Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister update the House on action the government is taking to guarantee and fund the vital services that Australians rely on such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme? Is the Prime Minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Robertson for her question. As the honourable member knows, the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a great national enterprise introduced under a Labor government with the full support of the coalition—truly a bipartisan achievement.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's bipartisanship.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is real bipartisanship. That is a commitment to supporting it. When the Labor Party called on the opposition—the coalition in those days—to support a half a per cent increase in the Medicare levy to pay for the NDIS, we supported it. We gave them that support. But Labor did not fund the NDIS. They left a $55 billion hole in the NDIS. Their recklessness, their financial negligence, mocks the empathy they claim to have—they are dripping with sanctimony and empathy, but there were no resources to put behind the NDIS. We are delivering on that. We are taking the tough decisions. We have sought savings elsewhere in the budget but we have not been able to get them through the Senate. We are taking the tough decision to raise the Medicare levy by another half a per cent to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I was delighted today, with the Treasurer, the Minister for Social Services and the assistant minister for disabilities, to meet with stalwart advocates for people with disabilities—John Della Bosca from Every Australian Counts, Ara Cresswell from Carers Australia, Katherine McLellan from National Disability Services and Kirsten Deane from the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations. They have come to Canberra to ask the Labor Party and the crossbenches to support the Medicare levy increase of half a per cent to fully fund the NDIS. There is a big poster there: 'A message to the Treasurer—fully fund the NDIS'. What is our answer? Yes. We are delivering on it. We are prepared to fund it. Labor is not.

How can they look into the eyes of mothers of children with disabilities? How can they do that? The Labor Party are filled with hypocrisy—all empathy, no resources; all empathy, no responsibility. We are funding the NDIS and Labor should support it. They know we are right. Three-quarters of the shadow cabinet know we are right. It is about time in Labor that the politics came to an end, and on this issue this new master of bipartisanship can give us a demonstration of supporting that great national project—backing in that great exercise, that national enterprise, of practical love, of solidarity, of commitment—with real money. (Time expired)