House debates
Monday, 18 February 2019
Questions without Notice
Disability Services
2:21 pm
Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My question is to the Prime Minister. Which government minister directed government senators to vote against a disability royal commission in the Senate last Thursday? Given the Prime Minister desperately wants people to believe he never opposed this royal commission, why did he allow one of his ministers to direct government senators to vote against it?
2:22 pm
Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The shadow minister makes a whole range of assumptions in her question which I'm not going to speculate upon. I'm so used to the member for Sydney coming to the dispatch box and making a whole bunch of assertions. What our ministers are doing is getting on with establishing the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That's what they're doing. And what I have done as Prime Minister is I had a number of immediate priorities. We had to finish one royal commission, which I initiated as Treasurer—
Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It was the government that initiated the royal commission into the banking and finance industry, and it is the government that I lead that is acting on all 76 recommendations.
The other priority was to establish the royal commission into the aged-care sector, which we have done and which is now underway. They were my priorities. That's what we've got on with. I will continue to address the issues facing Australians with disabilities. That's what I'll continue to focus on, and that's what the government will do. I'll tell you one thing we won't do: we won't engage in this rank partisanship we're seeing from the opposition. They're simply trying to use people with disabilities for their own political purposes.