David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I will bring myself to the question before us: the Liberal Party's commitment to the NDIS. It was only a very short time ago that the shadow Treasurer, the thinking man's Clive Palmer, was giving a speech in London. To impress his Conservative friends, safely, so he believed, beyond the realm of political scrutiny, he gave a hairy-chested speech about ending the culture of entitlement. To be fair to Senator Fifield, he has not come into this place talking about ending the culture of entitlement. He has instead come here and talked about setting up a committee. His are the tactics of delay and dissimulation. At least he has not had the viciousness of Hockey.

This boils down to the fact the Labor Party and the Labor government have managed a budget that has not only come back into surplus but, amongst its many reforms and achievements, has delivered action on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This of course is a mighty achievement. It is a mighty achievement and it is understood to be such by all of those in the sector. Of course, confronted with this mighty achievement, the opposition have constructed not a response but a fig leaf, a stratagem—and their stratagem is to have a committee, chairs, co-chairs and presidents and vice-presidents and convenors and co-convenors, and this grand group, spanning Mitch's timeline of hundreds of years—