NDIS funding brawl ‘shameful’

Scott Morrison has accused Labor of cynical politics after the opposition criticised changes to NDIS funding.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: Getty Images

Labor MPs who accused the federal government of giving money to farmers “at the expense” of disabled people are the same parliamentarians who voted against the transfer of investment funds worth $7.8 billion to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Scott Morrison and disability advocates have lashed the “disingenuous” and “cynical” attacks of Labor after the Coalition announced it would convert the $3.9bn Building Australia Fund to a drought future fund after initially earmarking it for the NDIS.

The Australian can reveal a ­second fund, the $3.9bn Education Investment Fund, was also unable to be transferred to the NDIS ­because of Labor opposition.

The federal government has not ­decided what it will do with the money from the second fund, the EIF, but it now has a significant boost for pre-election commitments.

Labor senator Murray Watt, who joined parliament in 2016 before the federal government announced the BAF and EIF funds would be tipped into the NDIS, tweeted on Saturday: “I’m all for helping drought-stricken farmers, but why should it come at the expense of people with disabilities?”

The Prime Minister has blasted the opposition. “Labor’s shameful and hypocritical scaremongering on the NDIS cruelly creates needless anxiety among Australians living with disabilities and their families, while kicking Australian farmers when they are down,” Mr Morrison told The Australian.

“While Labor have been playing cynical politics, we’ve been ­focused on delivering our plan to grow the economy.

“That plan is why we can guarantee both the NDIS is fully funded and back our new Drought Future Fund.”

Former president of People with Disability Australia Craig Wallace said the state of affairs was a “mess of the major parties’ own making”.

“My personal view is that it is disappointing that five years out, we still don’t have a settled national approach to funding the NDIS, and political responsibility for that is shared,” Mr Wallace said.

“Things started to break down after the government announced it would raise the Medicare Levy to fund the rest of the NDIS. It would have been hypothecated. Done, finished, period.

“It was the sensible way to fund it. Labor started that, the government offered to complete it, Labor opposed it and then government took it off the table. It shouldn’t have either been opposed or taken off the table when it was.”

Including the proposed – and now dumped – rise in the Medicare Levy, Bill Shorten’s parliamentary team has now blocked or opposed $22bn worth of additional investment in the NDIS, enough to fund an entire year of the mammoth program at full rollout.

Labor’s social services spokeswoman Linda Burney tweeted at the weekend that the government “must give a guarantee they aren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul” but declined to answer questions about the party’s voting record.

“Labor set up the NDIS and fully funded it, we’ve always been consistent,” Ms Burney told The Australian.

She did not answer questions about why the party opposed the transfer of the BAF and the EIF ­accounts to the scheme.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the ­special savings ­account for the NDIS has also been dropped because it couldn’t get through the Senate. “As such, given the measures required to transfer funds into the NDIS Savings Fund Special Account have not been supported, the relevant special account has not been ­established nor has money been transferred to it,” he said.