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May 2, 2013
The Bernie Brooks Myer episode over the proposed funding of the NDIS exposes the nature of business intervention into political debate. It is intervention from the position of self-interest in the form of profits before people.
This ignores that the aim of the NDIS is to redistribute Australia’s considerable per capita wealth to allow around 400,000 of the most disadvantaged in our community a better shot at earning a living. To help pay for it--- Disability Care---the Gillard government will raise the Medicare levy — currently a 1.5 per cent levy on everyone's income tax — to 2 per cent--- thereby raising an extra $3.3 billion a year in extra federal revenue.
Alan Moir
This is good reform and Gillard Labor has shown some political courage on this issue with its proposal to increase the Medicare levy. It indicates that Labor are prepared to risk increasing their unpopularity in the pursuit of a significant and lasting legacy of reform.
I expect the rhetoric by those opposed to this scheme on ideological grounds (smaller government and lower taxes) will take the form of the small increase in the Medicare levy (ie., an increase in taxes) beingthe reason the coal industry will soon die, towns will be wiped of the map, cheese will soon cost triple its current price, the cost of living will skyrocket, the debt is strangling a once great country and Australia will be bankrupted. Etc, etc.
Or it will be along the lines of a nasty, arrogant Gillard playing wedge politics and putting politics before policy. It's all political game playing by Gillard etc etc. Better care for those with disability through an insurance scheme is ignored by this kind of rhetoric.
Yet the national disability insurance scheme will both improve the lives of the people it helped and bring into the workforce Australians who were previously unemployable for life---not just the 400,000 disabled Australians, but also their carers and family members.
The Coalition is now prepared to back a modest increase in the Medicare levy to fund the NDIS. It was only yesterday morning that the Coalition was publicly opposing it. They had to shift as their position was untenable , even for them. The Coalition's position was to support the scheme but not the means to pay for it and opposing a levy while simultaneously touting a levy to pay for their paid maternity leave proposal. They blinked and now provide conditional support and so undercut their message of needing to lower the tax burden and limiting the expansion of government.
The core problem is the question of how to fund the remainder of the system. Hal Swerissen at the Conversation says:
The all up cost of the NDIS is currently about A$13.5 billion per annum. The states and the Commonwealth provide around A$6.2 billion at the moment, leaving a shortfall of around A$7 billion.The proposed increase in the Medicare levy raises about A$3.2 billion, to be quarantined in a special fund dedicated to support the NDIS. The rest will need to be found from savings and redirection within the Commonwealth budget.
The extent of this funding will determine the extent to which it operates as a fully fledged entitlement scheme which properly meets the needs of people with a serious and permanent disability, or one which is based on caps and rationing
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Myer CEO Bernie Brookes suggested that increasing the Medicare levy to help disabled Australians would damage his company’s profits.