May 30, 2024 • 20 mins
This week we look at two stories about our public servants. The first story is about the faceless kind of public servant who toil in government departments, and the second story is about the political public servants at the heart of the Albanese government, as we discuss the different public and private roles of ministers.
Joining Jacqueline Maley is national affairs editor James Massola and senior economics correspondent Shane Wright.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.
Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age,
this is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, May 24th.
This week on the podcast, we are going to discuss
two stories from our Canberra bureau that are about public servants.
The first story is about the faceless kind of public
servants who toil in government departments. And the second story
(00:24):
is about the political public servants at the heart of
the Albanese government as we discuss the different public and
private roles of ministers. This week our man David Crowe
is on leave. So joining me on the podcast today,
we have national affairs editor James Massola and senior economics
correspondent Shane Wright. Welcome to the program, gentlemen.
S2 (00:45):
Good day. Jacki. We can't fill the crow's feet, but.
S3 (00:48):
They're big shoes to fill. We will try. We'll do
our best.
S1 (00:55):
Shane, you wrote a really great piece this week that
was sort of a budget follow up, an after thought,
if you like, which had a lot of impact. It
was about a line item in the budget that wasn't
widely reported last week, which was $6.5 billion put aside
for defense veterans. So it was no small item. Tell
us about what you wrote.
S2 (01:13):
Well, it's sad that things like this keep me awake
at night. Most people, after budget, curl up with a
good book and or a bad movie and go to sleep,
but I quite angered by a particular paragraph that was
on page 97 of budget paper number one. For those
lucky of us not to have ever seen a federal budget,
they are enormous things. And this one line just said,
(01:35):
we've had to spend $6.5 billion over the next five years,
because we're putting on extra staff in Veterans Affairs to
deal with all the claims that we've now got underway. Now,
that started to make my blood boil, and by the
end of the week, it had boiled over. Um, to
the point. Yeah, it was scalding because it transpires that
(01:58):
this goes back to the Morrison government, which had got
a situation within the Veterans Affairs department of using labour hire,
which it had used across all of the departments to
try and reduce the headcount of public servants. The problem
was in Veterans affairs and in other portfolios that labour hire,
(02:21):
these people tend to turn over quite often two, three,
four months. In Veterans Affairs. It takes about six months
to properly train a person to go through line by line.
All these claims that were coming through from Veterans Affairs.
So the Morrison government had actually encouraged people within the
Defence Force close to retirement or close to leaving. Right.
(02:42):
Get your claim in. And that way you'll have a
seamless revenue source to look after you. The problem was
they didn't have enough staff and the staff they did
just couldn't do that work. So by the time you
get to the election in 2022, there's 50,000 people, former
veterans whose claims had not even been allocated to staff
(03:05):
within Veterans Affairs to get processed.
S3 (03:08):
And the wait times too. Don't forget, Shane, so that
you've got 50,000 people there unallocated. The average waiting time
was more than 300 days. Yep. Was some massive, some
extraordinary percentage of people waiting more than 300 days, about
10,000 people waiting more than 400 days. And then once
you claim actually gets allocated, it was sitting on a desk,
(03:29):
you know, a public servants desk for, on average, 430,
440 days. That's come down to 373 days. That's an improvement.
You only have to wait a bit more than a
year now once you've got.
S2 (03:43):
So you went crazy. So this is yeah. So you
end up with the situation that Andrew gee, if you remember,
the last Veterans Affairs minister in the Morrison government had
threatened to resign from cabinet because he was so pee'd
off with the situation he was facing. So to, to
effectively pay him off, uh, Josh Frydenberg used his last
budget to employ 90 extra staff. Matt Keogh comes in
(04:06):
as the Veterans affairs minister and Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher,
the finance minister. And they've gone, oh my God. So
they actually employed 500 extra staff in the October budget.
And since then there was extra allocation of money for
staff in last week's budget.
S3 (04:21):
Yeah, another 141, another 140 when the coalition I mean
it's a somewhat controversial point to make, but public servants
aren't all lazy people on high salaries doing nothing. Um,
shock exclusive. You heard it here first. Some of them
work pretty hard. Some of them actually. In fact, I'm
sure most of them work pretty hard. Um, they actually
do things of consequence, and this is one of them.
(04:42):
So with all those extra staff, uh, from the 22nd
October budget, the people not allocated, it's down to around
2000 people with an average wait time of about two weeks.
So that's a massive improvement. Those files are actually sitting
on the desks of public servants now. But what is
not happening? We touched on this a moment ago. There's
still that 373 day average wait time to get money
(05:06):
for your medicine or to get, you know, physiotherapy or
whatever it might be that you're applying for help with PTSD.
People die waiting for this help to come through. Right?
S1 (05:14):
Well, there's a slogan along those lines, isn't there? Sorry
to interrupt.
S2 (05:17):
Yeah, that that's what I picked up. Is that within
the veterans community, it's delay, deny, die. And within the
government it is. They've just finding people who are just
resigning themselves to the fact that you won't ever get paid. Now,
you could be absolutely cynical and think, well, this is
this is a design feature. It's not a design flaw.
(05:39):
Because the longer you delay having someone's claim processed, the
less time they'll actually be on the entitlement before they die. Absolutely.
Or something else happens to them. And you've not only
got that aspect of it, which is upset so many.
People and it angered me. But also the fact that
you've got this whole cohort. Of veterans coming through the system,
(06:03):
particularly out of Afghanistan, in Iraq. About 20,000 veterans still
to come through from that, that element.
S1 (06:10):
Well, we think of it. I mean, budgets can be
so dry and so boring. And they're about the headline
figures in the data and stuff. But what we miss
so often in our reporting is that these are policies
and money allocated, which can change people's lives and do
change people's lives on the ground. James, you talked to
some veterans about the impact of dealing with the Department
of Veterans Affairs. What did they say about that experience?
S3 (06:31):
Yeah, look, I spoke to a couple of guys and
some veterans advocates as well. The two fellows I spoke
to a guy called Pete Rudland, who is a former
SAS and Commando who was in a Blackhawk crash in 2010,
in Afghanistan. And then another fellow called Paul McGlynn, who's
a former RAF mechanic who had an accident back in
(06:53):
1983 when he was about 20, I think he was
25 years old and he was trying to install a
new generator on what was then one of our jets
and Mirage jet. He was, you know, as he says,
he's a kind of a bit embarrassed about it. I was,
you know, idiotic 23 year old. I was trying to
pick up the generator by myself. I did it, it
fell back on me. And then I couldn't move. Right.
And it took a he left the service in 99,
(07:15):
took him 20 years to get to the point where
his back was so bad that he actually did need
some help, and then he had a bit of a
nightmarish experience, really, with DVA going back and forth. It
took well, I think in his case it was about
18 months, months before he got approval. Now he didn't
want to criticise DVA at all. He was really quite
striking all the way through, you know, make sure you
(07:36):
say that I'm grateful and what have you. But I mean,
as a neutral observer, I kind of listen to his
experience was a bit shocked. Pate was even more extraordinary. Jacks.
He talks about how he doesn't remember the day, the accident.
The last thing he remembers is planning the seating plan,
you know, for his Black Hawk helicopter, where his snipers
would sit, that sort of thing. And the next thing,
(07:56):
he sort of wakes up in a hospital in Germany.
I said, what injuries? And he said, and he was
so matter of fact about it. He said, I broke
my right leg. My rifle was embedded in my quad.
I broke my pelvis, I injured my lumbar. I had
a thoracic injury. I broke my eye socket, my cheekbone
and my nose. I had a frontal lobe brain bleed.
I damaged my kidney and liver and I broke my
(08:17):
left kneecap. And he sort of. Wow. He just. Someone
tells you that, and they're so matter of fact. No,
it doesn't define me. No, no, no, you know, it
was an opportunity because it meant I left the service.
And now I'm able to help other veterans in other ways.
S1 (08:30):
How long did he have to wait for his entitlements
to come through?
S3 (08:32):
Well, see, that was interesting. He and this touch I
was just getting to that. Good question. Jack's um, Shane
just mentioned that under the Morrison government, they started trying
to set up a system where you're in the service
and you can transition seamlessly over to DVA, so there's
not that wait for entitlements. So Pete's done seven years
of physiotherapy. He's had 403 million operations. Like he's permanently
(08:54):
damaged as a human being. And I don't mean that rudely.
It's just when you have an accident like that. So
he was in that process 2017 or so DVA like
it wasn't seamless. Again, he wasn't critical of them at all,
but they were saying no, that that that painkilling drug,
because he's on painkillers for the rest of his life.
We don't fund that one. We only fund this one that.
So you can't have that one that you're getting through defence.
(09:15):
They have some rule about you can only do one
half hour physio session per day that they'll pay for.
Now he lives 40 K's outside of Perth, 80 K
round trip to his physio. You know he was sort
of saying to them I don't want to have to spend,
you know drive rather 80 K's round trip each day
five days a week. And because he's doing, you know,
(09:36):
multiple sets of physio an hour and a half, two
hours a day, it doesn't make any sense. Now. Eventually
they came round and saw sense in both cases, which
is why he's saying, no, no, I didn't have such
a bad experience. But again, he just said, look, there's
both men in fact said there are all these rules.
You know, I get why they have these rules. It's
quite regulated. But there needs to be a bit more
flexibility in the system. And people need to listen to
(09:56):
vets more. Well, you can.
S1 (09:57):
Just particularly if you had complex PTSD or something like that,
the system would be so hard to navigate at the
best of times. Thank you for elucidating that story, because
it wasn't anywhere else in the media, and it was
really great that we got to hear about that. Shane.
(10:22):
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has very recently complained that the
number of public servants has swelled under the Albanese government.
S4 (10:28):
Labor's priorities are clearly wrong and frankly dangerous. The government
has announced an additional 36,000 public servants in this budget,
costing Australian taxpayers $24 billion over four years. The coalition.
S1 (10:43):
So if Dutton is elected at the next election, are
we likely to see him cut the public service back again?
S2 (10:49):
Yeah, I think it's hard for them not to reconcile
what they want to do, say we're going to be
talking about their nuclear power policy over the coming days, weeks, months.
How do you pay for it? Well, you've got to
find a way to cut spending. And so straight off
they'll go right. Public servants out of control even today. Uh,
(11:09):
so Thursday, Paul Fletcher was complaining that all these people,
public servants, are coming in to services Australia, which has
been had been run down. Again, this goes to the
labor hire issue, which the previous government had used. They'd
run down the service, run down the number of public
servants and then found, oh hell, we can't deal with
all the people, all the decisions that public servants are
(11:31):
required to make. This has happened in environment as well,
where decisions are being delayed or pushed back, or just
can't get processed because there haven't been enough staff. It's
a really interesting dynamic where you've got the opposition saying, right,
too many public servants ignoring what their policy of not
having public servants has actually caused. And that comes back
(11:52):
to that column I wrote. It means right in the
next five years, including within two years, there's going to
be a $3 billion extra payment out to veterans because
they just hadn't processed their claims, because they didn't have
the staff to deal with it. Ultimately, running a government
requires public servants.
S3 (12:12):
It's the laziest. I have to get my Canberra rant
hat on. It's the laziest. Tiredest, um, uh, most repeated
trick in the coalition playbook, and it's dishonest that public
servants work hard. I know I've touched on this before,
but this happens every time a coalition government comes to power.
You know that. What it ignores is that billions of
(12:32):
dollars are going out the door to pay big four
consulting firms, other consultants.
S2 (12:37):
And the and the labor hire companies.
S3 (12:39):
And labor hire companies to do the jobs of public servants. Now,
if I had a buck for every time I met
someone who was once a public servant, I don't know,
earning a sort of an average salary, if you like,
who's then gone out as a consultant and is charging
the government three times as much or twice as much
to do the same damn job they were doing in
the public service a year ago, I would be I
(12:59):
would be a very rich man. And these people are
getting rich because of this, uh, trend or vogue for, um,
outside consultants. And I think the sooner the coalition learns
that public servant bashing is, is cheap politics, that's counterproductive
to good government, the better the country will be.
S1 (13:16):
James, you also wrote a story this week about public
servants of a different nature. The sort of powerbrokers within
the ministry, which is interesting, sort of the real roles
that the ministers have in the machinery of making the
government work as opposed to their official titles. Can you
just walk us through sort of just very quickly, like
(13:36):
the main inner circle, say, of Albanese's government?
S3 (13:39):
Sure. Penny Wong Jack's is the most important person in
the Albanese government after the man himself. Um, she is, um,
a veteran politician like Albo. She's been around, I think
she was 21 intake in the Senate. He turns to
her for advice. He turns to her for emotional support.
He turns to her, you know, to bounce ideas off.
You know, she's been a finance minister. She's been a
(14:01):
climate change minister. Now she's the foreign minister. Repairing our
relations in the South Pacific, building our relations in Southeast Asia,
repairing our thawing our relations with Beijing. These have been
the three key foreign policy goals of Anthony Albanese and
Penny Wong. They were absolutely in lockstep. They've done a
pretty good job on all three of those things. I'd
say probably neglected Europe a bit. That places. Penny Wong
(14:23):
at the heart of the government, the other sort of
three key players for me, Jim Chalmers, the treasurer, not
as close with Albanese, will go a few days at
a time without talking, sometimes with the pair will go
a few days at a time. Then they'll talk six
times in a day or eight times in a day,
you know, across a range of policy issues. Katy Gallagher,
not a high profile person in terms of a public persona,
(14:44):
but she's finance minister for the Public Service and Minister
for women. She's been a chief minister of the Act.
She knows how governments work. The last person I had
was Tony Burke, who's more for political reasons, like he's
he's keeping the labor union base happy with union friendly
industrial relations legislation. He's done that well. But it's actually
why he matters. And he's in a sort of a
(15:05):
different concentric circle, if that makes sense to the three
I've just mentioned is how he runs the house, how
he keeps charge of the Parliament, how he, you know,
determines the timing of legislation. Albanese himself is a former
leader of the House. I think they see politics the
same way. I think they're both institutionalists, you know, people
who understand the traditions of the Parliament respect them. Um,
(15:28):
I mean, I think their.
S2 (15:28):
Electorates are, but.
S3 (15:29):
Yeah, they're in the.
S2 (15:30):
Same neck of the woods. Yep.
S1 (15:32):
Very quickly, guys, I want to go to Angus Taylor's
budget reply speech, which was at the National Press Club
on Wednesday. Did we learn anything new, and did he
make a little bit of a mistake because he seemed
to say something that was at variance with his leader,
Peter Dutton?
S2 (15:47):
Yeah, we're into the population wars that are going on,
and the argument is whether he has misspoken and we're
getting into the weeds of net overseas migration or the
migration intake, which are two different things. And whether he
supporting a 25% fall in one number compared to the
(16:09):
other and the time frame of this reduction, but actually
goes back to Peter Dutton speaking on radio in Sydney
on Friday last week, in which he actually so the
day after his budget in reply speech, he gave a
different answer to what he had actually said in his speech.
And so you've got this is causing confusion within the
(16:30):
Liberal Party because even so, we're speaking on Thursday. Even today,
deputy leader Sussan Ley has suggested this cut is going
to be ongoing. She's used the word ongoing, which then
means not just the three year term of the Dutton government,
if that came to pass, but beyond that. So that
has huge ramifications to the population, to skilled migration to
(16:54):
the economy. As every treasurer understands, population is a huge
economic swing factor. And this is like as much as
Peter Dutton has been talking about, say, impact on housing.
Migrants are are taking up time, your space and time. Um,
start cutting it. Yep. Those migrants aren't there. They're not
(17:14):
serving your coffee. They're not helping you build a new
mine in Western Australia, or.
S3 (17:18):
Build houses.
S2 (17:19):
Or build houses.
S1 (17:20):
And they're not looking after our elderly population in aged
care facilities.
S2 (17:24):
That's exactly right. And so this has got a long
way to go. And you could see in the way
that Angus Taylor struggled to articulate absolutely clearly what their
position is on just one element of it, that this
could be a real problem for the next 12 months.
S1 (17:41):
I mean, James, I want to ask you about the
politics of it because it is very difficult to follow, actually,
what the coalition policy is at the moment. And it's
very confusing, particularly for outsiders. It's like net migration versus
permanent and, you know, temporary migrants and so forth. Student visas.
I mean, is Peter Dutton onto a winner here in
terms in just sort of headline populist terms, as in
(18:03):
people do feel the feel the crush of infrastructure in
our cities, particularly the housing crisis is real. And if
he promises to cut migration, will that cut through to
some people, or are people going to be like, you know,
you guys don't even know what your own policy is?
S3 (18:16):
No, I think it's a winner. Frankly, the resolve poll
we had earlier this week made that very clear. People
favor a cut in migration for the reasons you've just
made clear, Jackie, I think Dutton's plan cuts through. It
goes further than Labor's plan. I think both plans are
welcome because labor, of course, wants to reduce the number
of foreign students coming in, primarily foreign students. I just. Yeah.
(18:38):
I don't think people are in the weeds on as
much as we might find an interesting on. Angus Taylor
said this, but was he really did he really mean that?
And what have you closer to the election people focus
their minds on the detail. Yeah. Um, this far out?
I don't think so.
S1 (18:53):
Yeah. And the overarching message will be that, uh, under
Peter Dutton, migration will be cut and that will be
better for easing those population pressures.
S3 (19:02):
Yeah. And that fairly obvious nuance about, well, okay, who's
going to look after her that we've all just made,
you know, who's going to look after the elderly, who's
going to serve his coffee, who's going to build our houses?
How are we going to, you know, stop the yeah,
we'll worry about that later. Yeah, exactly. People are feeling
the pressure.
S1 (19:18):
Gentlemen, that was really entertaining. We covered a lot of ground.
And I appreciate seeing you and hearing you.
S3 (19:23):
It's a pleasure, Jack.
S2 (19:24):
The pleasure is ours. Seeing you, Jackie. It certainly is.
S1 (19:29):
Today's episode of Inside Politics was produced by Kai Wong
and Rachel Clun, with technical assistance by Debbie Harrington. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. Inside politics is a
production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If
you enjoy the show and you want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au forward slash. Subscribe.
(19:56):
I'm Jacqueline Maley, this is Inside politics. Thank you for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age,
this is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, May 24th.
This week on the podcast, we are going to discuss
two stories from our Canberra bureau that are about public servants.
The first story is about the faceless kind of public
servants who toil in government departments. And the second story
(00:24):
is about the political public servants at the heart of
the Albanese government as we discuss the different public and
private roles of ministers. This week our man David Crowe
is on leave. So joining me on the podcast today,
we have national affairs editor James Massola and senior economics
correspondent Shane Wright. Welcome to the program, gentlemen.
S2 (00:45):
Good day. Jacki. We can't fill the crow's feet, but.
S3 (00:48):
They're big shoes to fill. We will try. We'll do
our best.
S1 (00:55):
Shane, you wrote a really great piece this week that
was sort of a budget follow up, an after thought,
if you like, which had a lot of impact. It
was about a line item in the budget that wasn't
widely reported last week, which was $6.5 billion put aside
for defense veterans. So it was no small item. Tell
us about what you wrote.
S2 (01:13):
Well, it's sad that things like this keep me awake
at night. Most people, after budget, curl up with a
good book and or a bad movie and go to sleep,
but I quite angered by a particular paragraph that was
on page 97 of budget paper number one. For those
lucky of us not to have ever seen a federal budget,
they are enormous things. And this one line just said,
(01:35):
we've had to spend $6.5 billion over the next five years,
because we're putting on extra staff in Veterans Affairs to
deal with all the claims that we've now got underway. Now,
that started to make my blood boil, and by the
end of the week, it had boiled over. Um, to
the point. Yeah, it was scalding because it transpires that
(01:58):
this goes back to the Morrison government, which had got
a situation within the Veterans Affairs department of using labour hire,
which it had used across all of the departments to
try and reduce the headcount of public servants. The problem
was in Veterans affairs and in other portfolios that labour hire,
(02:21):
these people tend to turn over quite often two, three,
four months. In Veterans Affairs. It takes about six months
to properly train a person to go through line by line.
All these claims that were coming through from Veterans Affairs.
So the Morrison government had actually encouraged people within the
Defence Force close to retirement or close to leaving. Right.
(02:42):
Get your claim in. And that way you'll have a
seamless revenue source to look after you. The problem was
they didn't have enough staff and the staff they did
just couldn't do that work. So by the time you
get to the election in 2022, there's 50,000 people, former
veterans whose claims had not even been allocated to staff
(03:05):
within Veterans Affairs to get processed.
S3 (03:08):
And the wait times too. Don't forget, Shane, so that
you've got 50,000 people there unallocated. The average waiting time
was more than 300 days. Yep. Was some massive, some
extraordinary percentage of people waiting more than 300 days, about
10,000 people waiting more than 400 days. And then once
you claim actually gets allocated, it was sitting on a desk,
(03:29):
you know, a public servants desk for, on average, 430,
440 days. That's come down to 373 days. That's an improvement.
You only have to wait a bit more than a
year now once you've got.
S2 (03:43):
So you went crazy. So this is yeah. So you
end up with the situation that Andrew gee, if you remember,
the last Veterans Affairs minister in the Morrison government had
threatened to resign from cabinet because he was so pee'd
off with the situation he was facing. So to, to
effectively pay him off, uh, Josh Frydenberg used his last
budget to employ 90 extra staff. Matt Keogh comes in
(04:06):
as the Veterans affairs minister and Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher,
the finance minister. And they've gone, oh my God. So
they actually employed 500 extra staff in the October budget.
And since then there was extra allocation of money for
staff in last week's budget.
S3 (04:21):
Yeah, another 141, another 140 when the coalition I mean
it's a somewhat controversial point to make, but public servants
aren't all lazy people on high salaries doing nothing. Um,
shock exclusive. You heard it here first. Some of them
work pretty hard. Some of them actually. In fact, I'm
sure most of them work pretty hard. Um, they actually
do things of consequence, and this is one of them.
(04:42):
So with all those extra staff, uh, from the 22nd
October budget, the people not allocated, it's down to around
2000 people with an average wait time of about two weeks.
So that's a massive improvement. Those files are actually sitting
on the desks of public servants now. But what is
not happening? We touched on this a moment ago. There's
still that 373 day average wait time to get money
(05:06):
for your medicine or to get, you know, physiotherapy or
whatever it might be that you're applying for help with PTSD.
People die waiting for this help to come through. Right?
S1 (05:14):
Well, there's a slogan along those lines, isn't there? Sorry
to interrupt.
S2 (05:17):
Yeah, that that's what I picked up. Is that within
the veterans community, it's delay, deny, die. And within the
government it is. They've just finding people who are just
resigning themselves to the fact that you won't ever get paid. Now,
you could be absolutely cynical and think, well, this is
this is a design feature. It's not a design flaw.
(05:39):
Because the longer you delay having someone's claim processed, the
less time they'll actually be on the entitlement before they die. Absolutely.
Or something else happens to them. And you've not only
got that aspect of it, which is upset so many.
People and it angered me. But also the fact that
you've got this whole cohort. Of veterans coming through the system,
(06:03):
particularly out of Afghanistan, in Iraq. About 20,000 veterans still
to come through from that, that element.
S1 (06:10):
Well, we think of it. I mean, budgets can be
so dry and so boring. And they're about the headline
figures in the data and stuff. But what we miss
so often in our reporting is that these are policies
and money allocated, which can change people's lives and do
change people's lives on the ground. James, you talked to
some veterans about the impact of dealing with the Department
of Veterans Affairs. What did they say about that experience?
S3 (06:31):
Yeah, look, I spoke to a couple of guys and
some veterans advocates as well. The two fellows I spoke
to a guy called Pete Rudland, who is a former
SAS and Commando who was in a Blackhawk crash in 2010,
in Afghanistan. And then another fellow called Paul McGlynn, who's
a former RAF mechanic who had an accident back in
(06:53):
1983 when he was about 20, I think he was
25 years old and he was trying to install a
new generator on what was then one of our jets
and Mirage jet. He was, you know, as he says,
he's a kind of a bit embarrassed about it. I was,
you know, idiotic 23 year old. I was trying to
pick up the generator by myself. I did it, it
fell back on me. And then I couldn't move. Right.
And it took a he left the service in 99,
(07:15):
took him 20 years to get to the point where
his back was so bad that he actually did need
some help, and then he had a bit of a
nightmarish experience, really, with DVA going back and forth. It
took well, I think in his case it was about
18 months, months before he got approval. Now he didn't
want to criticise DVA at all. He was really quite
striking all the way through, you know, make sure you
(07:36):
say that I'm grateful and what have you. But I mean,
as a neutral observer, I kind of listen to his
experience was a bit shocked. Pate was even more extraordinary. Jacks.
He talks about how he doesn't remember the day, the accident.
The last thing he remembers is planning the seating plan,
you know, for his Black Hawk helicopter, where his snipers
would sit, that sort of thing. And the next thing,
(07:56):
he sort of wakes up in a hospital in Germany.
I said, what injuries? And he said, and he was
so matter of fact about it. He said, I broke
my right leg. My rifle was embedded in my quad.
I broke my pelvis, I injured my lumbar. I had
a thoracic injury. I broke my eye socket, my cheekbone
and my nose. I had a frontal lobe brain bleed.
I damaged my kidney and liver and I broke my
(08:17):
left kneecap. And he sort of. Wow. He just. Someone
tells you that, and they're so matter of fact. No,
it doesn't define me. No, no, no, you know, it
was an opportunity because it meant I left the service.
And now I'm able to help other veterans in other ways.
S1 (08:30):
How long did he have to wait for his entitlements
to come through?
S3 (08:32):
Well, see, that was interesting. He and this touch I
was just getting to that. Good question. Jack's um, Shane
just mentioned that under the Morrison government, they started trying
to set up a system where you're in the service
and you can transition seamlessly over to DVA, so there's
not that wait for entitlements. So Pete's done seven years
of physiotherapy. He's had 403 million operations. Like he's permanently
(08:54):
damaged as a human being. And I don't mean that rudely.
It's just when you have an accident like that. So
he was in that process 2017 or so DVA like
it wasn't seamless. Again, he wasn't critical of them at all,
but they were saying no, that that that painkilling drug,
because he's on painkillers for the rest of his life.
We don't fund that one. We only fund this one that.
So you can't have that one that you're getting through defence.
(09:15):
They have some rule about you can only do one
half hour physio session per day that they'll pay for.
Now he lives 40 K's outside of Perth, 80 K
round trip to his physio. You know he was sort
of saying to them I don't want to have to spend,
you know drive rather 80 K's round trip each day
five days a week. And because he's doing, you know,
(09:36):
multiple sets of physio an hour and a half, two
hours a day, it doesn't make any sense. Now. Eventually
they came round and saw sense in both cases, which
is why he's saying, no, no, I didn't have such
a bad experience. But again, he just said, look, there's
both men in fact said there are all these rules.
You know, I get why they have these rules. It's
quite regulated. But there needs to be a bit more
flexibility in the system. And people need to listen to
(09:56):
vets more. Well, you can.
S1 (09:57):
Just particularly if you had complex PTSD or something like that,
the system would be so hard to navigate at the
best of times. Thank you for elucidating that story, because
it wasn't anywhere else in the media, and it was
really great that we got to hear about that. Shane.
(10:22):
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has very recently complained that the
number of public servants has swelled under the Albanese government.
S4 (10:28):
Labor's priorities are clearly wrong and frankly dangerous. The government
has announced an additional 36,000 public servants in this budget,
costing Australian taxpayers $24 billion over four years. The coalition.
S1 (10:43):
So if Dutton is elected at the next election, are
we likely to see him cut the public service back again?
S2 (10:49):
Yeah, I think it's hard for them not to reconcile
what they want to do, say we're going to be
talking about their nuclear power policy over the coming days, weeks, months.
How do you pay for it? Well, you've got to
find a way to cut spending. And so straight off
they'll go right. Public servants out of control even today. Uh,
(11:09):
so Thursday, Paul Fletcher was complaining that all these people,
public servants, are coming in to services Australia, which has
been had been run down. Again, this goes to the
labor hire issue, which the previous government had used. They'd
run down the service, run down the number of public
servants and then found, oh hell, we can't deal with
all the people, all the decisions that public servants are
(11:31):
required to make. This has happened in environment as well,
where decisions are being delayed or pushed back, or just
can't get processed because there haven't been enough staff. It's
a really interesting dynamic where you've got the opposition saying, right,
too many public servants ignoring what their policy of not
having public servants has actually caused. And that comes back
(11:52):
to that column I wrote. It means right in the
next five years, including within two years, there's going to
be a $3 billion extra payment out to veterans because
they just hadn't processed their claims, because they didn't have
the staff to deal with it. Ultimately, running a government
requires public servants.
S3 (12:12):
It's the laziest. I have to get my Canberra rant
hat on. It's the laziest. Tiredest, um, uh, most repeated
trick in the coalition playbook, and it's dishonest that public
servants work hard. I know I've touched on this before,
but this happens every time a coalition government comes to power.
You know that. What it ignores is that billions of
(12:32):
dollars are going out the door to pay big four
consulting firms, other consultants.
S2 (12:37):
And the and the labor hire companies.
S3 (12:39):
And labor hire companies to do the jobs of public servants. Now,
if I had a buck for every time I met
someone who was once a public servant, I don't know,
earning a sort of an average salary, if you like,
who's then gone out as a consultant and is charging
the government three times as much or twice as much
to do the same damn job they were doing in
the public service a year ago, I would be I
(12:59):
would be a very rich man. And these people are
getting rich because of this, uh, trend or vogue for, um,
outside consultants. And I think the sooner the coalition learns
that public servant bashing is, is cheap politics, that's counterproductive
to good government, the better the country will be.
S1 (13:16):
James, you also wrote a story this week about public
servants of a different nature. The sort of powerbrokers within
the ministry, which is interesting, sort of the real roles
that the ministers have in the machinery of making the
government work as opposed to their official titles. Can you
just walk us through sort of just very quickly, like
(13:36):
the main inner circle, say, of Albanese's government?
S3 (13:39):
Sure. Penny Wong Jack's is the most important person in
the Albanese government after the man himself. Um, she is, um,
a veteran politician like Albo. She's been around, I think
she was 21 intake in the Senate. He turns to
her for advice. He turns to her for emotional support.
He turns to her, you know, to bounce ideas off.
You know, she's been a finance minister. She's been a
(14:01):
climate change minister. Now she's the foreign minister. Repairing our
relations in the South Pacific, building our relations in Southeast Asia,
repairing our thawing our relations with Beijing. These have been
the three key foreign policy goals of Anthony Albanese and
Penny Wong. They were absolutely in lockstep. They've done a
pretty good job on all three of those things. I'd
say probably neglected Europe a bit. That places. Penny Wong
(14:23):
at the heart of the government, the other sort of
three key players for me, Jim Chalmers, the treasurer, not
as close with Albanese, will go a few days at
a time without talking, sometimes with the pair will go
a few days at a time. Then they'll talk six
times in a day or eight times in a day,
you know, across a range of policy issues. Katy Gallagher,
not a high profile person in terms of a public persona,
(14:44):
but she's finance minister for the Public Service and Minister
for women. She's been a chief minister of the Act.
She knows how governments work. The last person I had
was Tony Burke, who's more for political reasons, like he's
he's keeping the labor union base happy with union friendly
industrial relations legislation. He's done that well. But it's actually
why he matters. And he's in a sort of a
(15:05):
different concentric circle, if that makes sense to the three
I've just mentioned is how he runs the house, how
he keeps charge of the Parliament, how he, you know,
determines the timing of legislation. Albanese himself is a former
leader of the House. I think they see politics the
same way. I think they're both institutionalists, you know, people
who understand the traditions of the Parliament respect them. Um,
(15:28):
I mean, I think their.
S2 (15:28):
Electorates are, but.
S3 (15:29):
Yeah, they're in the.
S2 (15:30):
Same neck of the woods. Yep.
S1 (15:32):
Very quickly, guys, I want to go to Angus Taylor's
budget reply speech, which was at the National Press Club
on Wednesday. Did we learn anything new, and did he
make a little bit of a mistake because he seemed
to say something that was at variance with his leader,
Peter Dutton?
S2 (15:47):
Yeah, we're into the population wars that are going on,
and the argument is whether he has misspoken and we're
getting into the weeds of net overseas migration or the
migration intake, which are two different things. And whether he
supporting a 25% fall in one number compared to the
(16:09):
other and the time frame of this reduction, but actually
goes back to Peter Dutton speaking on radio in Sydney
on Friday last week, in which he actually so the
day after his budget in reply speech, he gave a
different answer to what he had actually said in his speech.
And so you've got this is causing confusion within the
(16:30):
Liberal Party because even so, we're speaking on Thursday. Even today,
deputy leader Sussan Ley has suggested this cut is going
to be ongoing. She's used the word ongoing, which then
means not just the three year term of the Dutton government,
if that came to pass, but beyond that. So that
has huge ramifications to the population, to skilled migration to
(16:54):
the economy. As every treasurer understands, population is a huge
economic swing factor. And this is like as much as
Peter Dutton has been talking about, say, impact on housing.
Migrants are are taking up time, your space and time. Um,
start cutting it. Yep. Those migrants aren't there. They're not
(17:14):
serving your coffee. They're not helping you build a new
mine in Western Australia, or.
S3 (17:18):
Build houses.
S2 (17:19):
Or build houses.
S1 (17:20):
And they're not looking after our elderly population in aged
care facilities.
S2 (17:24):
That's exactly right. And so this has got a long
way to go. And you could see in the way
that Angus Taylor struggled to articulate absolutely clearly what their
position is on just one element of it, that this
could be a real problem for the next 12 months.
S1 (17:41):
I mean, James, I want to ask you about the
politics of it because it is very difficult to follow, actually,
what the coalition policy is at the moment. And it's
very confusing, particularly for outsiders. It's like net migration versus
permanent and, you know, temporary migrants and so forth. Student visas.
I mean, is Peter Dutton onto a winner here in
terms in just sort of headline populist terms, as in
(18:03):
people do feel the feel the crush of infrastructure in
our cities, particularly the housing crisis is real. And if
he promises to cut migration, will that cut through to
some people, or are people going to be like, you know,
you guys don't even know what your own policy is?
S3 (18:16):
No, I think it's a winner. Frankly, the resolve poll
we had earlier this week made that very clear. People
favor a cut in migration for the reasons you've just
made clear, Jackie, I think Dutton's plan cuts through. It
goes further than Labor's plan. I think both plans are
welcome because labor, of course, wants to reduce the number
of foreign students coming in, primarily foreign students. I just. Yeah.
(18:38):
I don't think people are in the weeds on as
much as we might find an interesting on. Angus Taylor
said this, but was he really did he really mean that?
And what have you closer to the election people focus
their minds on the detail. Yeah. Um, this far out?
I don't think so.
S1 (18:53):
Yeah. And the overarching message will be that, uh, under
Peter Dutton, migration will be cut and that will be
better for easing those population pressures.
S3 (19:02):
Yeah. And that fairly obvious nuance about, well, okay, who's
going to look after her that we've all just made,
you know, who's going to look after the elderly, who's
going to serve his coffee, who's going to build our houses?
How are we going to, you know, stop the yeah,
we'll worry about that later. Yeah, exactly. People are feeling
the pressure.
S1 (19:18):
Gentlemen, that was really entertaining. We covered a lot of ground.
And I appreciate seeing you and hearing you.
S3 (19:23):
It's a pleasure, Jack.
S2 (19:24):
The pleasure is ours. Seeing you, Jackie. It certainly is.
S1 (19:29):
Today's episode of Inside Politics was produced by Kai Wong
and Rachel Clun, with technical assistance by Debbie Harrington. Our
head of audio is Tom McKendrick. Inside politics is a
production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If
you enjoy the show and you want more of our journalism,
subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to
support what we do. Search the age or Smh.com.au forward slash. Subscribe.
(19:56):
I'm Jacqueline Maley, this is Inside politics. Thank you for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!