Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

You cannot have a good social policy without good economic and budget policies, which is why we are working hard to repair the budget so that we can fund the NDIS. The Australian Labor Party continue to contend that they fully funded the scheme. Just to recap: it will be a $22 billion scheme, $10 billion will be from the states, $3 billion is Commonwealth money that would have been spent anyway in the absence of the NDIS and there is a further $9 billion of new Commonwealth investment. The previous government said: 'Oh, don't worry about that. The half per cent increase in the Medicare levy covers that.' Well, no, that only covers about 40 per cent of the Commonwealth's net additional costs. The other thing that those opposite will say is: 'We had a terrific graph in a paper when we were in government that outlines it.' I want to refer to that graph, which has a footnote that has '(a) selected long-term savings'. They did not specify what those long-term savings were, so there is $5 billion unfunded. (Time expired)