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Monday, 22 August 2011
Page: 8773

Carbon Pricing

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (15:16): My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the case of my constituent, Mr Andrew Fulton, who is a small business owner—a builder of accessible homes for the disabled—who wrote to the Prime Minister about the higher input costs his small construction business faces under a carbon tax. Can the Prime Minister inform Mr Fulton and the thousands of Australians in the not-for-profit disability sector, and those who provide homes and arrangements for the disabled, how they will be compensated for the increased costs of construction as a result of her government's carbon tax?

Ms GILLARD (Lalor—Prime Minister) (15:16): I thank the member for his question. First and foremost, on construction costs: construction predominantly relies on things that have the maximum assistance rate—things like cement, for example. So I would refer the member to that. There have been some very exaggerated figures in the public domain about impacts on construction costs. Should the member have read any of those figures and be inclined to believe them, I would point the member to the fact that the inputs for construction tend to be things that have the maximum rates of assistance.

Secondly, people with disabilities will see an increase in their disability support pension. They are amongst the pensioner households who will, on average, come out $210 in front when you take into account all of the effects of carbon pricing. Thirdly, in terms of the way in which the government works, for example, with state governments on disability services, payments under those intergovernmental agreements are indexed. Normally an element of that indexation is what has happened in CPI movements. It is weighed in the index and—

Ms Macklin: And its three times the indexation they paid.

Ms GILLARD: I am being reminded that the current indexation for the national disability agreement is three times the indexation paid under the former government. But my point in relation to carbon pricing is that, as the 0.7 per cent comes into the CPI, the CPI tends to be an input for indexation of government payments. So there is an increase there that flows as a result of the CPI arrangements.

What I would also say to the member is that, if he has a particular interest in disabilities, the big debate in disability services today is on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I was very pleased to see national agreement to that by all leaders on Friday last week, and we look forward to continuing to develop that scheme—a national disability insurance scheme—because we do not want to see Australians with disabilities left behind.