Why say "charity" instead of "entitlement" or "safety net"

"Charity" links the act to the motivation - love, care.  "Safety Net" is the language of political hacks.  So called charities have now begun to refer to people that they help as "clients". 
Language is the substrate on which we communicate and construct ideas.
To recast charity as a business client relationship is to deliberately remove any sense of gratitude to the people paying for the charity and replace it with the sense of entitlement that a purchaser of services would have.

The law provides no moral compass and is a set of arbitrary rules riddled with inconsistencies. 

Wealth is accumulated by the quaint principle of property rights which have generally been a shared value as well as a commonly violated value in most societies since.  A recently defunct social experiment attempted to regard property as theft and the leaders in its major remaining adherent, China, seem to have been very personally successful at property theft.... perhaps not quite as large as Gina.  But who would know ?

The argument that "entitlements, wealth and power are all creations of law" seems to be a variant on Obama's well known "you didn't build that"  line.  You don't own that.  Any thing you have is the gift of the law.

I look at it the other way. The law is the record of the messy battleground fought by a range of cultural groups attempting to exert power over other cultural groups.  You only have what you have fought for and won. 

If the left had unfettered power, Gina's wealth would no doubt be expropriated without compensation to pay for Craig Thomson's legal defence, and any mention of it would be prohibited by Stephen Conroy's thought police.

Luckily, we still have some checks and balances in Australia and there is both a vestige of support for property rights and for freedom of speech, so the left must chip away at them slowly. 

The key point is that rights are only as good as your ability to defend them.  Control the the language and a right can be redefined as a wrong - and a charitable gift can be redefined as the entitlement of a client.

Just one inevitable outcome of a national disability insurance scheme

To "separate injury from cause" is a good idea. 

I fully support the idea of eliminating all rights to personal damages litigation.   If a person has been injured by negligence then this should be a criminal issue e.g. an factory or restaurant owner, doctor or accountant should be warned, fined, disbarred, or goaled depending on the circumstances.
Any fines should go to the common weal and be used to support welfare.

Welfare should be restricted to providing a minimum subsistence level for those who have no other assets (i.e. skills, abilities, money etc) regardless of cause.

This IS the "insurance" scheme i.e. a system whereby the culture supports any of its own to a subsistence level.

Groups of people may want to voluntarily contribute additional assets to improve the minimum standard. It is important for the culture that this unearned support i.e. charity, and the accompanying gratitude it should evoke, are kept separate so that a culture of entitlement does not grow. The organisations that deliver charity should be kept at arm's length from the government agencies charged with providing subsistence support.

The above is of course not the current state of affairs in Oz. We have a rampant entitlement culture that makes even the work of nurses on the "front line" stressful and increasingly dangerous. We have a welfare entitlement culture that is being educated to expect the government to provide everything from set top boxes to life time income support at levels that aim to ensure a comfortable life style rather than subsistence.

We have a public health system that may not be as bad as that of the UK, but which is certainly under stress.
The proposed scheme is an attempt to top up and overlay once again because the quality and quantity of existing public health support is not considered adequate for people with "special needs". The fiction will be promoted that funds going to "special needs" will not affect the funds available to other public health priorities.

Even more damaging is the use of the language of contractual obligation.

The government wants to force and additional insurance payment onto all people regardless of their need or desire, and will then tell those with "special needs" that they are not receiving charity, but their contractual rights under an insurance scheme.

Everyone is well aware of the long and frequent history of insurance claims portrayed as equivalent to a lottery win, and people receiving insurance compensation (as opposed to charity) will become even more aggressive regarding the level of support for their needs.

We need to oppose both the creation of an additional "special" health funding system, AND the redefinition of the social relationship between the community and those claiming need.

These issues are extremely emotive for those with "special needs". Our politicians are renowned for their inability to tell any section of the community that we cannot afford more. Separating the funding for brain injury from lung cancer will not only create another bureaucracy, but one with a direct line to the our pockets that no-one will dare to challenge.