Fiona Scott (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister update the House on the work the government is doing to give young people in Greater Western Sydney access to the benefits of the National Disability Insurance Scheme?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. I am sure the member for Macquarie will be equally interested in the answer because, in more good news from both the Abbott government and the Baird government—these two governments together—we are bringing forward $23½ million in NDIS funding and services for Greater Western Sydney. This will ensure that 2,000 young people will be able to start accessing services from July—bringing that forward one year ahead of schedule—which is excellent news for the people of Western Sydney. It means that children and families will be able to begin receiving individual packages from September of this year, September 2015.

We know that this program, which enjoys bipartisan support, is already making a difference to 3½ thousand Australians in the Hunter—and to their families and their carers. Our decision, with the Baird government in New South Wales, to bring this forward is a further demonstration of the Abbott government's commitment to the NDIS. We know that it is not good enough just to support an idea; you have to be able to implement that idea. This government is doing the hard work of making the NDIS affordable so that we can absorb it into the budget. As we know, only 40 per cent of the NDIS at full implementation is funded by the levy. So room has to be made in the budget to ensure that we can absorb this very important program which everyone in this House supports.

It is also a further demonstration of the initiative of the Baird government in New South Wales and it is a further reason that the people of New South Wales should be supporting the Baird government this Saturday as they go to the polls right across New South Wales. This is an important election not just for the New South Wales economy—where New South Wales is now No. 1 again, as the Baird government and the O'Farrell government promised they would achieve in the course of one term—but also for the national economy.

What the Baird government has to confront at the moment is a campaign of dishonesty from the Labor Party of New South Wales—a shameless campaign, shown clearly by Martin Ferguson, an esteemed former member of this place and member of the Labor Party, who has called out the untruths of the Labor Party in New South Wales. We have the absurd position of the Labor Party in New South Wales running around saying, 'New South Wales is not for sale.' Well, they didn't tell Eddie Obeid that, did they? They didn't tell Ian Macdonald that New South Wales was not for sale

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They have got their mates on that side. They did not get that message to Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald. They thought it was theirs for sale. They thought they owned it personally and that they could appropriate it for their own benefit. So I am not surprised that, on Sunday, Mike Baird, in response to Labor saying that they have changed in New South Wales, made the very good comment: 'Yeah, right!'—no more changed than those opposite have changed their ways. The Leader of the Opposition's 'planet of ideas' is an absolute wasteland. We have sent the probe out, and there is no life on 'planet ideas'. (Time expired)