Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Fifield today relating to a National Disability Insurance Scheme.

For me, this was a particularly disappointing question time. As you know, Mr Deputy President, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is something that I have championed and something that this side of the chamber is extremely supportive of. We have entered a strange period when a question seeking factual information in relation to the NDIS cannot be asked without getting a partisan barrage in return. This is extremely disappointing because most senators would have hoped that the issue of the National Disability Insurance Scheme is one that could have been elevated beyond partisan politics. In fact, to that end, I have previously submitted a motion to the Senate seeking to establish a joint parliamentary committee, to be chaired by both sides of politics, to oversee the implementation of the NDIS. The purpose of that joint parliamentary committee would be to have an oversight mechanism that would span several parliaments, because the implementation of a full NDIS would indeed span several parliaments. It would be a forum where questions in relation to design, eligibility and funding of the NDIS could be asked, and could be asked in a way and in a forum that was not seen to be partisan.

That is one of the problems at the moment. Any time a factual, straightforward question seeking information is asked, whether it be in this chamber or in Senate estimates, all that comes back is the accusation that the opposition is being partisan. We get the accusation that the opposition is being petty, the accusation that the opposition is seeking to treat the NDIS as a political issue—and nothing could be further from the truth.

Australians with disability and their families and the organisations that support them and advocate for them have many questions in relation to the NDIS. They expect those questions to be put in the Australian parliament and I am putting those questions on behalf of them. The question which they ask time and again is: how does the government reconcile the funding profile outlined in the Productivity Commission's landmark report? How do they reconcile that with the $1 billion in the last budget, which is a quarter of what the Productivity Commission said was necessary to establish the first phase of the NDIS? The budget is also silent about funding beyond the launch sites, silent about how the NDIS will be given effect through to 2018-19 and beyond.

This is a reasonable question to ask. In asking it, I should make clear that the opposition fully and warmly supports the $1 billion in the last budget. We fully and warmly support the five launch sites which have been announced. We hope that they are a success. We want the NDIS to be a success and we want it to happen. What we do not want to see are launch sites that are stranded because of lack of funding. What we do not want to see are hopes raised only to have them not fulfilled because of a lack of provision in the budget.

It is my earnest hope that full provision is made by the current government for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That is what my questions were directed to. We know that that funding was not there, the full funding of it in the budget. We know it was not there in the MYEFO. My question to the minister was quite genuine. It was: at the time when Minister Macklin introduces into the parliament the legislation to give effect to the national disability insurance transition agency, will the minister announce the full funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme? It would make sense that when you are introducing legislation to give effect to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, at the same time there would be a commitment and certainty about funding. That has not yet been outlined. I would expect and hope, and I call on the government to provide funding certainty at the time that that legislation is introduced into the parliament.

Australians with a disability and their families are looking for that funding certainty. The opposition want to see that funding certainty, and we hope that our hand at bipartisanship is not rejected again. (Time expired)

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must say, for Senator Fifield to stand up and say that he has continually supported a national disability insurance scheme is a bit rich. Senator Fifield was in the office of former Treasurer Peter Costello. I am wondering what Senator Fifield did in those 11½ years when the coalition were in power. What did they do to establish, or even discuss or debate, a national disability scheme? We know the answer to that, because it is on the public record: they did absolutely nothing. It is another absolute joke to come here after a Labor government said that we will take on the task of ensuring that Australians with disabilities will be given fair treatment and a fair go in this country.

How could the Labor Party, the government, be confident of any bipartisan support from the most negative, the most destructive opposition that this country has ever seen? The negativity is there on every issue. Whether it is the National Broadband Network, whether it is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, whether it is about looking after workers' rights in this country, the coalition are negative. To stand up here, as Senator Fifield has, and talk about working cooperatively just defies the reality of the coalition.

But what this Labor government has done is to say to people with disability that we have a national plan, a national strategy and a care and conviction for Australians with disabilities and their families. We have said that we will get on with the job. We will not come here trying to score negative, petty political points. We have put our money where our mouth is. We have put up $1 billion to start trialling the scheme, a scheme that was never even on the horizon under the Howard government. I never heard, during my time watching the Howard government, any concern for people with disability. I never heard any vision for a plan or a strategy for Australians who suffer disability.

Who was it that brought this to the national agenda? It was Labor. It was Mr Bill Shorten from the other place, as a parliamentary secretary, who put it on the national agenda. I never heard a word out of the coalition about that issue until Labor placed the issue of the problems and the needs of people with disability on the national agenda. To come here and say that there should be some consensus committee put together, an oversight committee, is hypocrisy of the highest order. I have seen the coalition in action on oversight committees. I have seen the shadow minister for communications, Malcolm Turnbull, and I have seen Senator Birmingham in action on the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network. It is negativity and it is petty political pointscoring.

We want to get on with the job of looking after people with disability. We want to get on with the plan and the strategy. We are sick and tired of the hypocrisy that exudes out of the coalition while we are getting on with the job. (Time expired)

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I understand Senator Cameron's argument correctly, he is saying that the questions being asked by the coalition about the funding of the National Disability Insurance Scheme—the same questions which are being asked by families and carers of people with disabilities the length and breadth of Australia—cannot be asked because the coalition did not do enough for disabilities when it was in government—

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It did nothing! A big, fat zero!

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not true, Senator Cameron. You were not here; you do not know. It is too negative these days so you cannot raise these issues. I say to Senator Cameron that the place of members and senators in the national parliament is to raise issues of national concern. I know, because I have seen these concerns expressed and I have heard these people raise these concerns, that it is absolutely appropriate to ask a question in the Australian Senate about when the government intends to put flesh on the bare bones of a promise to deliver a National Disability Insurance Scheme. The government has made promises and put a small amount of money forward, much less than the Productivity Commission—which, despite what Senator Cameron says, is the real originator of this plan, not the government. The Productivity Commission has asked that a certain amount of money be put forward. It said there ought to be $3.9 billion on the table and the government—

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We commissioned it!'

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay, Senator McEwen, you deserve credit for commissioning it. But, having asked the question, the Productivity Commission has put forward the plan—not the government, per se; the commission has done it. And when it did so all of the parties in the federal parliament said: 'Yes, we recognise a good idea. We put our hands up to that happening.' We all did. It is not Labor's NDIS. It is an NDIS which ought to be welcomed and accepted as a national plan, as part of a national agenda. It is unfortunate in the extreme that the Labor Party has chosen to say: 'We're the ones committed to this. We're going to make it happen,' when, in fact, the evidence is not there.

I said that this was the concern not just of the coalition but also of others. I note that the ABC reported only a short while ago that Kate Larsen from Arts Access Australia raised concerns about the fact that in the MYEFO of a week or so ago there was nothing to clarify how this is going to be paid for. She said:

… for it not to be included in those projections, it is a huge blow.

Those are not our words; those are the words of those advocating for people with disabilities. Disability advocate Stella Young was reported on the ABC as saying:

There's a little bit of a feeling that people with disabilities in our families are again sort of being used as a political football.

And you know, rolling it out a year early, great, but rolling it out a year earlier without a solid plan for how we're going to fund it is not OK, it's too precarious and too scary.

This is what the people in the community who are dealing with these issues, who are caring for people with disabilities and who are advocating for them, are saying. That is the issue the coalition is putting on the table today.

If the government is serious about this it ought to be prepared to say how it is going to fund it. It is introducing legislation to bring forward this national scheme but as yet the details are not there. With great respect to the government, it has form in the past of this practice of making big announcements and not carrying them through financially. I am thinking of the dental scheme announced by the Labor government in the early nineties—a fantastic scheme to pay for dentistry. It ran for three years and then ran out of money. There was no money in the forward estimates—the money went. The other is the National Museum of Australia, which the government announced with a great fanfare, saying it was a fantastic idea, in the very beginning of the Hawke-Keating government. But when it left office in 1996 nothing had happened.

That is the kind of form we are facing on these matters. Unfortunately, in comparison with those other programs, this affects the daily lives of Australians living with disabilities. They are anxious about getting involved in these trials around the country, particularly in the ACT, where it is most extensive. They are concerned about whether they will be stranded when the money does not appear at the end of the trials. These are fair concerns, and if the minister finds it beneath her dignity to answer questions about those matters, to tell people out there who are wanting to know what their future will be, that is a very sorry day for the parliament.

Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Federation occurred in this country in 1901. Since that time we have been through enormous change—world wars, great depressions, huge migrant intake—large changes to the fabric of this country. But it is fair to say that since Federation there has been one group of Australians who have been disadvantaged by comparison for that entire period. In that time other groups have used leverage, negotiation and bargaining power to improve their physical or their material lot. One group of Australians was not so fortunate, and we know who we are talking about: those with disability, whether by birth, genetics, affliction, time, age or the sheer vicissitudes of life.

That neglect has occurred from 1901 to the early part of this century under successive governments for reasons that do not need to be gone into. But in recent times our government has chosen to make the issue of persons suffering from disabilities, and families who have looked after those with disabilities, a priority. In doing so we did not determine it on the basis of what we the government or we the advisers to the government thought was best, appropriate or achievable. We chose at the outset to make this an issue, to make it serious and to have that once-in-a-century reform that was going to permanently advantage those people who were suffering some or many forms of disablement. So we sent off a reference to the Productivity Commission to devise a scheme that could be implemented over time, with bells and whistles but, importantly, with funding and with efficiency constraints built in so that it would not fall over after two years, four years or six years because the government of the day no longer regarded it as a priority. The Productivity Commission reported back to the government and the government accepted the thrust of its recommendations, accepted the model that was recommended, in an objective fashion, and set about achieving that. But we are not fools in this government; we know that reform that takes a century to achieve, that has to last 50 or 80 years, needs to be done properly. We knew it would take time, that it would take five, eight or 10 years to build, and funding would have to be achieved over that sort of time, so we set about doing it in stages. We set out with a plan and we allocated, in the first round, over a billion dollars.

At no stage have the opposition or the minority parties been denied access to government ministers. At no time has their correspondence been returned unopened. We have invited them to participate, to share their ideas, to share their vision. But more than that, every day of the week when we meet in this parliament, we have committees that examine expenditure, that go through proposals from government line by line to allocate funds to build policy, to create institutions, to hire persons to carry out jobs. The opposition has never been restricted from participating in any of those activities. In fact and in practice, there is a de facto, bipartisan, modelled approach to the building of a disability regime in this country. The opposition has an important role, and it is to question what this government is doing—in public, in the open, with Hansard and with reporters and filming. If we make mistakes we will respond to those.

What have we done so far? We have negotiated with the opposition. We have negotiated with all of the states. We have allocated a billion dollars of funding. We are going through models and trials in three or four different parts of Australia to see what works effectively and what does not, so that it can be spread. In May of next year, the government has publicly committed to bring down more detail, to allocate a significant amount of additional funds to the ongoing implementation of disability reform in this country. (Time expired)

Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers given this afternoon by Senator Wong with respect to questions asked by Senator Fifield. I would like to reflect on the very measured tone of my colleague Senator Fifield, who talked about his disappointment at the response that he received to quite legitimate questioning about how the National Disability Insurance Scheme would be funded. Instead we had a partisan barrage. I think we are all agreed that this issue needs to be elevated above party politics in the interests of all Australians but most particularly in the interests of those with a disability.

My Western Australian Labor colleague, Senator Bishop, made some interesting remarks about Federation. He pointed to the fact that there is one group of Australians who have been disadvantaged for the entire time of our Federation, and that is Australians with disabilities. I would like to add my concern, as a West Australian senator, that that disadvantage could be amplified under a national disability insurance scheme for West Australians who suffer a disability.

I would like to reflect on some of the attitudes of the West Australian government which, I think it is fair to say, are not necessarily aligned to those of the current federal government. The West Australian government's disability service system has evolved through 25 years of bipartisan reform and funding growth. That system is recognised nationally and internationally for its focus on individualised funding, on developing local relationships and for the support provided to people through the network of local area coordinators. That fact was recognised in 2011 in the Disability care and support report of the Productivity Commission and it recommended quite specifically that these features of the West Australian system must be adopted nationally through the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I think that those words are quite important for us to reflect on, particularly for those senators like myself and, might I add, Senator Bishop, who represent Western Australia.

The issue is very significant and absolutely deserves to be raised above the level of partisan politics. I would just like to reiterate a word of warning about the development of the scheme as we progress to, hopefully, not only the delivery of the legislation to the parliament but also a very clear funding commitment from this federal government about what it will do to fund in its entirety a national disability insurance scheme. That word of warning comes from the West Australian government. The West Australian government also considers that the National Disability Insurance Scheme should build on the existing disability system in Western Australia, including local area coordinators, individualised funding and a strong disability services sector. These elements will continue to ensure that people with disability currently accessing services and supports will be provided with an equal if not better level of care.

The Commonwealth government's proposal that a new national agency take over responsibility for the system risks disrupting the services and supports that people receive by reducing flexibility to their local needs, changing the way the service providers are funded and undermining established relationships. These are important and critical issues that I look forward to reflecting on and representing the views not just of the West Australian government but of West Australians with disability services when that legislation comes to the Senate. I think it is worth adding—and reflecting on the fact—that the coalition was and is committed to a bipartisan approach to the delivery of better disability services for all Australians. It is disappointing given the coalition's proposition that a joint committee of this parliament should oversee the development and the implementation of this once-in-a-century opportunity. We need to exercise great caution at the moment that these expectations are not being unfairly raised and that this does not perpetuate itself as a cruel hoax on people with disabilities in our country. It is my great hope that this once-in-a-lifetime reform will deliver for West Australians with disabilities a better funding arrangement and better opportunities for a greater quality of life than they currently receive. Let me repeat that: I am hoping that the National Disability Insurance Scheme will deliver for West Australians with disabilities a better standard of care services than they currently receive. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.