Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline to the House the importance of providing certainty for Australians with disability as well as their families, their friends and their carers by fully funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme? Treasurer, are you aware of any alternative approaches?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for his question and his keen interest in supporting the families of those who are living with disabilities and their carers. There is a $55.7 billion funding gap for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and in this budget we announced how we would fill that funding gap by increasing the Medicare levy by half a per cent two years from now when the extra bills come in.

It was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard who, when it came to increasing the Medicare levy, said, 'The fundamental principle of the Medicare levy is we all put in and we all take out.' That is a principle that every single leader of the Labor Party has respected, both in government and in opposition, since Bob Hawke first introduced the Medicare levy in 1984, up until now. Now we have a Leader of the Opposition who has abandoned this principle like he has abandoned so many other principles in this place. He has abandoned that principle, as we know, while many in his own shadow cabinet think that principle should continue to be honoured.

Just a day after the French election, the Leader of the Opposition was asked about the election results, and he said that the lesson is that, when mainstream right-wing parties work with mainstream left-wing parties to block out the extremists, we do better, and that is the take-out of this for Australian politics. It seems that the lesson that the Leader of the Opposition was seeking to convey did not last a week in his own mind, because in his budget reply he chose not to reset from the divisive politics he has pursued as the Leader of the Opposition but to continue to engage in conflict and wrecking in this parliament and to not be a worker in this parliament. The Australian people want this parliament to work together, but the Leader of the Opposition wants to continue to be a wrecker, and that is the approach he has adopted with this budget.

The budget was a reset for the government in that it said that we want to work in the middle to guarantee the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to guarantee Medicare, to guarantee funding for schools and to guarantee support for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and all of these important services, including affordable housing. But the Leader of the Opposition has chosen not to. Perhaps there are others in the opposition who think they are better able to work in the middle with the government and get things done. I know that Australians living with a disability support the measures put forward by this government and they are very disappointed in the Labor Party, which was the initiator of the NDIS, because they are not seeing that Labor Party in this Leader of the Opposition.