Podcast appearances and mentions of heather jarvis

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2017 35:17

Navin75/Flickr, Australian Marine Conservation Society, ANUThe 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 group’s boats have engaged in annual high-seas battles with vessels carrying out Japan’s self-described scientific whaling program. But Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson has admitted that Japan’s 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 Japan’s 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 Commission’s treaty, and countries such as Japan have the right to decide for themselves what constitutes “scientific” in this context. Australia is not the only government to be accused of reluctance to stand up to Japan. But in 2014, Japan’s 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 University’s 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.

Change Agents: Darren Kindleysides and Don Rothwell on how Australia briefly stopped Japanese whaling

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2017 35:17

Navin75/Flickr, Australian Marine Conservation Society, ANUThe 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 group’s boats have engaged in annual high-seas battles with vessels carrying out Japan’s self-described scientific whaling program. But Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson has admitted that Japan’s 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 Japan’s 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 Commission’s treaty, and countries such as Japan have the right to decide for themselves what constitutes “scientific” in this context. Australia is not the only government to be accused of reluctance to stand up to Japan. But in 2014, Japan’s 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 University’s 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.

b&b164 Heather Jarvis JD in Sallie Mae strikes back!

Brunch & Budget

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2017 63:42

Heather Jarvis strikes back! (check the other episode where she focuses on private loans here) Heather Jarvis is back to discuss a topic that never goes out of style: student loans. Most people have them. It seems that college tuition is only rising, which leads us to wonder where all that money goes? Who do “merit-based […]

Change Agents: Amee Meredith and Caterina Politi on reforming 'one-punch' laws

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2017 34:15

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 “one-punch” 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: Amee Meredith and Caterina Politi on reforming 'one-punch' laws

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2017 34:15

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 “one-punch” 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 University’s 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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TRR ep. 221 (May 30, 2017): Working for human rights for sex workers in Newfoundland

Talking Radical Radio

Play Episode Listen Later May 30, 2017 28:11

In episode #221 of Talking Radical Radio (May 30, 2017), Scott Neigh speaks with Heather Jarvis, Alice, and Layla about the Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP), an initiative supporting sex workers in Newfoundland and Labrador in their efforts to win full human and labour rights. For a more detailed description of the episode, see here: http://talkingradical.ca/2017/05/30/trr-safe_harbour/

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Change Agents: David Buchanan and Fr Paul Kelly on ending the gay panic defence

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2017 32:49

David Buchanan and Fr Paul Kelly have spearheaded pushes to abolish the gay panic defence. Forbes Chambers/ABC/SuppliedThe gay panic – or homosexual advance – defence has allowed people literally to get away with murder. It’s 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 – or supposedly gay – 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 Australia’s 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: David Buchanan and Fr Paul Kelly on ending the gay panic defence

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Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2017 32:49

David Buchanan and Fr Paul Kelly have spearheaded pushes to abolish the gay panic defence. Forbes Chambers/ABC/SuppliedThe gay panic – or homosexual advance – defence has allowed people literally to get away with murder. It’s 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 – or supposedly gay – 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 Australia’s 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 University’s 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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Crushing Student Debt, Why College Isn't Free and Shady Loan Servicers

The Payoff

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2017 39:54

We're all about understanding student loans in this episode! We confront our own loan confusion and get expert advice from Heather Jarvis, a lawyer and student loan consultant who who offers student debt training and advice. Then we hear how the federal government thinks about student debt from former Department of Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell, who oversaw the ENTIRETY of federal student aid from 2014 to 2017. And to cap it off, we learn how Navient, the biggest student loan servicer around, was fined millions of dollars for shady methods around handling student loans. Do you have ideas for money or finance topics we should cover? Send us an email at payoffpod@mic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Change Agents: Alex Wodak and Lucy Haslam on the push to legalise medicinal cannabis

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2016 34:07

Lucy Haslam and Alex Wodak helped convince the public and politicians that the time for legalised medicinal cannabis had come. AAP/Alan PorrittIn 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: Alex Wodak and Lucy Haslam on the push to legalise medicinal cannabis

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2016 34:07

Lucy Haslam and Alex Wodak helped convince the public and politicians that the time for legalised medicinal cannabis had come. AAP/Alan PorrittIn 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: Stuart Morris and Leonie Hemingway on Australia's most radical reform of local government

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2016 33:42

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-NDVictoria’s council reforms in 1994 remain Australia’s 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 governments’ 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: Stuart Morris and Leonie Hemingway on Australia's most radical reform of local government

student loans heather jarvis

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2016 33:42

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-NDVictoria’s council reforms in 1994 remain Australia’s 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 governments’ 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 University’s 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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b&b122 Student Loan Expert, Heather Jarvis, Esq. demystifies your student loans

Brunch & Budget

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2016 60:25

We could not be more excited to have student loan expert, Heather Jarvis of AskHeatherJarvis.com on our show!! After taking her 8-hour student loan intensive a few days before we recorded this show, I knew we had to have her on to help you navigate through the confusing world of your student loan debt. We […]

Change Agents: Susan Alberti and Debbie Lee on establishing a national women's football league

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2016 33:26

Susan Alberti (left) and Debbie Lee were pivotal to the formation of the national women's AFL competition. Melbourne Football ClubWhen it kicks off in 2017 the national women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s league a reality. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne University’s 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 women’s 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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Change Agents: Susan Alberti and Debbie Lee on establishing a national women's football league

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2016 33:26

Susan Alberti (left) and Debbie Lee were pivotal to the formation of the national women's AFL competition. Melbourne Football ClubWhen it kicks off in 2017 the national women’s 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 women’s 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 women’s league a reality. Change Agents is a collaboration between The Conversation and the Swinburne Business School and Swinburne University’s 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 women’s 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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Change Agents: Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady on the birth of the NDIS

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2016 35:02

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 NDIS’ 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, I’m 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 Australia’s biggest social reform this century. By 2022 it’s estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, it’ll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy. Today we’ll 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 – so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now. But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workers’ 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 workers’ compensation schemes were developed – 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 wasn’t 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: I’ve 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 don’t 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 – there was no insurance available. And it’s a classic issue to which insurance applies – 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 – 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 “failure to recover” – 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 hadn’t started in Australia. And there was no mobilisation or interest. In America, it started – really, for the world – with the Vietnam veterans coming back and just not putting up with being put in institutions. They said “no way” and started the independent living movement. Ours would’ve 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 – because if the idea had been there, which Bruce designed, without the possibility of the mobilisation then we’d be back to where we were with the Whitlam era. So I think that’s a very important part of the question of: “how come?” AD: One of the people who deserves a lot of credit in bringing about the NDIS is the former deputy prime minister, Brian Howe. It’s said that back in 2005 he went back to the Woodhouse report – this report that had been commissioned by the Whitlam government – 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 – 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 “you have to stop thinking about disability policy as welfare, and start thinking about it as risk and insurance and investment”. 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 – not just those who were catastrophically injured in motor-vehicle or workplace accidents. I said to John “could we do this for all of disability?”, and he said “of course, we just need the data”. 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. I’ve got two adult sons, both of whom have cerebral palsy. Prior to them being born – my older son is now in his 30s – 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: “Why can’t my son get the early intervention services he needs?”. 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: Let’s 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 didn’t 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 people’s 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 you’d come out of it feeling like cutting your throat as a person with a disability because there you were, you’d ruined everyone’s lives and the families were in tragedy and so people with disabilities organisations didn’t get on at all with carers’ organisations, and both were united – probably quite rightly – in being highly critical of the services that hadn’t 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 we’ll get to that in a second, but I want to go to the 2020 Summit now, because that also is very important to this. I’ve 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 don’t think you were even a delegate, were you? BB: No, I wasn’t a delegate. RG: There’s 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 – on reflection – 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 don’t know. Certainly a number of people I know well pushed it. AD: How did you get people to say “OK, I will put your idea down as my second idea” at this big summit? BB: I think it was a compelling case. Everyone knows someone with a disability, or they’ve 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 – as you say – 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 we’d already started on that process. So a group of us, chaired by Ian Silk, worked for 18 months on this report. When you’re asked to recommend reform to governments you’ve got a choice – you can have a long shopping list of ideas, or you can essentially say “we’ve got one idea”, and that’s what we did. We said: “We’ve got one idea and we think it’s a big idea and we think it requires further examination by government”. AD: And I think this is about the time that Bill Shorten says to you and to the various groups: “come together and start working as a team”, 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 else’s point of view. I can remember the first time we came together with carers and I was thinking about it from my mother’s point of view – 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 person’s point of view, instead of just from the family’s point of view, that made it quite a profound connection. Internally to government, because the carers’ networks had been so powerful through the 1990s, there was a view that there should be a separate carers’ council. But because we’d mobilised and come together on the outside, it just didn’t 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 “but carers look after old people” and I thought “well you’re not a carer of someone old until they’re disabled, actually, otherwise you’re just a son or a daughter – you don’t play that carer role until they’re disabled too”, 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 “Oh no, it should just be consumers” and he was proven to be right; they were tremendously valuable – 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 – it’s 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 you’ve 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 – admittedly ambitious – but one achievable goal. RG: Yes, and the trouble also was a matter of us – Bruce and I – 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 didn’t 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. It’s 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 you’ve 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 – 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 – in fact you still have these kind of numbers – 150,000 people reachable by email who then have the flow-on effect of contacting others. The alliance didn’t 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 … AD: What do you mean by hot? RG: I mean they’ll take action. I mean they’re not just a contact list where half of them are old and you haven’t cleaned it. I mean this is a hot where people have kept up-to-date, where they’re vitally interested. AD: How have you harnessed this resource? RG: It was absolutely instrumental in getting the scheme. Wouldn’t you agree Bruce? BB: Yeah. RG: Very, very important. And it’s watching – it’s a marvellous check and balance, and it’s watching and anything that would not make the scheme happen in the way that everybody thinks that we’ve signed up for, it’s there, and it’s never before been in my experience, in my life, that I‘ve 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 that’s a really powerful act. But in Australia it’s never been but now it is, and I think it’s not going to go away – I think it’s just there, and it’s 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 don’t 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 … RG: Disability teas, do you remember those? BB: Yes. This was a very active group. It’s worth remembering that at about the time the NDIS campaign – the Every Australian Counts campaign – 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 – in many ways an old-fashioned grassroots campaign – mobilised through social media very, very effectively. RG: I was chairing a hospital at the time and hadn’t mentioned it to my hospital – to the board or the staff – that they might have had any interest – I should’ve – 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 – a lot of businesses had disability teas. There were state co-ordinators that were part of the Every Australian Counts campaign – 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 – a very powerful and important organisation. They’d get it out to their members and they’d all have disability teas so it wasn’t just that 150,000 very warm email contacts of citizens of Australia. They weren’t 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 – frankly and openly – 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: “In the midst of this great mining boom, we’ve got this?”. So, the sense of, not just shame, but that it can’t 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: “we’re happy”. Never before has a tax increase been approved overnight. AD: You referred to John Walsh before, and I don’t 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, he’s 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, he’d worked on most of Australia’s 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 … AD: I should say when this happened Julia Gillard was the prime minister … 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 don’t 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 didn’t 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: “we’re going to get this thing done”. RG: It was a very quick response after the commissioner’s report. It was about the quickest ever. BB: Yeah, but it was that moment where she said “we’re going to get it done”. 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 everyone’s onside and wanting to make it happen quickly? BB: It gets momentum. AD: That word momentum keeps cropping up from this point on … BB: Well I think when you have the prime minister’s department, the Treasury, the Finance Department, the Department of Family and Housing and Community Services, all behind an idea, and they’re 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. He’s 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 it’s 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, it’s like defence. If taxes aren’t 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: I’m 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 Macklin’s office … AD: Well, I remember reading that Jenny Macklin at one stage went to the Expenditure Review Committee [ERC] and, I don’t 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 – as you’d kind of hope that that would be the biggest thing she ever asked for – but this is a massive amount of money. RG: But she had a very good case. You make it sound quite casual, whereas she’s a very carefully prepared. She’s a top policy person herself, so she would have had all the i’s dotted and the t’s 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 it’s not fair to say “at that point the opposition fell in behind it”. 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 you’d 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 – he’d been very clear. But I bumped into Tony Abbott in the street in Sydney, and I said to him: “Mr Abbott, I’m hearing you’re supporting the NDIS and I’m so pleased”. And he said: “Well normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes”. 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! I’ve met millions of politicians over a long, long life – because I’m quite elderly by now – and a lot you don’t get past the goalposts because there isn’t 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 don’t 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 University’s 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. I’m 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 University’s 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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Change Agents: Rhonda Galbally and Bruce Bonyhady on the birth of the NDIS

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2016 35:02

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 NDIS’ 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, I’m 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 Australia’s biggest social reform this century. By 2022 it’s estimated half a million people will be using it to access better disability support. By then, it’ll cost around $25 billion a year, funded in part by an increase in the Medicare levy. Today we’ll 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 – so, it was a narrower scheme than what we have now. But the idea that you could take the thinking that applies to workers’ 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 workers’ compensation schemes were developed – 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 wasn’t 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: I’ve 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 don’t 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 – there was no insurance available. And it’s a classic issue to which insurance applies – 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 – 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 “failure to recover” – 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 hadn’t started in Australia. And there was no mobilisation or interest. In America, it started – really, for the world – with the Vietnam veterans coming back and just not putting up with being put in institutions. They said “no way” and started the independent living movement. Ours would’ve 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 – because if the idea had been there, which Bruce designed, without the possibility of the mobilisation then we’d be back to where we were with the Whitlam era. So I think that’s a very important part of the question of: “how come?” AD: One of the people who deserves a lot of credit in bringing about the NDIS is the former deputy prime minister, Brian Howe. It’s said that back in 2005 he went back to the Woodhouse report – this report that had been commissioned by the Whitlam government – 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 – 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 “you have to stop thinking about disability policy as welfare, and start thinking about it as risk and insurance and investment”. 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 – not just those who were catastrophically injured in motor-vehicle or workplace accidents. I said to John “could we do this for all of disability?”, and he said “of course, we just need the data”. 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. I’ve got two adult sons, both of whom have cerebral palsy. Prior to them being born – my older son is now in his 30s – 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: “Why can’t my son get the early intervention services he needs?”. 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: Let’s 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 didn’t 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 people’s 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 you’d come out of it feeling like cutting your throat as a person with a disability because there you were, you’d ruined everyone’s lives and the families were in tragedy and so people with disabilities organisations didn’t get on at all with carers’ organisations, and both were united – probably quite rightly – in being highly critical of the services that hadn’t 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 we’ll get to that in a second, but I want to go to the 2020 Summit now, because that also is very important to this. I’ve 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 don’t think you were even a delegate, were you? BB: No, I wasn’t a delegate. RG: There’s 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 – on reflection – 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 don’t know. Certainly a number of people I know well pushed it. AD: How did you get people to say “OK, I will put your idea down as my second idea” at this big summit? BB: I think it was a compelling case. Everyone knows someone with a disability, or they’ve 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 – as you say – 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 we’d already started on that process. So a group of us, chaired by Ian Silk, worked for 18 months on this report. When you’re asked to recommend reform to governments you’ve got a choice – you can have a long shopping list of ideas, or you can essentially say “we’ve got one idea”, and that’s what we did. We said: “We’ve got one idea and we think it’s a big idea and we think it requires further examination by government”. AD: And I think this is about the time that Bill Shorten says to you and to the various groups: “come together and start working as a team”, 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 else’s point of view. I can remember the first time we came together with carers and I was thinking about it from my mother’s point of view – 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 person’s point of view, instead of just from the family’s point of view, that made it quite a profound connection. Internally to government, because the carers’ networks had been so powerful through the 1990s, there was a view that there should be a separate carers’ council. But because we’d mobilised and come together on the outside, it just didn’t 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 “but carers look after old people” and I thought “well you’re not a carer of someone old until they’re disabled, actually, otherwise you’re just a son or a daughter – you don’t play that carer role until they’re disabled too”, 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 “Oh no, it should just be consumers” and he was proven to be right; they were tremendously valuable – 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 – it’s 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 you’ve 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 – admittedly ambitious – but one achievable goal. RG: Yes, and the trouble also was a matter of us – Bruce and I – 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 didn’t 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. It’s 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 you’ve 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 – 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 – in fact you still have these kind of numbers – 150,000 people reachable by email who then have the flow-on effect of contacting others. The alliance didn’t 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 … AD: What do you mean by hot? RG: I mean they’ll take action. I mean they’re not just a contact list where half of them are old and you haven’t cleaned it. I mean this is a hot where people have kept up-to-date, where they’re vitally interested. AD: How have you harnessed this resource? RG: It was absolutely instrumental in getting the scheme. Wouldn’t you agree Bruce? BB: Yeah. RG: Very, very important. And it’s watching – it’s a marvellous check and balance, and it’s watching and anything that would not make the scheme happen in the way that everybody thinks that we’ve signed up for, it’s there, and it’s never before been in my experience, in my life, that I‘ve 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 that’s a really powerful act. But in Australia it’s never been but now it is, and I think it’s not going to go away – I think it’s just there, and it’s 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 don’t 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 … RG: Disability teas, do you remember those? BB: Yes. This was a very active group. It’s worth remembering that at about the time the NDIS campaign – the Every Australian Counts campaign – 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 – in many ways an old-fashioned grassroots campaign – mobilised through social media very, very effectively. RG: I was chairing a hospital at the time and hadn’t mentioned it to my hospital – to the board or the staff – that they might have had any interest – I should’ve – 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 – a lot of businesses had disability teas. There were state co-ordinators that were part of the Every Australian Counts campaign – 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 – a very powerful and important organisation. They’d get it out to their members and they’d all have disability teas so it wasn’t just that 150,000 very warm email contacts of citizens of Australia. They weren’t 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 – frankly and openly – 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: “In the midst of this great mining boom, we’ve got this?”. So, the sense of, not just shame, but that it can’t 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: “we’re happy”. Never before has a tax increase been approved overnight. AD: You referred to John Walsh before, and I don’t 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, he’s 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, he’d worked on most of Australia’s 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 … AD: I should say when this happened Julia Gillard was the prime minister … 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 don’t 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 didn’t 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: “we’re going to get this thing done”. RG: It was a very quick response after the commissioner’s report. It was about the quickest ever. BB: Yeah, but it was that moment where she said “we’re going to get it done”. 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 everyone’s onside and wanting to make it happen quickly? BB: It gets momentum. AD: That word momentum keeps cropping up from this point on … BB: Well I think when you have the prime minister’s department, the Treasury, the Finance Department, the Department of Family and Housing and Community Services, all behind an idea, and they’re 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. He’s 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 it’s 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, it’s like defence. If taxes aren’t 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: I’m 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 Macklin’s office … AD: Well, I remember reading that Jenny Macklin at one stage went to the Expenditure Review Committee [ERC] and, I don’t 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 – as you’d kind of hope that that would be the biggest thing she ever asked for – but this is a massive amount of money. RG: But she had a very good case. You make it sound quite casual, whereas she’s a very carefully prepared. She’s a top policy person herself, so she would have had all the i’s dotted and the t’s 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 it’s not fair to say “at that point the opposition fell in behind it”. 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 you’d 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 – he’d been very clear. But I bumped into Tony Abbott in the street in Sydney, and I said to him: “Mr Abbott, I’m hearing you’re supporting the NDIS and I’m so pleased”. And he said: “Well normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes”. 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! I’ve met millions of politicians over a long, long life – because I’m quite elderly by now – and a lot you don’t get past the goalposts because there isn’t 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 don’t 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 University’s 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. I’m 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 University’s 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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"Student Loan Repayment Options and Public Service Loan Forgiveness" on Oct. 6 with Heather Jarvis.

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2015 90:00

Episode 42: Heather Jarvis, Student Loan Expert, Talks About Law School Debt

Thinking LSAT

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2015 75:25

Student Loan Expert Heather Jarvis addresses the following topics: What are need-based versus merit-based scholarships? How does tuition discounting work? How should students ask for more scholarship money? Tips for borrowing and reducing living expenses in law school. Should you borrow money from an IRA investment account or take out student loans to pay for law school? We also answer the following questions from listeners: Melissa is a 34-years-old mother who is considering law school. She asks about a LSAT prep strategy and whether to take a practice LSAT as her first step. Eric asks about "must be true" questions and when to diagram Logical Reasoning questions. Take a listen and let us know what you think. And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter. Everyone who signs up will receive updates and sample chapters of the upcoming Logic Games Playbook! Sign up and we’ll be in touch!

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Episode 40: Should You Focus on the Overall Score or Learning From Your Mistakes When Taking Practice LSAT Tests?

Thinking LSAT

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2015 95:26

Andrew asks if he has enough time to study for the December 2015 LSAT or should he wait until the February 2016 test. He also asks if he will be at a disadvantage if he takes a later LSAT because more people will be sitting for the exam. Kayle is doing well on her practice LSAT tests (scores of 169 and 172). When studying, she asks if she should: a) concentrate primarily on the number of questions missed; b) consider the overall score; or c) ignore everything and focus on learning from her mistakes? Dennis is concerned about a college class that has negatively impacted his GPA. He is currently retaking the class. Should he apply to law school as soon as his LSAT score is available, or wait until the semester is finished so he can report the better grade and higher GPA? We also tackle Logical Reasoning questions 5 and 6 (Section 2) from the June 2007 LSAT. Don't forget to try out the LSAT tracker. This lets you track your progress and discover what you need to work on. Lastly, Heather Jarvis, student loan expert, will be a guest on an upcoming episode. If you have a question for Heather, email us by Sept. 1. Take a listen and let us know what you think. And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter. Everyone who signs up will receive updates and sample chapters of the upcoming Logic Games Playbook! Sign up and we’ll be in touch!

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5 Questions: Gold, Stock Options, Coupons

Listen Money Matters - Free your inner financial badass. All the stuff you should know about personal finance.

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2014 38:20

We’re answering listener questions about gold, stock options, coupons, investing, and how to avoid student loan debt. 1. Should I invest in gold and silver? The short answer is no. It’s risky and speculative. Gold and silver prices fluctuate wildly from ridiculous highs to tremendous lows. To make money this way you would have to time the market and we’ve discussed before that it is inadvisable to do so. 2. Should I buy company stock at a 15% discount or continue with Betterment? This question was detailed but at the end of the day, the company was getting a year long loan and the money was not accessible. It’s also the problem of too many eggs in one basket. Having your income and investments coming from the same place is risky. Continue putting the money into Betterment. 3. Are coupons worth your time? Coupons are to get you into the store knowing that once you’re there, you’ll buy more than what you came in for. If you have a lot of self control and are using the coupon to buy something you normally buy, than they can be a good thing. 4. I have an $8000 loan with 3.45% interest. Should I pay it off before investing or invest and make a lower monthly loan payment? Andrew calculated this out. If you put $1000 into investing every year for eight years and got a return of 7%, you would make $410.90 more than if you did the same with the $1000 by buying off the loan. But that was on paper and actual life is variable so you can’t count on 7%. Also, the interest rate on this loan is very low. So in a vacuum, you would invest the money rather than pay down the loan but in the real world, pay off the loan before investing. 5. How do I avoid going deep into debt during my two year graduate program? If you have to take out loans, take out federal loans over private when possible. The interest rate is lower and there are programs for debt forgiveness for federal loans. Put any savings into an investment account. The day you graduate, pull it out and pay on your loans. They don’t accrue interest while in school. Even if your program is full time, find a few hours a week for a side hustle. An Uber driver sets their own hours and has clients seek them out. Take everything you just learned in class and create a blog or a Youtube video. It’s tutoring but to a potentially huge audience. I’ve added our student loan episodes to the show notes. Thanks guys, we love these episodes so keep sending in your questions. Show Notes LMM Episode 32: Adam Carrol educates us about student loans. LMM Episode 70: Student loan expert Heather Jarvis talks about student loan repayment and forgiveness programs. Smart Passive Income: Pat Flynn’s site that teaches ways to make passive income. Betterment: The easy to use investment tool. Use this link and get six months free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Student Loan Help with Heather Jarvis

Listen Money Matters - Free your inner financial badass. All the stuff you should know about personal finance.

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2014 36:16

We get lots of questions about student loans so we decided to bring on an expert to help. Heather Jarvis joins us to answer of your pressing questions. Heather graduated from Duke Law School with $125,000 in student loans. She wanted to use her degree to help poor people so it wasn’t going to be a big salary helping her pay that back. Heather has worked on the government’s student debt relief programs but admits they are complicated and tricky to access. Heather’s site is designed to make things easier for those who already have student loan debt. We asked Heather to explain some of the programs to help deal with student loan debt. 1. Income-Based Repayment Plans This is an income-based repayment for federal student loans. You do need to show financial hardship in order to get it. Which shouldn’t be too hard as student loans are a financial hardship. Your monthly payment will be based on the income reported on your tax return and compared to the national poverty rate. 2. Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program Public servants can apply to have their loans forgiven after ten years. Heather says, “It’s all about making the right kind of payments, on the right kind of loan while working the right kind of job.” 3. Deferment or Forbearance If you’re having trouble paying your loan no matter how much the monthly amount is lowered to, you can apply for a forbearance, which allows you to defer your loan payments for a certain period of time. The interest still accrues during this period though so keep that in mind. Basic Student Loan Tips from Heather * Everyone should be filling out the FAFSA forms, even if you think you won’t get it. * Try to get federal loans over private loans because they tend to have lower interest rates. * Use StudentLoans.gov and check out some of the tools and services there. * State loans are the worst of both federal and private loans. * Be careful about what you borrow. Understand what kind of loans you have and what your options are. * Think more carefully about the cost of the colleges you plan to attend. * Consider community college for a few years to do your prerequisite courses. College debt can be crippling but there is help out there. If you are struggling, consult Heather’s site and get some help. Show Notes Ask Heather Jarvis: Take control of your debt. Mint: The easy way to invest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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New Student Loan Interest Rates

Talk Credit Radio with Gerri Detweiler

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2013 16:17

New legislation changes student loan rates. It's a good deal for borrowers today, but tomorrow those rates will rise quickly and become quite expensive. Here attorney and student loan expert Heather Jarvis, founder of askheatherjarvis.com, joins me to explain what's going on with student loan interest rates. We talk about what's happening in Congress as well as the frustration many students are experiencing when they try to pay off, consolidate or refinance these loans. Jarvis had a lot of debt herself and has experienced this problem firsthand. Her insights are both personal and professional. This episode aired live August 5, 2013.

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Heather Jarvis on managing student loan debt on Feb. 9, 2012.

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2012 111:18

Student Loan Management for Lawyers

The Legal Toolkit

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2012 27:18

Stressed about your student loans from law school? On The Legal ToolKit, host Jared Correia, Law Practice Management Advisor with Mass. LOMAP, joins Heather Jarvis, student loan expert and former capital defense attorney, to discuss student loan management. Heather offers her insight on consolidation, Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Income Based Repayment and how lawyers can reduce, or better manage their payments.

Loan Repayment Seminar (Guest Speaker Ms Heather Jarvis) October 26, 2011

FIU Law: Events and Speakers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 16, 2011 91:13

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Student Debt Relief, Part 1: Public Service Loan Forgiveness with Heather Jarvis

The Idealist.org Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2011 16:45

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Student Debt Relief, Part 2: Income-Based Repayment with Heather Jarvis

The Idealist.org Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2011 17:47

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Heather Jarvis on managing student loan debt and new loan repayment assistance programs on April 12, 2011.

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2011 64:03

Heather Jarvis, senior program manager for Law School Advocacy and Outreach Resources at Equal Justice Works, on Managing Student Loan Debt: New Loan Repayment Assistance Programs at a Sept. 16, 2009 program o-sponsored by the Public Interest Section's De