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April 30th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Updated
Photo:
Prime Minister Julia Gillard attends the rally in Sydney. (AAP: Paul Miller)
The Government’s decision to fund part of a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) from July next year has been welcomed by disabled Australians, but questions are being raised about where the money for the scheme will come from.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard made the announcement today at one of a number of rallies calling for a shake-up of disability support services.
Last year Australia’s Productivity Commission recommended that the Federal Government provide insurance cover for all Australians in the event of a significant disability.
Ms Gillard told the Sydney crowd from next year the NDIS will operate in up to four locations across the country, helping about 10,000 people with significant and permanent disabilities.
“We know disability can be for a lifetime which is why a lifetime of care and support for people with disability makes sense,” Ms Gillard said.
“We will launch a full year sooner than the Productivity Commission suggested.
“That means from the middle of next year select launch sites around the country will begin serving around 10,000 people with disabilities, growing to 20,000 from the middle of 2014.”
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told the media in Perth that he has offered the Government his bipartisan support on the NDIS.
“Peoples’ lives, peoples’ opportunities, peoples’ chances to be everything that they can be and should be should not be determined by a litigation lottery,” he said.
But the Federal Government is saying nothing about how that bill will be paid.
Audio:
Round one of disability scheme to start 2013
(PM)
And despite his leader’s enthusiasm for the scheme, Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey is sceptical about the scheme.
“The NDIS is a very worthy scheme. But it sounds to me like the dying days of a Government when they make big, heroic announcements about massive programs and they won’t tell you how they’re going to pay for it.
“It’s $8 billion a year. For someone on $67,000 a year, it’s roughly an extra $1,000 a year in tax. Are Australians prepared to pay that? Well let’s find out from the Australian people.”
His comments are echoed by the Treasurers in New South Wales and Queensland, who have told the ABC’s 7.30 they are still being kept in the dark.
Queensland Treasurer Tim Nicholls says the Federal Government needs to involve the States for the scheme to be successful.
“The problem we face at the moment is that the Federal Government are not really working with the states to work out how a funding model can work. You can’t make bricks without straw and at the moment the Federal Government are not even giving us the straw,” he said.
“Until then the Federal Government is simply raising expectations and not providing any substance to those expectations.
And New South Wales Treasurer Mike Baird says he fears the scheme will become a political football.
“Don’t turn this into a political game, there is a real chance to do it properly and if you don’t do the work, if you don’t do the funding properly well our fear is you are raising false hope across a sector and I don’t think this is the issue you should do that with,”
Long overdue
But people within the disabled community say the scheme is vital, and long overdue.
One of the thousands of Australians at the rally in Sydney was Clare Conroy, whose 11-month-old son has a crushed spinal chord.
His name is Evander, just like the world champion American boxer.
Ms Conroy says her son is a fighter too, but he cannot stand on his own.
“He’s really needing intensive therapies and also equipment is the other main thing that he needs: standing frames, wheelchairs, all of that sort of thing,” she said.
“We have two other children, so there’s lots of costs in our family already. There’s certain equipment that’s provided, wheelchairs, but other things aren’t on the list and we have to go to charities like Variety, I think, and other charities in order to get that equipment. So it’s all very important, but otherwise it comes from our own pocket, which we don’t really have.”
She says while she understands the cost to taxpayers, the funding is needed for disabled people to have what other Australians take for granted.
“I guess there’s a lot of strain on the taxpayers, but I think people with disabilities they’re a very needy group. And like they were saying inside [the rally], that every Australian counts and they should have the right to what every other Australian has in terms of their needs,” he said.
And one of the architects of the scheme, John Walsh, says significant funding is needed straight away.
Mr Walsh has been a quadriplegic since a football accident when he was 20.
Now a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers – he helped write the Productivity Commission’s report on the scheme – and says the Prime Minister decision to bring it forward is ambitious.
He says $500 million will be needed in next Tuesday’s budget alone.
“The risk is that bringing it forward makes it more difficult to do it properly so there’s a great deal of work to do in the next 12 months to make it work properly,” he said.
Alan Hamilton, who went to the rally with Clare Conroy and Evander, approves of Ms Gillard’s announcement.
“I think it was great to hear – for everyone to hear that the Prime Minister was going to start pilot programs in this budget. And some people are going – they’re going to make the system work and make sure it works before they launch it to the nation,” he said.
But Mr Hamilton is concerned about what might become of the National Disability Insurance Scheme if the Gillard governments fails.
“We only hope that Mr Abbott, when he becomes a prime minister, will make sure that he continues what’s been started today.”
Topics:
disabilities,
federal-government,
government-and-politics,
australia
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