Sex toys, taxidermy and Pauline Hanson: Inside Shorten’s rogue campaign

An insurgent campaign by Bill Shorten to repair the National Disability Insurance Scheme has featured Pauline Hanson in a federal minister’s office and the second-ever reference to sex toys in the House of Representatives.

A two-month delay to new laws governing the NDIS stands to cost taxpayers at least $1 billion, with Shorten using his electoral experience to target the Coalition with methods more commonly deployed by an opposition trying to hammer a government.

Bill Shorten with the driving billboard that’s being used to campaign against the Coalition and Greens.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

And it’s a campaign gaining interest from fellow Labor ministers who see it as an alternative way to push back against Peter Dutton and the Greens while achieving their legislative aims.

As MPs and senators left Canberra airport on Thursday night, they caught sight of a truck emblazoned with “Save the NDIS: Put participants first, senators”. It also featured images of Greens leader Adam Bandt, one of his senators, Jordon Steele-John, and Liberal upper house members Linda Reynolds and Maria Kovacic.

The truck, which had driven laps around Parliament House in the morning, capped off Shorten’s week-long effort to get the Senate to consider and pass his bill to overhaul key parts of the NDIS.

The upper house’s community affairs committee earlier this year spent three months examining Shorten’s proposals, which aim to restrict expenditure within the NDIS in areas of questionable merit or for the automatic top-up of support packages.

But in June, thanks to Coalition and Greens senators, another inquiry into the same proposals by the same committee was set up and is not due to report until early next month.

On Monday, he received a formal confirmation note from NDIS actuary David Gifford, noting that by pushing back the new laws until at least August, the cost of the scheme would be $1.06 billion.

Shorten has used that $1 billion cost blowout to target both the Coalition and Greens with methods normally used by an opposition during an election campaign.

That included bringing Hanson, who once declared she did not trust Shorten, to do a joint press conference in his office to press the Senate to pass the NDIS reforms.

“Changes (are) needed to be done and it needs to be cleaned up. And that’s why I’m here talking today and I’m supporting Mr Shorten on this legislation that’s been put forward,” Hanson declared.

Bringing Hanson into the parliament’s ministerial wing was one thing. In the house, Shorten went even harder, explaining the type of services and goods his proposals would stop being funded under the NDIS.

“At the moment, we want to rule out the payment of strata fees; fines; steam rooms; gambling; legal cannabis; cruises; trips to Japan; non-assistance animals; taxidermy; weddings; gift cards; the Liberal favourite, sex toys; crystal therapy; cuddle therapy; clairvoyance and tarot (readings),” he told the parliament.

It was the second time since parliament sat in 1901 that sex toys have been referenced in the House of Representatives. Crystal therapy and taxidermy also debuted because of Shorten’s commentary.

An unusual pairing … Pauline Hanson with Bill Shorten in his ministerial office.Credit: James Brickwood

Apart from listing the types of services that have been funded under the NDIS, Shorten has set up a website (www.outoftouchwithcostofliving.com) that gives a running tally of the cost of delaying reforms to the service. That website will run until at least the Senate committee reports.

He has also hit the phones of people outside the parliament who hold sway within the Liberal Party, to effectively embarrass their elected representatives into changing tack.

Shorten’s main message is about the cost of a program that threatens to overwhelm the budget.

The NDIS is expected to cost taxpayers $48 billion this financial year, the budget’s third-largest expense behind GST grants to the states and the age pension. Shorten’s measures are aimed at bringing down the annual increase in the cost of the scheme from around 14 per cent to 8 per cent.

If that rate of growth is not reduced, or savings are delayed, there is a substantial future hit to the budget.

The Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated if the cost of the NDIS grows at 9 per cent, rather than 8 per cent, the scheme will cost an extra $19 billion annually by 2034-35.

Shorten says if it continues to grow at 14 per cent, the cumulative total hit to the budget over the next decade will be around $250 billion.

He argues bringing the NDIS under control not only helps the budget, but is a form of micro-economic reform that will deliver benefits to taxpayers, recipients and the broader community.

If he is successful, it also means he has shown parts of the Cabinet that there are different ways to publicly push the government’s agenda.

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