Bowen and Macklin on Bill’s bob each way bandwagon

Labor’s Chris Bowen and Jenny Macklin are today still in denial about funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, despite the overwhelming evidence that Labor never fully-funded it.

They claim: “The NDIS is already fully-funded.”

Deloitte Access economist, Chris Richardson, said today on Sky: “Back in 2013 it was never funded. There was a promise to do something about spending cuts into the future. You know, unless you actually have the courage to say what they were. So no, this was never funded.”

He is absolutely right. Labor said in a 2013 Budget glossy that the NDIS was funded with only a vague reference to ‘other savings.’ But those ‘other savings’ never materialised.

So Chris and Jenny; why do you support a 0.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy to fill your funding gap in the NDIS, even if only for those in higher tax brackets, if there’s no funding gap?