was a very quick response after the commissionerâs report. It was about the quickest ever.
BB: Yeah, but it was that moment where she said âweâre going to get it doneâ. And from that point on, the machinery of the Commonwealth government swung fully into action behind the scheme.
AD: What does that look like, when it all swings behind you and everyoneâs onside and wanting to make it happen quickly?
BB: It gets momentum.
AD: That word momentum keeps cropping up from this point on âŠ
BB: Well I think when you have the prime ministerâs department, the Treasury, the Finance Department, the Department of Family and Housing and Community Services, all behind an idea, and theyâre the key departments, then it happens.
AD: The Medicare levy increased from 1.5 to 2%. How did you manage that?
BB: Craig Wallace was very significant in that. Heâs the chairman of People With Disability Australia, and so he has always been very influential in disability circles and he wrote an opinion piece on it, and I think that was at a time when the government was thinking through how were they going to fund it. So I think that was certainly influential.
I think itâs important to remember that what the Productivity Commission said was that this scheme should be funded out of general revenue, and part of the reason they argued that was because they said this is one of the first things that government should do, itâs like defence.
If taxes arenât going to go up then there are other things at the margin that government should cease doing in order to ensure that this scheme is funded. Their view was this was core government business.
RG: Iâm just trying to think, though, who did come up with the Medicare levy? I think it is a really interesting question. It might have come out of Jenny Macklinâs office âŠ
AD: Well, I remember reading that Jenny Macklin at one stage went to the Expenditure Review Committee [ERC] and, I donât know how she got away with this, but just coolly asked for A$14 billion over five years to make this happen. She said afterwards it was the biggest thing she ever asked for from the ERC â as youâd kind of hope that that would be the biggest thing she ever asked for â but this is a massive amount of money.
RG: But she had a very good case. You make it sound quite casual, whereas sheâs a very carefully prepared. Sheâs a top policy person herself, so she would have had all the iâs dotted and the tâs crossed.
AD: So it gathers this momentum, and I remember the announcement that it would be tied to Medicare and there was a little bit of opposition, there was some discussion about it. But what characterised it was how little opposition there was and how quickly the actual opposition, then the Coalition, fell in behind it.
BB: I think itâs not fair to say âat that point the opposition fell in behind itâ. I think that the opposition, particularly Tony Abbott and senator Mitch Fifield, understood this scheme and its significance from very, very early on, so the bipartisanship began much earlier.
And I think what they grasped was that it was not just a social policy reform, but it was an economic reform, and it was about equity, and about opportunity. And this is about equality of opportunity for people with disabilities, and it was about equity for them and their families.
And so there was a basis for that emerging bipartisanship. And one of the things that we knew already at the time of the disability investment group was that this reform was probably going to take seven years in terms of introducing it, that it was going to be a long period of time, therefore it was going to go across multiple governments and so had to win the support of all parties and all governments, both federal and state.
AD: Rhonda, when did you know that youâd won the support of Tony Abbott?
RD: There was a systematic program of approaching and talking, and I met with Mitch Fifield quite often and he had supported it â heâd been very clear. But I bumped into Tony Abbott in the street in Sydney, and I said to him: âMr Abbott, Iâm hearing youâre supporting the NDIS and Iâm so pleasedâ. And he said: âWell normally Iâm Mr No, but on this occasion Iâm Mr Yesâ.
And so I had a Press Club appearance about two weeks later and I quoted it. He then picked it up and quoted it everywhere. So it became his phrase!
Iâve met millions of politicians over a long, long life â because Iâm quite elderly by now â and a lot you donât get past the goalposts because there isnât that groundswell. Medicare had a groundswell, which was pretty good for its day when you think about it; this was about 50 times bigger than the Medicare groundswell. And I donât think a politician in Australia could deny it.
AD: Rhonda Galbally, a board member of the National Disability Insurance Agency, and before her, Bruce Bonyhady, the chairman of that same organisation. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Leadership Institute, and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, or listen on Soundcloud. Production today: Heather Jarvis, Sam Wilson and Jonathan Lang. Iâm Andrew Dodd, and I hope you can join me next time for Change Agents.
Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne Universityâs Department of Media and Communication. It is presented by Andrew Dodd and produced by Samuel Wilson and Andrew Dodd, with production by Heather Jarvis.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
