The NDIS, the levy and the post that is going to lose me friends and readers

By now, you would have to have been living somewhere under a very large and wifi-proof rock not to know that the Australian Government has advanced their final proposal to implement a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

The scheme, which has been talked about for years and is sorely needed, will support Australians with permanent disabilities that affect their mobility, self-care, self-management or communication. Despite some of the propaganda to the contrary, it will also cover individual assistance for people with disabilities or differences where there is good evidence that early intervention will increase functioning (ie. autism, celebral palsy, acquired brain injuries) or decrease decline of function (ie. MS, Parkinson's Disease).

The next thing that has become apparent this week is that the NDIS is going to be partly funded from the budget ($1 billion has been committed from July 2013), and partly funded by an increase of 0.5% in the Medicare levy, taking it from 1.5% of earnings to 2% of earnings. This means an increase of $325 a year for someone earning $65,000 a year, or $500 a year for someone earning $100,000 a year.

In the debate that has ensued, there have been opinion pieces galore from every conceivable perspective. Comments have been flying, on social media, in the MSM, and at the school gate (it's an oldie but a goodie, the school-gate radar - equivalent, I suppose, to water-cooler chitchat in an office). The scheme and its funding method has fierce defenders, equally fierce detractors, and everything in between. This is not unexpected, as it's a major policy initiative with taxpayer consequences.

However, one aspect of all this that has struck me as NQR and quite counter-productive is the rhetoric that I have read directed against people who oppose the levy. Commenters and columnists alike have characterised levy-opponents as, effectively, greedy, selfish and hard-hearted. Moreover, they have conflated opposition to the levy with opposition to the NDIS, despite the ample evidence that a great majority of people want and support the NDIS, including those who oppose the levy.

It seems to me that there are two issues here that can be and should be separated, and the fact that they aren't being separated by politicians and commentators smells pretty cynical to me. The issues are:

1. Should we have an NDIS?
I would suggest that a very comfortable majority of Australians, myself included, would answer this with a conclusive YES.

2. How should it be funded? Specifically - should it be funded through an increase to the Medicare levy?
And here is where consensus breaks down, and I cannot stress this enough, NOT just because "people are greedy". Or "people are selfish / heartless."

Because, you know what?

It is possible to feel a heart-sinking at the idea of another increase in the take of the government from your wages, without being a bastard.

It is possible to be a family whose income has gone backwards while inflation has marched on, and feel distressed at the notion of increased costs and suspicious that, in time, they will be increased again.

It is possible that all the "0.95c a day" rhetoric will sound hollow to people who have heard the exact same line with the increases to their rates, their rents, their insurances, their electricity, their water, their pharmaceuticals, all in the last three years. At some point, you know what? There ARE no more 0.95c a day to spare.

It is possible that people may resent being asked for more when governmental spending in areas is so demonstrably inefficient and wasteful - offshore detention centres, anyone? BER? It is open to people to ask WHY exactly the NDIS, which we want, can't be funded from general revenue *instead of all the other things that we don't want or cost ridiculous amounts of money that was badly deployed*.

I will lay my cards on the table:

We can afford the 0.5% increase in Medicare, my husband and I. Of course we can. To claim otherwise would be ludicrous in a family that just bought a new car and is planning a big holiday for next year.

We support the NDIS too, and think it's long overdue.

BUT.

I do not agree that the levy is necessarily the right way to fund the NDIS. Not because I resent giving up a cup of coffee a day (I don't drink coffee) or I am greedy or selfish, but because I think it's a terrible precedent to set, one that will be hard to contain, and, most importantly, one that did not need to happen if other, better decisions had been made with budget spending.

I know many individuals and families that will feel this increase. No, not be bankrupted; no, not become homeless. Anyone that close to the tipping point, frankly, has bigger problems than a 0.5% Medicare rise. Nonetheless, they will feel it to the extent that they will resent it, and it may force sacrifices of kinds they don't really want to be making. Not of coffee or booze (although maybe), but, as one mum at school in a single-income family said, maybe of the family holiday that her partner's tax return usually pays for. Or swimming lessons for the winter term. Or a new bike for a kid. Or regular physio apointments for an able-bodied, but poor-postured and frequently sore, woman. (That one is me).

So I just wish supporters of the levy would knock it off already in their determination to cast all levy-opponents as villains who, in their selfishness, want to deny people with disabilities access to a scheme to help them. I support the NDIS, but I am, at best, ambivalent about the levy, and I want to be able to say that without being told I'm a monster.