It must have seemed too good to be true.
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The federal budget this week introduces some bold steps to ensure the National Disability Insurance Scheme is securely funded over the next decade.
The scheme, which has bipartisan support, has long been recognised as a key to framing an equitable system for supporting the disadvantaged.
From a sheer accounting point of view, the 0.5 per cent rise in the Medicare levy from 2019 was designed to help fill a $55.7 billion, 10-year funding shortfall in the National Disability Insurance Scheme that seriously undermined its future.
The message for its sustainability was simple enough; we could all need it, so we should all pay for it. Mr Turnbull was curt in his appeal to get behind the policy, and "depoliticise this. Let's just pay for it".
National Disability Services chief Dr Ken Baker summed up the thoughts of many with his hopes that there might be some resolution over why and how the NDIS needed a secure and permanent source of funding.
“It would be very regrettable if ... differences between the parties about tax equity jeopardised legislation guaranteeing a future funding stream for the NDIS," he said.
Most Australians are generous enough to recognise the value in a safety net so important and universal and equally are magnanimous enough to realise this comes at a cost. That spirit of altruism for what genuinely matters – particularly the worse off – is a real Australian value, regardless of what is said in Canberra.
But within days any hope of unanimity or keeping a national scheme free of point scoring or even class warfare seem to be have faded. Labor leader Bill Shorten’s main grievance is who will pay for it. He has accused the government of favouring the wealthy with corporate tax cuts and the axing of the deficit levy.
He says his plan incorporates keeping the deficit levy for high income earners in place and only applying the increased Medicare levy to those earning more than $87,000 a year, a combination that will deliver about $50 billion over 10 years – $4.5 billion more than the Coalition's proposal.
Meanwhile, both The Greens and Nick Xenophon's concerns over low income earners paying the extra levy indicate there will be trouble in the Senate and no smooth sailing for Budget 2017.
A week in politics can be an eternity when it all seems to have happened before.