Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow the member for Kingsford Smith in this debate, because I totally agree with what he said. Before speaking on the Medicare Levy Amendment (National Disability Insurance Scheme Funding) Bill 2017, I listened to the contributions made by other speakers from both sides of the House in this debate. I particularly took note of the contribution from the member for Jagajaga. The member for Jagajaga was the minister in the Rudd-Gillard governments who was responsible for the introduction of the scheme and would know as much about it as anyone in this House. I particularly noted her comments, which I endorse and totally agree with, not only that it was Labor that was responsible for introducing the scheme but that the introduction also included fully funding the scheme. Labor has always been committed to the NDIS and continues to be.

The real difference in this debate between Labor and the government is not our commitment to the scheme. There is no question about that at all—albeit I have always doubted the true commitment to the scheme from coalition members. Indeed, I suspect they came on board only because they knew that it would be political suicide at the time to oppose the National Disability Insurance Scheme. But the difference right now is how the scheme will be funded going into the future.

The first point I want to make is to concur with the comments of the member for Jagajaga: the scheme was fully funded during our time in government and it was in the forward projections of the budget. If the coalition government since taking office in 2013 has redirected those funds, used them for other purposes or not adopted the funding mechanisms that Labor had proposed then it's a matter for the coalition government to explain that clearly to the Australian people, not to simply say that the scheme was never funded.

The other point of real difference in respect of this matter is that what we are seeing—consistent with so many other decisions and proposals that come into this place from the Turnbull government—is that low-income Australians are once again being hit with additional costs and being asked to fund this government's economic incompetence. I say 'economic incompetence' because the reality is that this is a government that has come into office, has been in office now for over four years—it's into its fifth year now—and still can't get its budget in order. Last year's deficit was, from memory, $38 billion. This year it's looking like $29 billion, if things go as projected. This government has overseen our national debt hitting half a trillion dollars.

It is because the government cannot balance its budget that it is looking for other ways of doing so, and those ways of doing so include increasing the Medicare levy by half a per cent from its current level. The government is coming into the House and doing that under the pretence that this is all about compassion and that this is about supporting people who are in need and whom we should be supporting. I totally agree that we should be, but that's not what's driving this government's increase in the levy. What's driving this government's increase in the levy is its need to increase taxes in order to balance its budget. There is no question about it whatsoever: this is a tax increase. The government can call it a levy and anyone else can call it whatever they like, but the truth of the matter is that whether it's called a levy or a tax increase it will hit people who are on incomes above $21,000, and it will come out of their pocket.

I have listened to members opposite, who have continuously come into the chamber and tried to paint a picture that the problem we have with the NDIS is that Labor not only didn't fund it properly but mismanaged the whole process. It's becoming a hallmark of this government to blame Labor for everything that is wrong with society today—not four years ago; today. We saw it again in question time today. The Prime Minister in response to questions on one hand would brag about the NBN rollout but then simultaneously say that problems that are associated with the NBN are all Labor's fault. We see from this government that, regardless of the issue, it likes to take credit for matters, but then as soon as something goes wrong it blames Labor, just as the Prime Minister did again today with respect to jobs. He came into the House, boasting about how many jobs were created but then, in the next breath, said that higher power prices are killing jobs in this country. You can't have it both ways and nor can you blame the opposition, which was in government over four years ago, for what is happening in society today. The government has had four years to fix up those issues and it simply hasn't done so.

I said from the outset that Labor has always been committed to the NDIS. It's always been Labor that has introduced social policies in government. It was Labor that introduced the minimum wage in 1907. It was Labor that introduced the old-age pension in 1909. It was Labor that implemented the Medicare system in 1984 after the Fraser government, when it came to office, dropped the original Medibank system that the Whitlam government had brought in in 1974. It was Labor that brought in compulsory super, it was Labor that brought in paid parental leave and it was Labor that brought in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And what we have seen from this government is consistent attacks to somehow try and dismantle those social schemes, which were brought in to act as a social net for people in this country. And we saw it again only recently when this government turned its back on people who are going to lose their penalty rates.

I can well recall when the NDIS was first mooted. The member for Maribyrnong was the parliamentary secretary at the time. I organised a community forum in my electorate. It was held at Tyndale college. We asked people who had a disability or their carers to come along and talk to us about the problems they faced. I very clearly recall that occasion because a young girl came along who touched everyone in the room that day. She was having to stay home from school—from memory, she was 13 or 14—because she had to care for her sick mother, who had a disability. To see a young person have to forgo her own career and her own future because she loved and cared for her mother was an injustice that needed to be corrected. The member for Maribyrnong and I walked out of that meeting both absolutely committed to doing something about this. To the credit of the member for Maribyrnong, he certainly did. He took it back to the cabinet and, with the help of the member for Jagajaga and other members in this place, the NDIS finally got off the ground.

Few if any people struggle through life more than people with a serious disability or the family members who may have to care for them. For most of my life, I lived across the road from a family who had a person with a serious disability. I watched that young person grow into adulthood. I watched the mother and father sacrifice their lives every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year, year in, year out, in order to care for their son, whom they dearly loved. When they grew much older and couldn't care for him anymore, they put him in a residential care facility and he was looked after there. The sacrifice that was being made was a social injustice that had to be redressed—and Labor did that by introducing the scheme that we did.

What is wrong with this legislation is simply this—and I go back to one of the comments I made from the outset: the real difference between Labor and the government on this matter is no longer the difference about the need for a National Disability Insurance Scheme but, rather, how it's going to be funded. Only last week we saw legislation debated in this place that offered corporates a $65 billion tax cut, yet the government is saying it cannot afford to find the funding to pay for the NDIS scheme. The tax cut that was being put forward last week by the coalition government, as we all know and as has been made absolutely clear time and time again, is a tax cut that in most cases will go to corporates who are paying very little tax right now or to shareholders who live overseas—and, therefore, the beneficiaries will be people who live overseas or in turn invest their money in offshore low-tax jurisdictions. So we have a situation whereby there are opportunities for the government to find the funds if it chose a different source of funding. But the government is saying, 'No, we want to offer tax cuts to the corporates but we'll ask people on low incomes, people who earn above $21,000 a year, to pay for it through an increase of half a per cent in the levy.'

The other issue that this levy paints very clearly is the government's incompetence with respect to the budget. I quoted some figures earlier on in terms of how this government simply can't balance its budget. Last week we had the debate about the closure of GMH. The closure of the auto industry in this country will hit the economy by about $29 billion. It was one of the stupid decisions that this government made, turning its back on the auto industry, which is now going to cost the government tax income stream. Again, these are examples of the government showing its incompetence and therefore having to turn on people who are still earning some wages to try and balance its budget by increasing the levy.

With respect to the people that have a disability in this country, the member for Jagajaga made this point quite rightly. I recently had a constituent come to see me who was on a disability pension. The constituent had managed, after many years, to finally take a break and go overseas, was overseas for just over four weeks—I think it was five or six weeks at most—and came back and found that the disability pension had been cut and stopped because that person had exceeded the four weeks. The person, who I understand now has to go overseas for an essential matter over the coming months, is in fear of losing the pension that was being received because for the next 12 months, having already exceeded the four-week limit, that person cannot travel overseas. This is the injustice that is being done. When the members opposite say that they care about people with a disability, perhaps they should start thinking about people like the person in my electorate who was treated that way.

I understand that the funds need to be found. No-one disputes that. As I said earlier, we had budgeted for the NDIS into the future. The government's changed the rules. It came into office four years plus ago, changed the rules and now needs to find the funds. We accept that. That's why we're saying that, if we were in office, we would only increase the levy for people earning $87,000 or more, because they are the people that can possibly still afford it. This is at a time when last year average wage growth was 1.9 per cent, exactly the same amount as the rise to the cost of living. So wage earners in this country are no better off today than they were 12 months ago. We know that corporate incomes over that same period of time—and the corporates are going to get the tax cut—have never been higher. So the injustice is being perpetrated every day.

So we're saying that, if the government needs to find the funds, at the very least it should look to the people that are going to get a tax cut, because in many cases those people were paying the budget repair levy and they won't have to in the future because this government's going to drop that. At least set the rules so that the people on the lowest incomes, who are probably struggling the most with their cost of living expenses on a day-to-day basis, don't have to pay the levy. That would be the fairness that I believe most members in this place would want for themselves if they were in the shoes of the people that are going to get hit hardest by this tax.

Time does not allow me to speak at length about this, but in closing I say this: the government's attack on the lowest income people in this country is shameful. It's one issue after another, and this levy is just another example of the way this government treats low-income Australians.

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