Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

You've got to make up your mind, mate! Come on! This is the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which has been paid for by Labor once, and now those opposite are pretending that all of these cuts to essential services and tax increases on ordinary Australians are about paying for the NDIS again. What? When you've spent this are you going to make people pay for it again, and maybe again after that? What a ridiculous proposition!

We know from the Productivity Commission that spending is tracking just as we expected for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. What's lagging, though, is the implementation. What we know from the most recent report is that the implementation is being botched by those opposite. We are hearing report after report from families who are stressed, who are describing the difficulties of interacting with a telephone planning service and with a computer system that doesn't work. It's not the costs that are the problem; it's the botched implementation. As they've done with the NBN, as they did with the census and as they did with NAPLAN online, it's botched implementation from those opposite.

The government has capped staffing at the NDIA, preventing people who should be able to access this service from accessing it. They've bungled the implementation of the IT system and clients are having enormous difficulties in accessing it. This means delays in the take-up of the scheme. There's the Nadia project, the virtual assistant that would be making a big difference to people ringing up or using their computer to get information from the NDIA. That's stalled, despite the government already spending $3.5 million on it. So let's be clear: this is not a funding problem for the NDIS; it is an implementation problem.

When we were in government, yes, we did put up the Medicare levy by half a per cent, but you can't put it up by half a per cent one year, and then put it up by half a per cent the next year and then put it up by half a per cent the following year. When does it stop? How often do you have to make people pay for this? We didn't just put up the Medicare levy; we also made some very difficult cuts, including some that were vociferously opposed by those opposite. I remember, because I was the health minister, how we means-tested the private health insurance rebate and had all of those on the other side saying that it was an outrage to means test private health insurance and that they were going to remove to means testing as soon as they were in government, as soon as they possibly could. I'll tell you what: it's still means-tested. I haven't heard a peep from those opposite about getting rid of means-testing private health insurance. In fact, what I have noticed recently is those opposite trying to further constrain spending in the area of private health insurance. They didn't try to do that when we were in government trying to deliver those savings. In fact, they opposed us at every step of the way. The tightening of eligibility for family tax benefit was not easy in the face of the opposition of those opposite. We made a range of savings because we didn't think it was fair that the NDIS should simply be funded by continually increasing the Medicare levy.

You know, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a magnificent project. This is something that Australia has to be proud of, must be proud of, should be proud of, should be telling the world about. People with disabilities have been advocating for many, many years for such a scheme, and I think it first really came to national prominence during the 2020 summit. Those opposite like to say, 'Whatever happened from the 2020 summit?' The NDIS is a pretty great example of something that hit the government agenda through the 2020 summit. It was picked up and—

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