COMMENT: Noel Murphy
The dying days of the Gillard Government saw one of Australia’s most cynical, self-serving political stunts played out.
It was a stunt that prayed on the weak and helpless, the most vulnerable in our community; a stunt which saw PM Gillard go all misty in Parliament as she exhorted Australia to a “united embrace of national responsibility and a great act of mutual care and solidarity”.
But while the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or DisabilityCare as it was briefly dubbed, was greeted as a long-overdue addition to the nation’s public healthy quotient, it was a work in progress at best.
It was a hastily-concocted piece of emotional political blackmail aimed not so much at resurrecting Labor’s election prospects as lumping the incoming Coalition with a massive multi-billion dollar millstone.
The Coalition, fully cognisant of the scope for an explosive emotional political response offered bipartisan support. It wanted the scheme, too, but then it is a political animal as well, with a highly-developed sense of smell.
But the Labor move was a political stunt as old as Methuselah. When you’re on the skids, make the job as tough as possible for the new government.
Therefore, when Abbott & Co are inevitably forced to curb NDIS spending, courtesy the many other debts left by Gillard and Rudd, Labor will howl from the rooftops with all the shrill self-righteousness it can muster about the terrible sins being visited on Australia’s most vulnerable.
With former Treasury secretary Ken Henry warning the scheme is not affordable, it’s little wonder Labor’s already talking about the NDIS’ Geelong operations being under a cloud. And the Coalition hates it, too.
But the Government already warning against blank cheques and trial cost blow-outs, the writing is on the wall – the NDIS is not about to be delivered in the fashion Labor wanted. Which, of course, is exactly what it wants.
Which is what it set the scheme up to do. To fall over. Spectacularly.
Funny thing about the whole NDIS is that many people seem to forget it’s an insurance scheme.
Now insurance companies are not necessarily the most-loved institutions in our society. Just ask a few injured workers who’ve been forced to jump though the hoops Workcover offers what they think of insurance.
Just ask a few people with disabilities who have already tangled with the NDIS. Not happy is a serious understatement.
The expectations Labor whipped up among the community of some great national disability resource/rescue package via the NDIS were quite extraordinary.
Some commentators, such as James Cook University academic Professor Matthew Yau suggested sex-worker services and professional sex therapy should be available under the scheme.
The Geelong launch site for the NDIS was deemed “a trial” by Labor, in what is a five-year plan.
“Everyone understands this will be a learning experience,” Corio MHR Richard Marles told this paper.
Anyone who can’t sense a waivering commitment by even Labor, covering its back for the possibility of a return to office within those five years, isn’t paying attention.
A furious Coalition response by Corangamite MHR Sarah Henderson to last week’s Independent headline “Cloud over NDIS”, and the suggestion the NDIS might not be fully delivered, whatever fully even means, is odd.
She was in a nationally-disseminated photograph last month beside Mitch Fifield, the coalition’s Assistant Social Services Minister when he said scheme was set to blow out of by $400 million.
Since then, an independent report commissioned by the government has stated the agency in charge of the NDIS is like “a plane that took off before it had been fully built and is being completed while it is in the air”.
Surprise, surprise.
Of course, the Coalition should be checking the scheme will deliver, be cost-effective, not open to rorting, and not abusing clients.
But if anyone in Labor’s ranks disagrees, let them explain why they were in such a hurry to push through a half-baked, trial NDIS.
