Q&A: George Brandis put on the spot over Centrelink fiasco and disability funding

The continuing Centrelink automated debt notice scandal and the future of the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) were front and centre of the debate during a Q&A that put a human face on issues of disability and welfare.

Audience member Fred Thorpe, whose daughter was the 2014 New South Wales young carer of the year, told the panel, which included the attorney general George Brandis, of her “absolute fear” she would lose her disability pension.

“Can George Brandis explain why politicians’ expenses are extravagant and go unchecked while I am having my disability support pension reviewed, despite a 28-year exemplary career as a school teacher?” asked Thorpe, who receives $22,000 a year and is incapable of working due to ill health.

“I have already been assessed six years ago,” she told the panel of the ABC TV show. “I spent most of the weekend throwing up from absolute fear that if my pension is removed, what will become of us?”

In response, the Queensland Liberal senator said that any “decent social welfare system” must undergo “reviews from time to time to ensure that the payments are going to those who are eligible for them”.

Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman added: “As with any government spending, very, very strict guidelines must be endured. We have seen in all of the newspapers, stories about people who are dole bludgers. There is no other way to describe them. These people must be brought to book.”

However Thorpe criticised the “blanket approach” of the reviews and debt notices.

“Joe Hockey referred to people like me as ‘leaners not lifters’. Let me tell Mr Hockey and anybody else in any government: as a school teacher for 28 years, as a member of my community, I have never been a leaner and I don’t sit around drinking expensive bottles of Grange on the public dollar,” she said.

The attorney general inadvertently drew laughs from the audience when defending the policy of automated debt recovery.

“When a notice is issued and it appears a mistake has been made, they can contact Centrelink and sort out the problem”, he said.

“I’d just point out that Fred almost fell over laughing,” interjected moderator Tony Jones as the audience laughed.

“How long did you wait on the phone?” asked the deputy opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek.

“It took me two weeks every day for one-and-a-half hours a day,” Thorpe replied.

The new federal disability commissioner, Alastair McEwin, speaking through an Auslan interpreter, asked Brandis and Plibersek if they could guarantee the $20bn in funding for the NDIS, which has recently been under question due to the government’s stalled attempts to pass its welfare cuts bill in the Senate. Both Brandis and Plibersek said they were committed to long-term funding of the NDIS.

McEwin said the $20bn outlay would, if funded correctly, bring a financial benefit to the country by increasing workforce participation and social inclusion.

“People with disabilities will then become part of the community and be able to pay their taxes, and the money will come back into the community”, he told the panel. “The debate over funding which happened last week was not fair to those with disabilities who really are some of the most disadvantaged people in our community.”

Plibersek matched the government’s commitment, saying Labor had identified funding through means-testing private health insurance, a tobacco excise and increasing the Medicare levy by 0.5%.

Plibersek also defended the opposition’s renewable energy target following blackouts in South Australia.

“We have seen the cost of solar come down by about 80% in the last seven years. We have seen the cost of wind power generation come down by about 50% over the last seven years … More renewables will push down the cost of energy over time. New coal will push up the price of electricity over time,” she said.

Plibersek, Brandis and Akerman then talked over each other as they debated the cause of the South Australian blackouts.

“Nobody disputes that renewable energy is an important part of the energy mix. So is coal. What we have to do is to integrate renewable energy into the system in a way that works effectively. That, I am afraid, is what we have not seen in South Australia where the government can’t even keep the lights on,” Brandis said.

Plibersek countered: “We had blackouts in Sydney. New South Wales is the most coal-dependent state. It had blackouts.”

Brandis also struck an optimistic tone when asked whether the new Trump administration would renege on the US-Australian deal to relocate asylum seekers on Manus Island.

“[The deal] didn’t fall apart. It was affirmed by the Trump administration. Famously we now know that the prime minister had a difficult telephone conversation with president Trump and the outcome of that was that president Trump committed to the deal,” he said.

Both Brandis and Akerman denied the suggestion from the human rights lawyer Julian Burnside that Trump had “made it clear he doesn’t want Muslims coming into America”.

“His executive order was about seven nations, but didn’t include the largest nations with the largest Islamic populations in the world,” Akerman claimed.

Burnside, a prominent refugee advocate, pressed the issue: “Attorney general, as the senior law officer of the country, do you believe that asylum seekers who come to Australia commit any offence?”

“They commit offences against our migration laws,” said Brandis. “I am not going to quote you a section.”

“That’s because there isn’t one. You’re just wrong,” Burnside replied.

Panellist Michele Levine, the chief executive of Roy Morgan polling, revealed that a special poll conducted for the program showed the nation “divided 50-50” on whether asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru should be brought back to Australia.

“The people who say, ‘No, don’t bring them here’, it is actually less about border security,” she said. “It is less about fear there will be hordes of people coming. It’s really concerns about ‘Do we have enough housing?’, ‘Will we be able to fit them in?’, ‘What about our own poor?’ Those are the sorts of issues that are really concerning people.”