Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The bill before the House is a simple measure, but it is smart policy. It is a clear example of the sensible, pragmatic approach to policymaking that characterises this government and another demonstration of our commitment to following through on our promises.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a noble idea and one close to my heart. As the parent of a daughter who lives with disability, I take a passionate interest in getting it right when it comes to delivering these services. I know that Australians with disability want security, excellence and choice in the support that they access. The NDIS should be a world-class means of delivering that support. It should become an increasingly critical part of our nation's provision of health care, supporting hundreds of thousands of Australians with security and dignity. However, without urgent action, all of that is at risk from a funding black hole that threatens the sustainability of the entire system.

While Labor sought to deny the problem, the coalition recognised this shortfall from the very beginning and we have consistently proposed commonsense measures to meet the Commonwealth's NDIS obligations. The government is on record as committed to properly adequately and sustainably funding the scheme, and the present measure is an important part of following through on that commitment.

Behind the technical terminology of this bill is a very straightforward idea: good governments listen to the people and they learn from the commonsense ways that families adopt and by which they prosper. To any of us who have ever had to manage a household budget—or, as I have, operated a small business—the good sense of the measure before us today is immediately apparent. I think most families around the country would recognise this approach. How many of us have a jar on the kitchen bench at home, or an extra bank account—a place where we save what we find we have left over to pay for the big costs and investments? When we have a little spare money, when the water bill is not as we expected or there is some change left in a pocket at the end of the day, we all know what the best thing to do is: we drop it straight in the jar or we deposit it into that extra account.

But we also know that just having the jar is never enough. The other lesson we all learn early, hopefully, is how quickly that money, whatever our good intentions, can disappear unless we decide beforehand exactly what we are saving for and we stick to that resolution. It is these practical lessons and that pragmatic attitude that informs this bill.

No forecast is ever exactly right, and few budgets are met to the dollar. In the course of the tens of billions each year, which will flow through the National Disability Insurance Scheme, some items of expenditure will not be as large as the department anticipates. With the economies of scale generated by the full national scheme, there will be other savings which the Department of Social Services will identify. As the minister announced in May last year, savings of $711.2 million over five years have already been achieved through the timely finalisation of transition arrangements with states and territories. There will be many more to come.

By providing the ability to determine amounts to be credited to this savings fund special account, this measure will allow the minister to bank those savings and underspends, and make sure that they are locked in as major contributions to the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the future. However, we are going to need more than that.

An investment as large and important as the NDIS will encourage all ministers and departments to work together and consider carefully whether any economies can be made in other portfolios. The bill therefore also provides for the minister to channel funds to this account deriving from savings in other departments. These savings would result from decisions by the Prime Minister or cabinet in other areas of government. For those times when banking day-to-day savings is not enough and to get the fund going, the bill also rightly allows for extra credits to be made based on discretionary investment decisions by the Prime Minister or cabinet.

In May of last year, the Minister for Social Services laid out some of the specific discretionary savings and investments this government will make to start the account off on a healthy basis. The government has committed to allocating $1.3 billion over five years to the NDIS Savings Fund Special Account from closing carbon tax compensation for new welfare recipients. It further committed to another $67.2 million saved by closing that same compensation for single-income families not already in the system from July of this year and to another $62.1 million over five years from additional reviews for disability support pension recipients. All of these are in addition to the $711 million saved through the finalising of state and territory transitionary arrangements.

The closing of compensation for a Labor carbon tax that has been abolished is exactly the kind of common sense saving that this bill will allow to be redirected to paying for the NDIS. And these savings continue. Just this week, the government announced a further $3 billion that will be allocated to the fund from the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Omnibus Savings and Child Care Reform) Bill 2017—that is, if the other side agree to its passing. But, like any household saving, we need to do more than find the money. We need to ensure that it is locked in to paying for the NDIS and nothing but the NDIS. We need the funds to be quarantined and protected as predictable forward contributions to the scheme; otherwise, there is a risk that additional funds may be announced one day but redirected for short-term political expediency the next.

The NDIS Savings Fund Special Account is therefore necessary as an instrument to guarantee that money once committed is available only to the Minister for Social Services to spend on meeting funding shortfalls in the NDIS. This is also why the bill's provisions regarding the long-term commitment of credits to the account is so important. All credits to the saving fund will be publicly announced, calculated consistently with the Budget Process Operational Rules and committed for 10 years. With these provisions, we can ensure that the additional funding available to the NDIS is consistent, predictable and available when it is needed.

Sadly, we know that this additional funding is going to be all too necessary. Members opposite like to claim the NDIS as their own, but the reality is that their version—your version—of the NDIS was half-baked, half-finished and fatally compromised from the beginning by a lack of funds. A report into the capabilities of the agency set up by Labor to run the scheme said in 2014 that it was 'like a plane that took off before it had been fully built'. It has been left to this government to complete it while it is in the air. In the first quarter of operation under Labor, the average cost of an NDIS package was a full 30 per cent higher than it was anticipated. If this situation had been allowed to continue, the total blowout in costs would have been immense and unmanageable. As it is, this government inherited from Labor a shortfall of $4.1 billion a year between the Commonwealth's NDIS commitment and the funding set aside for it in concrete dollars and cents. Over the next decade that funding gap is expected to grow to more than $7 billion a year.

The need for a special fund was highlighted again this morning in stark terms. The Labor Party continue to this day to be wilfully blind to the disaster they left behind. The Leader of the Opposition said this morning on the radio that Labor had funded the NDIS and that their plan to do so was 'to find other savings'. What other savings? We were never told. In fact, what we do know is that any savings that the Leader of the Opposition did identify he had already promised to other projects not once but repeatedly. The Labor budget that supposedly funded the NDIS predicted a surplus of $1.5 billion but in reality delivered a deficit of $18.8 billion. The need for a special account could not be clearer. The money needed for the NDIS must be clearly and irreversibly committed to be spent only on paying for the NDIS. One wonders why those opposite would challenge such a view.

This dire funding situation could not be allowed to continue, and this government has taken a series of practical and decisive steps to repair Labor's NDIS black hole. The government committed immediately to properly, adequately and sustainably funding the NDIS without yet more of Labor's deficit borrowings or increased taxes. We have maintained that commitment ever since. Before the last election, we made it clear that we intended to establish this Savings Fund Special Account. As I have suggested, in the 2016 budget, the government even laid out some $2.1 billion of additional funds that would be channelled into the fund. We took that plan to the Australian people last year, and we are now seeking to make that plan into a reality through this bill.

As we have seen, this plan has been diligently worked through and planned for by the government. It has been discussed with stakeholders and put to the Australian people, but it has also been considered at another place. The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee produced a detailed report on this bill, with a single recommendation. What was that single recommendation? That the bill be passed. That was a Senate recommendation.

The NDIS Savings Fund Special Account will allow the government to lock in underspends and savings from across all departments across future years and reserve them for the NDIS alone. With the 10-year commitment of funds, it will also grow consistently over future budgets, moving us forward in a transparent, predictable and responsible way to meeting the Commonwealth's NDIS contribution.

When it is fully operating in 2019-20, the NDIS will be injecting more than $24 billion each year into the Australian economy and making a difference in the lives of around 460,000 Australians with disability.

The NDIS is not due to roll out until 2019 in the seat of Fisher on the Sunshine Coast, and it will not be before time. Many families I speak to that have a family member living with a disability are eagerly awaiting its implementation. I only found out this morning that the decision on when to roll out the NDIS on the Sunshine Coast was a decision made by the Palaszczuk Labor state government—not this government but the Palaszczuk Labor government, another example of them penalising a loyal conservative area of the Sunshine Coast.

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