Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the minister—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Mr Khalil interjecting—

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

The member for Chisholm will resume her seat for a second. Members on my left! The member for Wills can stop acting like a clown, to be frank.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence, could I also—

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

Hang on, I have not called you yet. I am going to allow the member for Hindmarsh, but I will do that at the end of the question. It will allow you to refine it a bit more. The member for Chisholm has a question.

Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister update the House on the government's commitment to ensuring a fully funded National Disability Insurance Scheme with appropriate safeguards to ensure that participants receive quality services? Are there any alternative approaches?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question. As she is aware, today is actually a very significant day for upholding the rights of Australians with disability to high standards of care with the introduction of a bill which will create the National Disability Insurance Agency Quality and Safeguards Commission.

We will soon have an independent Commonwealth commission with $209 million worth of funding and 300 staff to uphold the standards participants deserve and to ensure clarity on the rights and responsibilities of participants, providers and their staff. The commission will have very significant powers in registration, complaints handling and compliance, including deregistration powers, banning orders, civil penalties, injunctions and powers of entry, search and seizure.

I am asked about alternative policies by the member for Chisholm. Of course, the Labor policy is to refuse to fully fund the NDIS through a 0.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy and so refuse to give certainty to all the families who will use the NDIS or who may need the NDIS. The voices past and present who support this levy as a very fair way to fully fund the NDIS grow every single day. Today we can add to that growing list the member for Jagajaga. This is what the member for Jagajaga said directly to the then Leader of the Opposition in 2013, very simply and very clearly: 'Do the right thing by people with disability, support the increase in the Medicare levy.'

I ask those opposite: how is it that you can oppose a funding policy as unfair when you also so vigorously support the exact same funding measure? How is it possible to both support and oppose the same policy? Some have called it hypocrisy, but it has actually gone to the next level. It is now what Orwell called doublethink—the truly remarkable ability to simultaneously hold two completely opposite concepts in your mind and convince yourself that both are equally true. Doublethink is how you think that war is peace and that ignorance is strength. Doublethink is the only way you can believe that $18.6 billion more spending on schools is actually less spending on schools. Doublethink is the only way you can believe that the Medicare levy is at once a completely fair way to fund the NDIS and also a completely unfair way to fund the NDIS. In fact, the terribly irony under this Leader of the Opposition is that doublethink is the only consistent policy position that Labor has. So we say to the member for Jagajaga: drop the doublethink and just do the right thing by people with a disability. (Time expired)