Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. I know that, in his electorate of Banks and in the electorates of all honourable members, there are many parents with children who are disabled who are grateful that at long last the parliament appears to be on the point of honouring the commitment to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and fully funding it. That is what we are doing. The Labor government left the National Disability Insurance Scheme unfunded. We are rising to the challenge and ensuring it is funded.

I ask one question for the opposition leader: will Labor support the increase in the Medicare levy to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme? It was only a few years ago, when Labor increased the Medicare levy to partially fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme, that the Leader of the Opposition, in a passionate call for bipartisanship, said, 'No-one could be that dumb to put politics before this critical reform.' The question is: will he play politics on this reform? The member for Warringah, at the time the NDIS was announced, as leader of the coalition said, 'This is a reform whose time has come,' and now the time has come to pay for it. The time has come to fund it. The time has come to be fair and honest to all Australians and recognise that we should put the money back in that important policy—that important insurance scheme.

It is fair, vitally fair, to be able to say to all Australian school students, 'You will receive Commonwealth funding consistently, fairly and based on needs, totally transparently, with everything disclosed—not with 27 secret deals conflicting with schoolchildren in one part of the country receiving less than children in another but totally transparent.

Again, it is fair and honest to fully fund and guarantee Medicare to restore indexation and to create a Medicare Guarantee Fund so that every year from 1 July all Australians will see, in priority, the moneys are placed in that fund to fund Medicare and the PBS. Again, we ask whether the Leader of the Opposition will support that measure. Will he do that? After all, he talks a lot about Medicare. Will he back our fairness, our support, for the NDIS, for a fair schools policy and for the guarantee of Medicare?

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