Van Badham theguardian.com, Thursday 5 June 2014
What is informing the policy agenda of Abbott’s government is not expertise, practicality or even research – something which is clear from their worrying lack of clarity
A drug testing centre. Photograph: Martin Godwin
So the Abbott government’s proposal to drug-test welfare recipients has vanished from the table with the speed at which it apparently appeared.
Social services minister Kevin Andrews went public on the weekend that the government were “not ruling out” obliging Centrelink staff to add to their overstressed workloads the requirement to shove swabs in their clients’ mouths. Prime minister Tony Abbott, appearing on The Bolt Report on Sunday, didn’t rule the plan out, either. The idea had been floated as a result of “looking closely” at New Zealand’s welfare system, where recipients are stripped of 50% of the payments if they either fail a drug test or refuse to submit to one.
Andrews was still doing interviews about the plan until the precise moment he was informed by the ABC journalist speaking to him that the prime minister had followed his Bolt appearance with a doorstop interview in which he’d conclusively ruled the plan out. “Well, it’s out,” Andrews conceded.
The story says much about the present state of Australian politics at a practical level, as much as an ideological one. It has been an embarrassing couple of weeks for the government trying to sell the most unpopular budget in historical memory – their desperate persuasion campaign unhelped by a confusion of messages from cabinet ministers and the prime minister.
Confusion and back-pedalling over drug-testing is not a sole blip in the government’s policy message. Less than two weeks ago, the prime minister’s office was forced to correct his declaration to 3AW’s Neil Mitchell that “standard bulk billing arrangements will apply” to the “average person” after 10 doctor visits. This is not actually the case – those who are not pension card holders or under 16 will pay the $7 co-payment indefinitely.
Then, no less than the Australian Medical Association accused the treasurer Joe Hockey of misleading statements on the co-payment. Hockey had declared on the ABC’s Q&A programme last week that chronically ill payments would not have to pay the $7 fee. The AMA, having read the government’s policy with potentially a closer eye to detail than the treasurer who prepared it, pointed out that an exemption for a payment applies to a sole doctor’s visit a year to receive a care plan for chronic illness. Said spokesperson Brian Morton, in terms one does not readily associate with the historically right-leaning AMA: “He either doesn’t understand or is misusing the statistic or is lying.”
Policy confusion doesn’t end in discussion of welfare or healthcare. The prime minister has also contradicted his own policy pronouncements on the matter of education. He told ABC radio that only university students who start studying in 2016 will face the new few regime – but the budget papers saddle all students who enrol after 14 May to face the new fees in 2016.
Education is a particular policy quagmire for this government. Christopher Pyne’s notorious plan to take HECS from dead students was publicly slapped down by the prime minister. The Australian’s Higher Education Supplement reported today on how the most extreme restructure of higher education policy in 25 years has been accompanied by education department officials humiliatingly having to edit a government website that contained the incorrect suggestion that former students would not face real interest on their HECS debts, when they will. Also facing a real interest rate on their debt will be those who graduate through apprenticeship schemes, although industry department secretary Glenys Beauchamp doesn’t believe it’s “appropriate to comment” on the changes. Industry minister Ian Macfarlane’s office, on the other hand, made a statement that support loans for apprenticeships will be interest free but indexed with inflation – which directly contradicts what’s written in the budget papers.
It’s into this context of confusion and miscommunication of Coalition policy that the drugs-for-the-dole non-event is revealed as an avatar for what defines Abbott’s government. Andrews’ claim that the Coalition had been “looking closely” at the New Zealand model is either disingenuous, incompetent, or zealously one-eyed; while Andrews and Abbott have dismissed the policy as impractical due to administrative complication of Australia’s state jurisdictions, at a basic policy, these drug tests do not work.
In New Zealand, and at wasteful expense, the drug test 8,001 jobseekers took found only 22 that either tested positive or refused to take it. This is a repeat of results in Miami, where a Florida law to do exactly the same thing resulted in “no direct savings, snared few drug users and had no affect on the number of (welfare) applications”. As conservative legislatures across America have pursued similar policies, legal challenges have resulted and the Florida law was struck down by a judge as an invasion of a constitutional right to privacy.
What this means applied to the Australian example is this: what is informing the policy agenda of Abbott’s government is not expertise, experience or research based on comparative modelling. It is not considered opinion, nor consultation with stakeholders. It is not practicality, not economics, not populism (as the post-budget polls clearly show). It is an ideological agenda to punish the poor for being poor, the sick for being sick, addicts for being addicts, and those who who are not rich but wish to learn for having ambitions above their station.
And the Coalition will pursue this agenda exactly as far as the Australian people allow them to get away with it.
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