Australia has a long history of women being blamed for men’s mistakes. It’s known as the “glass cliff”, whereby women and people of colour are appointed to positions only after an organisation starts performing badly and are then blamed for its past performance.
It seems if there’s unavoidable disaster, the blokes step back and a woman takes the fall.
Newly appointed National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Linda Reynolds is likely to face that glass cliff having inherited Stuart Robert’s problematic draft legislation, which is sending the disability community into an uproar.
Reynolds’ suitability to hold any portfolio, let alone one dealing with people’s welfare and well-being, should be questioned after her poor handling of former staffer Brittany Higgins’ allegations of rape. Reynolds called Higgins a “lying cow” — she later apologised. Higgins announced yesterday she is writing a memoir.
‘Pure power grab’
The NDIS has been a problematic portfolio for some time. Designed under Labor but implemented under the Coalition, the scheme is designed to give people with disabilities more choice and control over funding to live their lives.
Days after the March cabinet reshuffle, a proposal for changes to the scheme — which look as if they will do the opposite of what it is designed to do — was leaked. The proposal is horrendous. State and territory disability ministers were not given copies of it and have raised concerns it represents a “pure power grab”.
Key clauses underpinning the scheme have been removed in the proposal. The federal minister will be able to make “rules” without majority agreement from states and territories, and disability ministers will no longer have veto power.
Year after year under the Coalition there have been billions of dollars of underspend on the scheme — $4.6 billion in 2018-19 and $1.6 billion in 2019-20. A new form of assessing people with disabilities’ needs is set to be introduced that advocates say will cut peoples’ funding and lead to more underspend.
Participants will be surveilled in real time and — similar to robodebt — the NDIS will be able to collect debts if it believes funding has been spent on ordinary living expenses instead of disability-specific expenses.
The proposal has been met with outrage from state and territory ministers and the disability community, who are demanding answers but are met with silence as Reynolds remains on leave.
A history of scapegoating women
In 1990 Victoria’s first female premier Joan Kirner inherited debt problems from John Cain, and came to her premiership while support for Labor was falling. The career of Western Australia’s first female premier, Carmen Lawrence, faltered over the 1992 Penny Easton affair. The first NSW leader of the opposition Kerry Chikarovski lost her role due to a coup by her party in 2002 after a long campaign of sexism and harassment.
Former NSW premier Kristina Keneally came to power with corrupt ministers Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi in her ministry. Julia Gillard came to power when the Rudd government hit a crisis point in the polls. Current Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk took over Labor amid an electoral disaster.
It’s textbook, according to research that analysed CEO transitions in Fortune 500 companies across 15 years and found white women and people of colour are more likely than white men to be promoted to CEO of weakly performing firms. White men are then likely to replace these appointees — dubbed the “saviour effect”.
Many female political leaders did wonderful things in their roles. But how likely is it they would have been able to take up their high-profile positions had their organisations not been in crisis — and who will Morrison appoint to swoop in and “save” Reynolds’ ailing portfolio?
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You left out the examples of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh, and Mike Baird and Gladys Berejiklian, and David Morgan and Gail Kelly, and Peter Costello and Kelly O’Dwyer. If we consider those cases, it is difficult not to notice that self aggrandisement and contempt for ordinary people is gender blind.
Carmen Lawrence in WA, Joan Kirner in Victoria, there are a host of examples and some of them pulled off surprising wins, making it hard to toss them out for some male saviour.
Don’t forget Annastacia Palaszczuk. AFAIR just after she achieved an astounding win over the huge first-term majority held by the LNP under Campbell Newman in Queensland in 2015, some of Palaszczuk’s male Labor colleagues became very huffy about her off-script frolic of going into government when she had been made party leader just to mind the shop while Labor was in opposition. They thought she should ASAP do the decent thing and make way for one of boys.
Lynda Reynolds will hit squally weather with the intended reforms of the NDIS. That reforms are needed is indisputable. No government service can sustain annual increases in the double digits, ever increasing demand, ever greater expectations and ever widening eligibility criteria.
Administration costs can exceed the cost of services on the ground. The NDIS is essential but it is not designed to neutralise and compensate fully for those in the community who have had a raw deal in the game of life.
Any attempt to limit the NDIS in any way will bring screams of outrage from all over the place. But those who are yelling loudest will often be the ones least willing to pay the increased taxes that would make the system sustainable.
there’d be no no need to increase taxes for us common folk, if corporations and millionaires actually paid what they should
Annual increases in spending, ever greater expectations? With a growing and ageing population it doesn’t take a genius to recognise that the demand for any kind of services will increase over time. One needs to plan for that and not just do the bare minimum. Costs blow-outs? Or maybe the scheme was underfunded from the get go?
It’s quite ridiculous to suggest that a rich country like Australia can’t afford to ensure disabled people receive the care they need. Especially while only a couple of years ago this ‘government’ has decided that tax cuts that will result in billions of $ in lost revenue every year are a good idea.
The only problem here are priorities. Offering people in need adequate (at the very least!) support doesn’t seem to be one of them.
Of course we can afford them, Agatek, it is that we choose not to, are at least the LNP chooses not to, a political choice.
For he that has much will receive more, and he that has little will have that taken away from them.
Something like that, anyway.
“The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights,” according to J. Paul Getty.
I have the funny feeling that the amount of Jobkeeper funding not required by various big companies might just, JUST, be able to keep the NDIS going. If only they’d pay it back; if only the government would ask them.
NDIS is not essential – but too hot a political potato to remake. It is based upon the flawed premise that the disabled should make their own decisions in all matters the same way as the non disabled. Which is fine philosophy but unrealistic. Not all disabilities are functional and therefore the decisions are made by grasping persons around them “for the disabled benefit of course”- Bit like the Family Court – “in the best interest of the child” mythology.
But the Administrators and bureaucrats in these entities make a good living – helps the unemployment statistics.
Funny how we never question if defence material spending is sustainable. It constantly increases, nothing is delivered on time or budget, it blows out by hundreds and hundreds of %, but apoarently we can always afford these follies.
A govt with a sovereign currency can afford anything it chooses to spend. Unlike other govt spending, the NDIS isn’t inflationary.
There is no evidence the ‘reforms’ proposed are needed, if they were yiu would have agreement from states and territories who have to fund 50% of the cost and are now being cut out of any decision making. It is a system to provide reasinable and necessary support to live a life with some dignity, nothing more than that. Anyone who has a problem with people with a disability being able to shower every day, or children being able to get a new wheelchair when they outgrow theirs needs to take a good hard look at themselves.
Dead right, the government prints money as required, there is no sovereign debt to be repaid, that’s just to frighten the dumb sheep, you notice Frydenberg is not spouting the debt and deficit bullshit anymore since quantitive easing ( money printing) has been exposed by the reserve bank the sheeples are starting to wake up to what suckers they really are.
Reynolds is too thick to see the outcome !
No. If Linda Reynolds had any decency she’d resign. Anyone still a minister in this corrupt farrago of a cabinet should hang their head in shame. The Morrison Government attacks anyone less fortunate – from refugees to Pacific Islanders to the disabled. To be a minister in such circumstances is to sign on to these policies. Reynolds might not have invented the debuting of the NDIS, but it doesn’t mean she needs to stay and implement them.
If Linda Reynolds had any decency she would not be a member of this corrupted government. but she doesn`t and she is.
Would this be why Scummo was so vituperative towards Holgate – she was appointed CEO of a company that was meant to fail, and was turning it around, so other excuses had to be found to throw her under the bus!
Tis.
And he considered the ‘scandal’ politically advantageous at the time.
The usual.
YEP!!!