Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to stand to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Savings Fund Special Account Bill 2016. Firstly, I come to this debate with a little bit of a vested interest. I have discussed this in other debates on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I am not going to go over those issues again, but there is no-one in this House who wants more than me to see the National Disability Insurance Scheme fully funded and operational to give our kids, our teenagers and all people in our society who are afflicted with disability a better go. It is not only for those people but for their carers as well. I see the mental strain on carers of people with disabilities as one of the most difficult issues that we need to tackle in our society.

I was hoping that I could come into this chamber and that we could have this debate above politics. Unfortunately, we have seen the contributions from the Labor members—the member for Jagajaga and the member for Bendigo—dragging this debate down into a partisan political debate, which is very disappointing.

It may come as a surprise to the member for Bendigo, who gave a wonderful speech about how the NDIS was fully funded and how Labor, as the previous government, increased the Medicare levy by half a per cent. I do not think the member for Bendigo understood the finances of this. We know that when this is fully rolled out we will be giving extra care to 460,000 Australians under this scheme. The estimated cost is $22 billion. That is not a one-off hit; it is $22 billion every year. But the half a per cent increase in the Medicare levy that the member for Bendigo said this was going to be funded by raises only $3.3 billion. Only around 15 per cent is raised by the Medicare levy. This is just typical of what we see from the Labor Party. They come in here and try to lecture the coalition on finances and budgets and claiming that the Medicare levy funds the NDIS when we know it funds only 15 per cent.

We have seen more of that today and we saw it yesterday. We have seen the Gonski reforms that they were going to fund. That was all going to be funded by increases in the tobacco tax—that is what they said. We found out late yesterday that they have made a $19½ billion mistake. Do you know what they call it, Mr Deputy Speaker? 'A rounding error.' These are the people who want to come in here and give lecture the coalition government about how to fund this most important reform.

We have seen it before. Four years ago a Labor Treasurer sat in that seat. He stood up on budget night and he said:

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement … of our policies.

He went on:

This budget delivers a surplus this coming year, on time … after that, strengthening over time.

…   …   …

The surplus years are here.

That is what they said. Now they come in here and have the hide to lecture us when it comes to the accounting of this scheme.

Let's go through some of the numbers to get to that $22 billion. There is existing disability funding which will be redirected to the NDIS, which is estimated at about $1.1 billion. On top of that, there will be a redirection of funding which is currently provided to the states for specialist disability services, and that is another $1.9 billion. That takes us to $3 billion. On top of that, we have the Medicare levy of $3.3 billion, so that takes us to $6 billion. We need $22 billion. Even assuming that the states come up with half of that, the Commonwealth needs another $5 billion worth of funding.

There are only a few ways that money can be raised. Contrary to what members that sit on the other side think, Mr Deputy Speaker, you cannot just turn the printing presses on and print money out. We cannot continue to borrow money. We are going on 10 years of budget deficits. We cannot continue. It is completely unsustainable. Somebody who is on $80,000 will pay about $625 this financial year in interest on the debt—that is on the interest only. In fact, if we did not have the debt that was run up through the reckless and wasteful spending of the previous Labor government, which blew billions of dollars on pink batts, wasted billions on overpriced school halls, had to spend extra billions on their failed water protection policies and sent $900 cheques out to all and sundry, including those who were deceased and those who were living in New Zealand, if we had not had that reckless fiscal financial management the interest that we are now paying on the debt could fund the NDIS in full. But we have that debt to pay. And we know that next year someone on average male full-time earnings will pay from their taxes $700, just on the interest on that debt. It will be more next year and more the year after.

We cannot fund the NDIS from borrowed money. We must fund it in a sustainable way, and there is only one way to do that. That way is from the taxes of the hardworking people, the wealth creators, of this nation. Yet what we see put forward by members of the Labor Party are policies that attack those very wealth creators that we expect to raise the money and the wealth of this country to pay for the NDIS. We want to see and we need more investment. But what do we see the Labor Party proposing? It is proposing a 50 per cent increase in capital gains tax. How will it encourage investment and wealth creation to increase the tax on capital gains by 50 per cent? It is often wrongly said that when people pay their capital gains tax they get a discount of 50 per cent. That is not correct. The previous Howard and Costello government changed the arrangements for capital gains tax where you did not make an adjustment for inflation, because you do not make any capital gains if that is all eaten away by inflation. We changed that in the previous Howard and Costello government. But increasing capital gains tax attacks the wealth creators.

We have seen also Labor's brilliant scheme to abolish negative gearing. It is an attack on investment and wealth creation also. It is not just housing on which they will abolish negative gearing; it is everything. Anyone who wants to start up a small business and take a risk—exactly what we want if we are to create wealth in this country—and suffers a loss would no longer be able to negatively gear that against wages and salaries. Yet if you are a wealthy investor and you have money from other investment income, you can negatively gear the losses from one business activity or one investment against your other investment income. So they are punishing the very middle class of this country who want to strive and create more wealth.

We saw Labor's attack on the middle class and the workers and the wealth creators with its Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. What an outrageous scheme, to place those people who are not in a union at a competitive disadvantage to price them out of the market. What an outrage. We know that Labor plans to bring it back. If Labor gets back into office it is going to bring back the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, and the 30,000 truckies that are on our roads today are operating in fear that they will be sent to bankruptcy if this mob come to office.

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