Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When the coalition came to office in 2013, the bequest from Labor was $274 billion of gross debt on a trajectory to $667 billion, by 2030, after Labor had inherited themselves a $20 billion surplus and another $45 billion in the bank. Labor's bitter bequest to every man, woman and child in the country after six years of waste and mismanagement also included $240 billion in consecutive big budget deficits—first $27 billion, followed by $54 billion, followed by $47 billion, then $43 billion, then $18 billion and finishing with yet another $48 billion. When you add it up, that is about $240 billion in deficits.

That was the dismal case, even though, according to the member for Lilley, at some stage of the projection process every Labor budget was miraculously going to be in surplus. But when you are letting spending grow at an average of 4.5 per cent a year with revenues nowhere near that, Labor's claims to be perennially on the verge of surplus were always deliberate Mediscare-scale and style nonsense. This was the worst inheritance for any incoming Australian government in our history, even by the famously weak economic standards of the Labor Party which, sadly, Australians are now very used to.

Labor always spends us into trouble, and the coalition always comes in and has to sort out the mess. That has been the pattern practically since Federation, and that is what this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill, is all about. Labor announced the NDIS in the same way it announced the also-hugely expensive Gonski education plan—with absolutely no idea about where the money was going to come from—which was the height of irresponsibility, and so typically the way of Labor governments, especially from 2007 right through to 2013, across all policy areas.

Both ideas—Gonski and the NDIS, and especially the NDIS, I have to say—were morally sound. The case for a greater level of care for the almost one in five Australians with a disability and their carers is indisputable, just as was the conclusion that, as a country, we desperately need to do something about the tragic decline in the quality of education, especially for children. To Labor, as always, the solution was just more dollars, but they did not have the dollars and they had no real prospect of getting the dollars. They uttered vague, rhetorical ideas about where the dollars might come from, and when they did try to give some undertakings they were vague and, ultimately, I believe, misleading. Moneys they implied were tied to the NDIS were not. Billions in alleged NDIS funding were double-counted—a standard Labor trick. Labor was effectively just like Micawber, one of Charles Dickens' fictional characters, who always assumed that something would just turn up to solve a problem in due course and in the fullness of time, maybe on a time horizon so far into the future that it is just not really worth worrying about today.

Sadly, that is the attitude Labor has taken on funding for the NDIS but, as we all know, nothing just turns up. Funding a program like the NDIS requires a lot of hard work and a lot of decisions of the sort put forward in this very bill. I have no doubt that the speaker who spoke before me, the member for Longman, is right in claiming that every stakeholder she speaks to wills the NDIS to succeed—they want it to succeed. I think she is probably right. However, wishing for something is not the same as planning for something. Wishing for something is no substitute for planning for it, and this is where Labor always goes so fundamentally wrong.

Once again, therefore, it is left to the coalition to do the heavy lifting, to do the hard work, to clean up the mess and to plan ahead. Labor's funding gap for the NDIS in 2019-20, when it becomes fully operational as a program, is $4.1 billion, growing to $6 billion a year soon after. It was, and it is, a ridiculous and totally irresponsible black hole. The staggering $32 billion that the scheme is expected to cost within a decade of becoming fully operational was never on the Labor radar, but it is on our radar, and that is what the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account is indeed all about. This is the fund that will become the Fort Knox for the NDIS. It will start with a contribution of $2.1 billion from reforms to the disability support pension and other changes to the welfare system that aim to make it fairer, more finely targeted and, more importantly, accountable to the taxpayer.

It will be augmented over the years by a new spending regime and savings from across government, including $3 billion via measures being put forward to this parliament in associated bills—that is money that will both take care of the short-term funding shortfall and set in train a process for guaranteeing funding into the future, when the scheme will be exponentially more expensive. Again, the previous speaker, the member for Longman, talked about the importance of certainty. It does not matter if you are running a profitable commercial business or a not-for-profit organisation or a charity; certainty is key, and there is no greater certainty that you can provide a player in any sector that is reliant on government funding than the certainty of funding. But the black hole created by Labor is the very thing that undermines confidence, and we cannot have this sector continuing to lack confidence because of a funding black hole.

So here we are, yet again, in this 45th Parliament with all eyes on Labor and their allies, the Greens and the crossbenchers in the Senate. All eyes are on them yet again to see if maybe—just maybe—this time they will do the right thing and work with us to protect the NDIS by supporting this bill and other associated measures. I commend the bill to the House.

Milton Dick (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been a long time coming for the NDIS since the first disability insurance model was explored by the Whitlam government in the 1970s. But let's be clear: since then, people with a disability and their families had to wait another 40 years and for another Labor government before they would finally get the support they deserve. Since being established under Labor in 2012, successive Liberal governments have been caught out, dragging their feet, to implement the NDIS. And this government is no different.

Labor opposes this bill as the government, again, wastes the parliament's time on a political stunt. It is clear that it is just a transparent attempt to pretend that the NDIS is not fully funded. It is absolutely galling to listen to speaker after speaker on the other side making outrageous claims that the NDIS was not funded. Of course Labor absolutely funded the NDIS and, as we read in The Courier-Mail today, the editorial sums it all up: 'Brinkmanship the lazy route to Budget cuts'—

and this is the quote from the editorial in today's paper in my home state:

Instead of rolling up their sleeves, Mr Morrison and Mr Porter decided to take a policy program with universal and overwhelming support and hold it hostage.

On Monday the ministers made an indirect connection between future funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the proposed family benefit cuts.

This was too clever by half, and simply not true in the short term.

The NDIS is funded through the national budget for the forward estimates …

…   …   …

Firstly, no one should use funding for helping disabled Australians to make a case for spending cuts—it is stupid politics and skewed policy thinking.

Second, the path to reform, including the never-ending work of finding savings and efficiencies in big-spending portfolios like social services, requires smart thinking and hard work—

two things which elude the Turnbull government.

So I was disappointed but, more importantly, I was angry that whoever the geniuses within the government came up with the idea of 'Well, you can support cuts to the elderly, the disabled, the most vulnerable Australians and we'll use that money to fund the NDIS' should hang their heads in shame. Pitting disabled Australians against vulnerable Australians—just once I would like someone from the government to get up and actually do the right thing and stand up for Australians who need support. I am sick and tired of members of this government coming after and attacking those Australians who need a hand. It happens day in, day out. Those opposite in my opinion simply want to smash our safety net and they make no apology for it.

In the 2013-14 budget, Labor clearly set out, as we have heard, how the NDIS would be funded for 10 years—well past the transition to the full scheme. This included reforms to the private health insurance rebate, reforms to retirement incomes, the phase-out of the net medical expense tax offset and other long-term saving proposals. This should not come as a shock to the minister at the table or the member for Flynn, who is in the chamber today, because they voted for them. They supported them. And they supported every single savings measure, and now the government, we know, has a $50 billion tax cut right up their sleeve to hand out—is it to the most vulnerable in the community? Is it to those who need a hand? Is it to the so-called hardworking men and women whom we keep getting lectures about all the time? No. It is to large corporations, large banks and large multinational companies.

As we have heard through speakers today, when you are in government, it is about priorities and that fact alone says volumes about this government. But we know that the government has stooped even lower to holding the NDIS to ransom over cuts to other programs for some of our most vulnerable Australians, as I said before.

We know that this is a disgraceful political game of brinkmanship and we have seen community advocates, great Australians—Paralympians, like Kurt Fearnley, who said through the media that he was furious about the government's move, accusing it of using the NDIS 'as a political football'. It is mischief. It is political opportunism and it is just wrong.

We know that the Australian Council of Social Service head Cassandra Goldie rejected the linking of social security cuts to disability funding. As we heard the member for Gilmore say about 20 times, she is right: this is robbing Peter to pay Paul—pitting people on low incomes against each other in an unfair way. We know that the NDIS has been funded, but that should not be at the expense of the poorest people in our community.

I say that the minister should be condemned for this shameful linking of funding for the NDIS with cuts to those people who can least afford it. And we saw the walk back today a little bit through the media when, clearly, the Prime Minister's office briefed out and said, 'Well, we didn't think it was a good idea, but the Treasurer did.' So everyone we know we can see is slowly walking backwards from this ridiculous and shameful proposition. But, more importantly, we should have a member of the government get in and apologise for even putting it on the table in the first place.

We have said from day one that the NDIS is a bipartisan reform that should be above politics—the largest social reform our nation has seen since the introduction of Medicare. We have heard from speakers today about the inquiry by the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee. Labor referred the bill for inquiry. We have seen in evidence provided to that Senate inquiry that disability organisations resoundingly reject this fund and the government's planned cuts that will go into it. Multiple submissions to the inquiry raised significant concerns about the fund, for which the government has failed to establish any evidence of the need to even establish the account.

The disability sector, just like Labor, are onto this government and will not have the wool pulled over their eyes as to what is really going on here. But we know that cutting programs and funding for those who need them most is in the LNP's DNA. The Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance said it best when they said:

The Alliance recommends that the Committee finds the NDIS Savings Fund, as proposed, to be unfit for purpose.

That is right: these are the advocates working in the disability sector. These are the experts. I pay tribute and give credit to people who give up their time, work long hours and make sacrifices to make a career of helping those Australians with disabilities.

In my own electorate I am privileged to have visited and supported organisations like Youngcare, located in the south-west of Brisbane, and I have seen firsthand the difference that a dedicated organisation like Youngcare can make to the lives of people living with a disability. The story of Youngcare began in my electorate when they opened their first residence, at Sinnamon Park, in 2007. We are celebrating 10 years of Youngcare. This is a wonderful facility which means young people with a disability do not have to go to nursing homes. They do not have to live in aged-care facilities. They live wonderful lives and they contribute greatly to the richness of my local community. The Youngcare Wesley Mission Apartments pioneered a new approach to independent living.

When I was a candidate running for office, the first shadow minister that came to the Oxley electorate was Jenny Macklin. I deliberately wanted it to be Jenny Macklin, the member for Jagajaga. She has long been a dedicated servant of our party, our great parliament and, of course, Australia. She is a person who has devoted her life to social justice and fighting for those people who need it. I wanted to learn firsthand and speak to the people who live in this wonderful facility in their homes. They were able to share all of their experiences, and what a transformation that support is giving them. I want to be a strong voice for organisations like Youngcare that are based in the Oxley electorate. It is also an important part of my work to support the transformation that is happening in Darra in my electorate through the great work of Montrose in giving support to families and young kids with disabilities. Making sure we are fully resourcing an effective NDIS is a pledge I give to those residents and to the disabled families in my community.

We know that this bill will serve only to throw more uncertainty into an already plagued NDIS rollout. It is bad enough that this government wanted to link cuts to those who can least afford it and put a hostage situation into the NDIS, as we have heard from speaker after speaker. I will not stand for that and the people in my electorate will not stand for it. All of Australia is opposed to what this government is planning to do.

We know that the government has a pretty poor track record when it comes to delivering and rolling out the NDIS. We know that there were continual stuff-ups in Western Australia and that they led to the NDIS splintering, with the news that the Western Australian government will go it alone on their own version of the NDIS after a secret, last-minute deal between the Commonwealth and the Barnett Liberal government. We have seen similar issues in the ACT.

We hear a lot from ministers on the other side saying, 'Don't listen to what they say; look at what they do.' We hear these lectures over and over again. Well, you need only look at this government's mistreatment of the Chair of the NDIA, the father of the NDIS, Bruce Bonyhady; at the disgraceful way, in my opinion, that a distinguished Australian was treated. There was no reason given. I have got my own theories as to why the government took action there. I do not think someone of Mr Bonyhady's standing should have been subjected to the disgraceful treatment we saw at the end of last year. For the minister to use him as a scapegoat for problems with the scheme, which ultimately should fall under his responsibility, is disgraceful.

My understanding and my strong belief is that the NDIS board needs people with a deep understanding of the disability sector. It needs people with a lived experience of disability. That is what people with disability want as well. That is exactly what someone of the calibre of Bruce Bonyhady brought to the table, which the minister dismissed, in my opinion, in an attempt to blame anyone but himself for the problems in the NDIS rollout.

It is clear from the outset—and this is supported by multiple disability advocacy groups—that this bill is further proof of the government's failure to deliver the NDIS. From the secret deal with the Western Australian government and the blame-shifting in the ACT to the removal of the NDIS chair, there has been only confusion and frustration for thousands of Australians who deserve better. I do not want any more lectures from those opposite. I do not want any more platitudes from them about what happened 20 or 30 years ago. I want action. The people in the disability sector want action as well. More importantly, they deserve action. They deserve a parliament that is going to stand up, fight and make sure that it delivers the long-term care and support that they have earned. As I said in my opening remarks, we started this conversation under the Whitlam government, and it has now taken 40 years—more than my entire life—to make sure that we are finally seeing quality, dignified care given to some of the most frail and vulnerable people in our country.

Australians will not accept more cruel cuts from the government under the guise of funding the NDIS. We know that the NDIS is already well funded. Why do we know that? We know that because Labor delivers on what it says, and Labor made sure that this transformational project not only was implemented and delivered but, more importantly, was funded. We will keep fighting to make sure that the NDIS is protected from any attacks by the Turnbull government. I will always stand up for those people who need a helping hand. That is what I was sent to this place to do.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill 2016. What the government is perpetrating by this proposed legislation is an out-and-out lie. Do you know why that is? It stems from this: the Prime Minister walks into this chamber and he holds his head up high with a legacy to Australia of having lost a republic referendum and having delivered a failure of an NBN. Bill Shorten, the leader of the Labor Party, the Leader of the Opposition, walks into this chamber and he can hold his head up high because even before he has made it to being the Prime Minister, which he will, he has the legacy of having delivered for disabled people in Australia.

People with disability can thank the Labor Party because we delivered on a fully funded NDIS, and the lie of this proposed legislation is writ large in its own wording because what it is doing is setting up a special fund which—wait for it—is part of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It is a fund within a fund. It sounds like a fund we do not need. And do you know why that is? It is because Labor had always fully funded and fully costed the NDIS, which is being delivered now for people of disability in this country. We recognised that the people who are the worst off, the people who need the most care, deserve to have the most assistance from this government and from the nation, because not only is the NDIS about helping those who need our assistance, it is about making our entire country more productive. That is why it was recommended by the Productivity Commission.

This entire legislation is effectively a fabrication. It is a political tool from the government to try to wedge Labor, to try to make Labor look bad. Well, have I got news for you, government. You have been in power for four years. All we hear in this chamber day after day, question time after question time, is the government getting up and complaining about its view on a Labor policy. Well, get on and government. I mean, do you even govern, bro?

I come back to the NDIS itself. One of the things that the government has done now to make this travesty of a lie even worse is that it has tried to pit people with disability in this country against those with children who need child care and against those who have a need for the family tax benefit. It has said, 'We need to make these cuts to Australian families in order to pay for the NDIS.' Not only is that a lie, because Labor fully funded the NDIS, but it completely fails to take into account that this government has done a grubby deal with the Western Australian government that sees a substantial part of the cost—$140 million at least—transferred across to the Western Australia government. It has already made a huge saving on the administration of the NDIS by offshoring it to Western Australia, which is a complete dud of a national disability insurance scheme. This is one of the real travesties of the way in which the government has been operating the NDIS and trying to bring it to fruition.

In Western Australia we have seen two trial areas established: one for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, another for what is called WA NDIS. I am a reasonably parochial Western Australian, so it makes sense to make sure that WA gets the best deal, and I could not really fault the idea of saying, 'Okay, WA has a pretty good disability service scheme with the Disability Services Commission. Let's make sure that we get the best deal in Western Australia.' However, after setting up these trials and, in fact, even expanding the area being covered by these trial sites, including expanding WA NDIS into the Armadale area in my seat of Burt, the government then almost immediately signed up a deal between the federal government and the Western Australia government to introduce it across the entire state before the trials of WA NDIS had been completed.

What really troubles me about that—and what I think should trouble not only all Western Australians but all Australians, because this is a deal with the federal government—is that they set up these trials to do an evaluation and they have not shown us the result. Apparently, buried somewhere in the bowels of the Commonwealth and state governments is an evaluation report that nobody has seen. How are we in Western Australia—let alone across the nation—to know that this deal that is being done, which is going to cost Western Australians $140 million at least, is actually to the benefit of Western Australians. This is some secret, grubby deal.

What makes it even worse and what just underlies the political nature of that agreement is that the agreement was signed the day before the Barnett government went into caretaker mode. They did not want any scrutiny of this. They did not want the opportunity for a Mark McGowan WA Labor government to come in and actually understand what has been going on. No, they were going to sign the deal up straightaway to cover their own tracks.

I have had disability advocates, people with disability and parents of children with disability coming to me in my office and meeting with me at community meetings, saying, 'Matt, we are very concerned about the differences between the WA NDIS and the national scheme.' I will accept that there could be some deficiencies in the national scheme. Under this government, I do not think that will come as any surprise to anybody. But what concerns me is that these people, whose children are some of the most vulnerable people in our community, want to know that their children will be cared for as they grow older and that they will have access to support, especially after the time has come when they, as parents, are no longer able to look after them. They are concerned about some of the differences that they are seeing in the schemes. In fact, that differences between the schemes is a critical point, because what we saw under the trials was that the Commonwealth government would not comment on the WA NDIS and the WA government would not comment on the national scheme. So we had this situation where no-one could ever really get to the bottom of the differences.

Fortunately, the wonders of Facebook—you might have heard of the internet over there on the government side—have meant that there has been collaboration and discussion between service providers and those that receive these benefits under the NDIS, and they are very concerned about some of the differences they see. I will not run through them all now because part of the problem has been that, in trying to clarify what the differences are, how they operate and why they are there, we cannot get any information out of the WA government or the Commonwealth government. In fact, we even tried to use freedom of information to get access to the evaluation report to understand the differences and why one scheme is better or not better than the other, but we were told, 'No, that's subject to intergovernmental agreement now, so you can't have access to that report.' What are this government and the Barnett government trying to hide?

Under the NDIS, there is supposed to be this concept that the user, the person with disability, is able to choose how their benefit is spent, what services they access and how they access them. The control is placed with the individual. Instead, under the WA NDIS they will go and meet with their local coordinator, who will say, 'This organisation can provide you with that service,' and sign them up for at least six months prepaid—done. If there is a problem with that service provider, it would appear there is no capacity for the individual to change service provider, find a better service provider or use someone who better meets their needs. It may be no fault of the service provider that, for whatever reason, they cannot meet the individual needs of that person—but, no. They are signed up for six months prepaid and cannot change it.

With all of these issues, we do not know what sits behind it, but one of the interesting things under this agreement between the Commonwealth and the state government of Mr Colin Barnett is that Western Australia, unlike any other state in the Commonwealth, will now bear the administration costs of the NDIS in WA. It is supposed to be a national scheme, but instead Western Australians are now going to have to pay for the administration of the NDIS. If you accept a proposition that says, 'The WA government's going to provide more administration or better service or better access to local coordinators,' you might think, 'Okay, it makes sense that the WA government bears the additional cost,' but, no. It will not be just the additional cost; it is going to wear the whole cost. This is an absolute travesty. This is supposed to be a national scheme—and, again, we do not know what is better.

The other part of this, of course, is that we are supposed to have national transferability—portability around the country. If you are a person with disability in Western Australia and the opportunity arises for you to take up a job in the ACT or New South Wales, or your family needs to move and you are a child who is receiving benefits through the NDIS, you do not know what you are going to get now because they have changed the schemes and we do not know how. How will we have full portability if we have different schemes operating in different states?

The other thing here is that, in addition to Western Australia wearing the administration costs, while the Commonwealth will pick up the cost of the actual scheme and the services provided—that seems fair—now 75 per cent of the cost overruns in Western Australia will be borne by the state of Western Australia. This is supposed to be a national, federally funded scheme. Those opposite say, 'Labor didn't fully fund the scheme,' but they do not even want to fully fund the scheme; they want to palm the costs off onto the state, which is exactly the opposite of what we are supposed to be doing.

I raise these concerns because I am seriously concerned about what is going on for our national disability scheme. The key thing I want to emphasise in speaking on this is this: when it comes to those individuals—when it comes to people with disability and to the parents of children with disability—they need to know that as Western Australians they will be no worse off than anyone else in the Commonwealth under this scheme. They should know that; that should be a guarantee. That was part of the design of the NDIS as it was put in place by Labor. But now they do not know. They have uncertainty. They have fear. They are coming to people like me and saying, 'We just don't know, but all we want is to know that we'll be no worse off.' I think that is a very reasonable request—for people with disability and their parents to know that, by being in Western Australia, they will be no worse off. But, with the way in which this government is hiding and the way in which the Colin Barnett Liberal government is hiding, the results of that evaluation tell me that there is something rotten in the state of Western Australia and something rotten in the deal that the Barnett government has cut with Christian Porter and the Liberal government here in Canberra.

When it comes to this piece of legislation, the government says, 'Oh, Labor didn't fund the NDIS.' We know from the wording of the legislation that that is a bunch of rot. Once again, the Turnbull government is all fluff and cluck on the NDIS and helping people with disability. That is why I have serious difficulty with this legislation.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill 2016. As we have heard, this bill seeks to establish a new savings fund that would sit within consolidated revenue. The government claimed—and they have been claiming this a lot in the last few days—that, in order to meet the necessary funding obligations for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, they need to set up this ongoing special account. Let me make a few things clear from the beginning. Most of all, this legislation is not about the actual National Disability Insurance Scheme; it is not actually about helping and assisting those people with disabilities, their families or their carers. I want to make something else very clear from the outset. Let us always remember that Labor created the NDIS; Labor designed the NDIS; Labor fully funded the NDIS. As a result of our commitment and our design, now thousands of people across the country are having their lives transformed through the NDIS. I would like to take this opportunity to commend all those individuals and community groups who, for years, fought for the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I have spoken to many of those people over the years and I admire and commend their dedication.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill is a not-so-subtle attempt by this government to pretend that the NDIS, as designed and developed by Labor, is not fully funded. It is, in fact, a political stunt, providing yet another poor excuse for this government to make further damaging cuts to the social services portfolio. It is indeed a shameless political stunt, at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities—in a sense, making them political pawns. It is disappointing on many levels.

The government falsely claims—and, indeed, has falsely claimed on many occasions in the last few days—that the NDIS was left high and dry under the Labor government; they keep saying that at every chance. This is completely untrue, and the government's continued insistence on this fallacy will not make it any less of a political game at the expense of people with disabilities, their families and carers. The whole premise of this legislation is based on this blatant untruth—that Labor, in government, did not make the budget decisions required to fund the NDIS. It is indeed a falsehood we have seen trotted out again and again in the last few days by most of the people across the chamber.

But, despite their commitment to this obvious duplicity, deep down members opposite will be very aware that the NDIS was indeed fully funded. In fact, many of those opposite were sitting in this chamber and voted for those savings measures when they were introduced. This government, in opposition, agreed to the decisions that were made to contribute to the cost of the scheme. Indeed, under Labor, in the 2013 budget, the NDIS had a clear plan, explicitly showing funding for 10 years and taking it even further than the transition to the fully-funded scheme. This included, but was not limited to, an increase to the Medicare levy, which was always intended to cover some—not all—of the cost of the NDIS. Labor made other responsible budget choices to help fund the NDIS over the 10 years, including private health insurance rebate reforms, retirement income reforms, amendments to tax concessions for fringe benefits, changes to tobacco excise indexation and changes to import processing charges—a whole range of changes to pay for the NDIS. Some of the legislation that gave effect to these measures even passed the parliament after the 2013 election, when the coalition had already formed government.

In opposition, as in government, the coalition purported to bipartisanship for budget measures that were specifically intended to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme. So, if the funding from these measures is no longer directed towards the NDIS—well, where is it being channelled to? That, of course, is the obvious question, based on what they are saying. If the government truly believes that the NDIS is unfunded, why has it signed bilateral agreements with state governments committing to the full rollout and the full funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme? In fact, in setting up this other account, the government is questioning their own supported budget savings measures. The real question should be: 'What has the government done with the money that they have agreed was already set aside for the NDIS?' That is the real query that many people have.

The answer is that this is yet another opportunity for this government to pursue more unfair budget cuts—cuts that will affect the most vulnerable in our communities. And we have certainly seen over the past few years some very harsh cuts to those very, very vulnerable people in our communities. We have seen budget after budget with different measures—very cruel, many of them. But I think what we have seen this week from this government really does take the cake when it comes to their levels of cruelty, in terms of their omnibus bill and the fact that they really want to hold the NDIS hostage, if you like. It has been quite appalling to see what they are doing. They are in fact holding the NDIS hostage over their $5.6 billion in cuts to families, new mothers, pensioners, people with disability, carers and young jobseekers. What they are doing is playing a disgraceful political game of brinkmanship.

People with a disability do not deserve to be treated with such absolute contempt by the Liberal and National parties, in holding them hostage for their cruel cuts. Make no mistake: linking the delivery of the NDIS to massive cuts to families, pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients is not just appalling; it is also very cruel. And people in the community are telling me that. They are also very distressed and upset that the funding for the NDIS has been placed in this position by the government, with these threats, and holding them hostage.

Is the government actually seriously saying that if these unfair cuts are not passed through the Senate then the NDIS will not go ahead? Is that what they are actually saying to the community? That is the fear the community has, and that is certainly what they are relaying to me.

Many of these people with disability and their families have waited years and years and years for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and many people have fought hard for it. And this government should actually be getting on with the job of delivering the NDIS. They should stop telling these untruths to those people with disability and their families, and they should stop putting the future of the NDIS into doubt, because it is causing a huge amount of distress. I think what makes it worse is the way they are attacking so many vulnerable people in our community but have still got their $50 billion in tax cuts for big business—that is still there, whilst all of these other cruel measures are taking place and whilst the NDIS is being held hostage as well.

I note today some very apt comments from Kurt Fearnley, the five-time Paralympian. He has reportedly accused the government of using the NDIS as a 'political football' and criticised the decision to fund it through cuts to other social services. Kurt Fearnley was a member of the NDIS advisory council, and an ABC News article reports that he:

… criticised the Government for taking funding from services that benefit vulnerable members of the community as opposed to re-evaluating its negative gearing program or big business tax policies.

In that article he is quoted as saying:

To sit there and draw a direct line between funding for people with disabilities and the cuts to other vulnerable members of our community—to those on welfare, to those on pensions—you could draw that line across a thousand different parts of the budget.

And he says that he wishes the government would fight for the NDIS with as much vigour as it is fighting for its $50 billion business tax cut. How true is that! The government will repeatedly go out there and fight for the top end of town, but for those with a disability or those on a whole range of pensions, we just see their constant cruel measures, and I think it really goes to the heart of what this government stands for. And with the government pursuing these more unfair budget cuts, yet again, as always, it hurts the most vulnerable in our communities.

Labor committed the revenue from the increase I spoke about before—the increase to the Medicare levy—into the new DisabilityCare Australia Fund. That is a special account from which the states and territories are paid in accordance with their agreements. So there is already an account into which funding is placed to fund the NDIS. But this government wants to set up a special account that serves no genuine purpose in the budget. The money put into the account would still sit in the contingency reserve to be used as the government prioritises. So it is purely political. And all this to ostensibly fund the NDIS—a scheme that has already been fully funded by Labor.

Furthermore, and most importantly, this political game that this government is playing comes at a real cost, because the National Disability Insurance Scheme is dedicated to ensuring that people with a disability, their families and their carers receive full access to the services and programs they need, affording them the respect and value that they deserve in our community. By 2019, the NDIS was designed to support over 460,000 Australians with disability, their carers and their families, and that support will take the form of personal care, access to community services, therapy services and essential equipment, because the former Labor government did all the work of designing and costing the NDIS. The 2013 budget under the Labor government set out—to be precise—a clear 10-year funding plan. The Minister for Human Services and the Treasurer, as I say, keep trying to convince everyone that that is not the case, but deep down they know that it is true. They will try to say the savings measures were not specifically allocated, but their arguments, as always, are incorrect and flawed. Labor set up that account, and it is very disturbing to hear the government keep peddling those untruths. The government claims bipartisan support for the NDIS but it is more than happy to use its scheme as a pretext for its budget cuts. It shows that that level of bipartisanship is not there. It is distressing to see that and hear the government's repeated untruths about that.

Labor referred this bill to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry, and their recent report supported the overwhelming evidence against the establishment of this account. In the submissions to the inquiry there were a number of quite lengthy concerns from non-government organisations. It is interesting to note that among the concerns they had was the fear that the establishment of the account would lead to less certainty of NDIS funding, as it would be tied to savings measures that may not pass parliament, and the concern that it should not be used as an excuse for cuts to payments to the most vulnerable. That is exactly what the Senate inquiry found and it is now precisely what we are seeing.

There are many reasons why what the government has done is wrong and why it is cruel. We should look at the reasons why the NDIS was first put in place. The NDIS was there to give all Australians the peace of mind that if their child or loved one was born with, or acquired, a permanent or significant disability they would get the support they needed. This new model is a significant move from the previous ad hoc system to one that encourages both participation and empowerment, providing people with choice in their own care, which is vitally important.

In 2010, following discussion about the need for a major reform of disability services in Australia—I think it was widely recognised we needed that reform—the Labor government requested the Productivity Commission to carry out a public inquiry into the care and support of people with disabilities. The commission found that the disability support system was underfunded, unfair, fragmented and inefficient, and that people with disabilities had very little choice and absolutely no certainty of access to appropriate support. The stresses on the system were growing. Also growing were the costs for governments at every level with an increasingly ad hoc system. The Productivity Commission received over a thousand submissions from people with disabilities and other stakeholders in the disability sector.

It was decided that what was needed was a disability care and support scheme that would determine services designed to meet the long-term needs of people with disabilities, their families and carers. The inquiry looked at the feasibility of such a scheme, the costs and benefits, as well as how the scheme could work with the sectors of health, aged care, informal care, income support and injury insurance. It included how the scheme should be introduced and the oversight of it, along with the protections and safeguards that would need to be a part of it.

The then Prime Minister released the Productivity Commission's report in August 2011. In March 2013, the NDIS legislation was passed—a very proud day—and the NDIS Act 2013 was created, along with the NDIS and the National Disability Insurance Agency. Regional offices were established, and each of the first-year launch sites was put in place to manage implementation on the ground. We have heard a lot of feedback from those launch sites on how important this scheme is to Australians.

Labor will keep fighting to protect the NDIS that we created, and we will certainly defend it, particularly from the attacks we are seeing. The NDIS should not have to suffer because of the political game playing that we are seeing at the moment from the government. This is too important for our country and too important for the future of those people with a disability and their families to have it be part of some political game that the government wants to play.

Labor created the NDIS, we designed the NDIS and we fully funded it. We have made that very clear on many occasions and let's make it extremely clear again tonight. As a result of those initiatives, thousands of people across the country continue to have their lives transformed. In my electorate of Richmond I have spoken to many people who are eagerly awaiting the rollout of the scheme in our area in July. I have heard lots of positive feedback from other people around the country about what a difference it makes to them and how it will really empower them and change their lives. There may have been some small teething problems and changes as we moved to a new system, but I think overall there is strong community support for this scheme. I hear it all the time, not just from individuals and families but from community organisations and larger organisations who are all very keen to work together to get this great outcome.

I will continue to fight to ensure that those in our community receive the full support that is afforded to them under the National Disability Insurance Scheme. People in my community and throughout the country should not have to worry about the future of the scheme. I cannot underestimate the level of distress that has been caused this week with the government holding the NDIS to ransom and with the language they have used and the upset they have caused. The fact is, people with disabilities, their families, their carers and their communities know that Labor has their best interests at heart. They know that Labor has fought for, designed and funded the NDIS. We continue to do that in this House, we will continue to do that in the community and we will continue to stand up for those people who need us. We have always fought to protect them and we always will, because we understand the importance of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to speak today. I know much has been said about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill 2016, but for me this is personal. In my working life there have been very few major dramatic social advances. Medibank, now Medicare, was one. Most change, however, has been incremental, usually barely noticeable but sometimes bitterly fought. The most dramatic change in social policy since Medicare has had bipartisan support—I thought. It was fully funded by the Labor Party and has dramatically changed the lives of many of the families I have cared for over my many years working as a paediatrician. For many children with disabilities that I have seen, the NDIS has been truly dramatic.

Almost universally, parents of children with disabilities worry about what will happen to their children as they themselves age and also how they can afford the ongoing costs in caring for someone who cannot ever support themselves or will need help to support themselves. Some felt forever chained to the role of supporting parent, never able to let go, even in very old age. I have seen parents in their 80s still wondering what will happen to their child with a severe disability. Many of the children I have seen can never feed or toilet themselves. Many had intractable seizures, severe cerebral palsy, visual impairment, hearing loss and multiple congenital abnormalities. They are human beings nevertheless and deserve to be treated with dignity, care and compassion. They have as much right to share in the wealth of this country as I do. The Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party gave bipartisan support to the NDIS. The NDIS gives these people support, where in the past they got none or very little. It gives them and their families certainty to plan their futures in the knowledge that we will all share in supporting their burden, that we will act as an inclusive society and, using the government's own language, we will all lift together.

Of itself, this bill represents a very small cog within the grand design that is the National Disability Insurance Scheme. NDIS trials were completed in 2016, and there are now over 30,000 people participating. That number will ramp up very rapidly over the next three financial years, and the current estimates are that the annual cost of the scheme will hit $22 billion by the financial year 2019-20. The costs were factored in with the NDIS, and there was unanimous parliamentary agreement. Labor has consistently argued for full NDIS funding, and we will continue to work with the government to ensure this comes to fruition.

The bill is planned to create a special account within the Commonwealth Consolidated Revenue Fund, required under the Constitution as the repository of all federal government moneys. The Treasurer, never one to undersell even the most unremarkable of this government's limited achievements, has lauded this proposal as a 'locked box', trying to safeguard the NDIS from the depredations of future governments. This has caused unending distress amongst people who are eligible for the NDIS and their families. Notwithstanding the Treasurer's and various ministers' confected anger about the NDIS funding arrangements, they are all aware that there are no 'locked boxes' in the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

As the journalist and ex-Treasury officer Peter Martin wrote only a few days ago, the locked-box analogy is not well made. The Constitution makes the Consolidated Revenue Fund a single fund which may include special accounts, but neither the Consolidated Revenue Fund nor the accounts within it can ever be seen as a locked box. That is the case whether the special account is created by legislation or administratively, as many special accounts are. This one could have been created administratively too, if that was what the government really wanted—and you wonder why it was not. It seems that the government cannot explain this properly either. Neither the minister's second reading speech nor the explanatory memorandum have assisted debate today on why the legislative path was selected.

It is at this point that the government needs to be called out. What the government is doing is using the NDIS and people with disabilities as a pawn in its political game-playing. I remain totally mystified, as do others, by the minister's claim that money moved from any proposed special account to the CRF is somehow lost to the NDIS. That is like saying that money in a bank is lost to its customers if it is moved from one vault to another—totally mystifying.

None of these arcane accounting niceties would amount to much if it were not for the fact that the Turnbull government seems to have allied this partitioning-off approach to sourcing money to fund the NDIS. The government's line—it is a bit ambitious, I think, to call it its thinking—seems to be that, apart from the funds raised from Labor's increase to the Medicare levy and the contributions from the states and territories, the only way you can add to the fund is by drawing off moneys earmarked for other forms of social and welfare spending. It is also ramping up its rhetoric by somehow trying to link the NDIS funding to its so-called omnibus bill.

Overall, I strongly believe this is a shameful attempt to link cuts to supports for some other very vulnerable people to the NDIS funding. This, I reiterate, is causing unbelievable distress to people and families with disabilities. This is an attempt to politicise something that has previously had bipartisan support. I think this reflects that, for the Liberal Party, anyone who requires support or deals with Centrelink or the NDIS is seen as a liability and has to be compartmentalised, isolated and not seen to be as worthy as other people.

This bill, as does the omnibus bill, sends a very bad message. The NDIS had bipartisan support. For example, the member for Warringah, in particular, was a strong advocate for the NDIS. Funding was agreed upon. It comes as something of a shock to see this government, for no particularly good reason, trying to segregate it. People with disabilities need to know that they are valuable members of our country, they are supported and they have as much right to the resources of this country as any other Australian.

I want the Treasurer to stop his insincere rantings full of renal output and flatulence—that is piss and wind, to the uninitiated. It is just not right. It is insulting and it sends a very poor message. It is all the more pity then that the government has again sought to use this arguably unnecessary bill as a device to revive its spurious and unsubstantiated claim that the Labor Party failed to fund the scheme that we first legislated for what is heading up to four years ago. The government has been making this claim since it entered full election mode in late 2015 but without trying to substantiate it. When given the opportunity to do so by way of a Senate inquiry when this bill was last before the parliament, in May, it singularly failed to take up Labor's challenge.

The government has made varying claims about the alleged size of the shortfall but never explains what it is down to, never explains what it is talking about and what the differences are. It will not even say if it arises from reasons such as previously unidentified demand for the NDIS now revealed through the trial and pilot programs the intergovernmental agreement established for that very purpose—of getting a better handle on costs. Nor does the government say if the alleged shortfall arises from a revenue gap related to the fact that the increased Medicare levy has not been as high as expected, because of fairly static incomes. If it is the latter, the government must take responsibility, as lower-than-budgeted tax receipts are due to the uninspiring levels of economic activity under this government, and it must take responsibility. That is something both Treasury and the RBA have pointed out, but the government's eloquent silence on this leaves us all guessing. As the member for Jagajaga, the Hon. Jenny Macklin, has made clear, the 2013-14 budget provided full funding for the NDIS for the first 10 years—that is seven years on top of the normal forward estimates horizon. The sources of that funding are well-known. They were not somehow spirited away like Shakespeare's princes in the tower during the last days of the Rudd government—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member is interrupted. He will have leave to conclude his remarks when the debate resumes.