Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

( The issue this week that has really demonstrated just how nasty and cruel this government is this issue. This government yet again has shown how cruel they are and how they are the masters of wedge politics. To go out there and say, 'How we are going to fund the NDIS is by cutting welfare payments, cutting family tax benefit payments, cutting pensions and cutting Newstart allowance,' is only designed to do one thing and that is to wedge families and to wedge our community. It demonstrates how cynical every member of this government is if they vote for this bill and vote for the omnibus bill, which is being listed for debate later.

The problem that the government has with this political stunt is that it is ignoring what is in the budget papers. As people on my side of the House have argued, in the 2013 and 2014 budget Labor clearly outlined how it would pay for the NDIS. I can remember, because it was before I was in parliament, the way in which people in our community embraced the idea of increasing the Medicare levy to help fund the NDIS.

It is rare to find somebody who does not have a family member, who does not have a friend or who is not caring for somebody with a disability. So Australians welcomed the idea of increasing the Medicare levy, and that is what happened. That funding is to go towards the NDIS. There were also a number of other measures that the former Labor government introduced: reforms around the private health insurance rebate, reforms around retirement income and reforms around the phase out of the net medicine expenses tax offset and other long-term savings.

In government, Labor was responsible to make sure that the money was there. In trying to establish this fund, the government is purely trying to use it as a smokescreen for their welfare cuts. Having struggled to get these zombie cuts through in 2014, 2015 and 2016, now in a desperate attempt they have attached it not only to NDIS but also to child care reforms. This is how desperate they are to cut welfare payments and attack some of the most vulnerable in our community.

It is such a shame that they would seek to divide people with a disability and their families against their neighbours, against young people who might be looking for work, against older pensioners by cutting their pensions and against families, the next-door neighbours who will have their family tax benefits cut. This is how cynical, this is how opportunistic and this is how mean this government is.

The NDIS is something that many in our community are looking forward to. In my own part of the world, in Bendigo, we are getting ready for the rollout. Across the Bendigo electorate—in Loddon, in Macedon, in Mount Alexander and in the City of Greater Bendigo—we formally come online with the NDIS this year, 1 May 2017. There is lots of hope that families have, but they are starting to get really concerned by the way in which this government is managing the rollout.

We all know the facts prior to the rollout. Even the Australian Bureau of Statistics backed up what we were hearing in the community. About half the people with disabilities are not receiving the help that they require. And I have heard this from local organisations in my part of the world, including Scope Loddon Mallee. A customer as well as a service delivery manager, Mary, said, 'The rollout of the NDIS would ease the burden of unmet need for local people with a disability.' She said from her knowledge, 'There were a lot of people in Bendigo getting insufficient support.' She talked about parents in their 70s and 80s still providing full-time care for their adult sons and adult daughters. Mary is not alone. We have had a number of organisations like Amicus, Access Employment and Access Australia Group all providing support and saying there simply is not enough support for the people that need it.

Another young woman spoke up about what it would mean for her. Emma Johnson was looking forward to the incoming NDIS because she was looking forward to moving out of home and starting a job in hospitality. NDIS and the funding that she would receive would help her with the training and skills that she needs for employment. It would also help her find accommodation.

There is a growing problem in our community with the need for accommodation for people with a disability and, in particular, people with a profound disability. There simply is not enough suitable accommodation available in regional areas. Wood Street, which does provide some respite care, has had to wind back its hours because it simply does not have the funding it requires to have all of its rooms available to local families.

All of us, if we are good MPs, know that for carers respite is so vital. If a family can have a week off, if they can have an afternoon off or if they can have a couple of nights off, that time gives them a chance to reset and refresh. The cost on our community, the cost on our government if we do not have quality respite care options is enormous.

One of the great moments that I had last year was being able to attend the opening of the Mount Alexander respite facility between Maldon and Castlemaine. This project has been community funded. There has been some federal government funding and there has been some state government funding, but the bulk of the funding has come from the local community. It has come from the Lions Club, from all the raffles that the parents organised, from donations and from very, very kind gestures of people in the community. This particular service is offering those families that respite support. But communities should not have to fight so hard. It took them over a decade to get the resources to build this respite facility. We need our government to be doing a lot more when it comes to the NDIS, the rollout of the NDIS and, in particular, when we look at accommodation.

There are some very good stories in our part of the world about people looking forward to the NDIS. But, as others have said, there also are some worrying stories. I hope that the government is listening to all of these stories, taking them on board and fixing the problems in the system where they exist.

Last year, on 22 November, a constituent contacted my office about his NDIS assessment. As people probably know, when it looks like they are about to hit the start button for the NDIS in your area, they offer early packages to people, which is what was happening here. For this constituent it related to his 10-year-old son. He was being given early access to the NDIS. Under the old DHS plan, Joshua, his son, was receiving $34,500 per year for services. The original NDIS assessment was for only $14,500, with an extra $4,500 being allocated to the management of the plan. The family was very concerned because it was a reduction of at least $10,000 for their son's package, which caused a lot of distress in the family. They were really anxious about how they would be able to meet their son's needs. We were able to assist. The NDIA did a reassessment, and the good news for this family—after all the anxiety—was that the final figure was much higher. The figure after the reassessment was $47,381. It was a very anxious time for the family when they thought they had lost funding, only to have it come back and increased after it was reviewed through the appeal process.

The volume of work that we are now doing to support people who are concerned or upset about their NDIA assessments is growing. We are expecting about 3,400 people in the region across the city of Greater Bendigo to have an NDIS package, so there is lots of work and support that our electorate office is providing to people. It leads me to ask the government: How are you managing this role? Are there enough people employed by the NDIA? Are there enough public servants there to support people? What training do they have to make sure they are supporting these families, who are just trying to make sure that their loved ones get the best support that they can? People have raised questions about payments. If they choose to manage the package themselves, how do they pay the providers? There are lots of questions coming up day to day.

The other problem that the government is not addressing in relation to the NDIS is workforce. It has no workforce strategy. We all know the statistics that in all of our states it is expected that the workforce will increase by 90 per cent—almost doubling—to make sure that we have enough people working in the sector for all of these packages. Yet despite report after report saying this and despite the agency saying this the government does not have, or has not released, a workforce development strategy. These are the issues that the government needs to be focused on rather than on its smokescreen and game playing. What about quality and safeguards? With any new system we need to ensure that we have quality and safeguards in place. Currently, the NDIA and DSS are working to develop a quality and safeguards framework, but what is it? What role is the government playing to ensure that we have safeguards within the system. It is a new system. It is expensive. We are providing support to the most vulnerable in our community to give them the same opportunities that the rest of us have.

Quite frankly, if the government does not start to take on board the issues of workforce and the issues of quality and safeguards the system might fall over, and it will be this government's fault for its inability to roll out the program properly and effectively, as planned by Labor.

Finally, I would like to reinforce that the government has used this issue to try and wedge our community. It is pure politics. It is saying to families who have a disability, who have been waiting for the NDIS to come: 'We're going to find you but not your neighbour.' It is wedging neighbourhoods and communities by saying, 'We will cut family tax benefit, we will cut pensions, we will cut Newstart and we will cut youth allowance to fund child care and to fund the NDIS.' That demonstrates just how cynical the government is. It demonstrates the disrespect that it has for Australians. People do not like to be treated this way. They do not like to know that a reform that they have been waiting for for many years will come at the expense of the pensioners living across the road. People do not like that. They do not expect that.

It comes back to government priorities. This government's priorities are wrong. It should be funding the NDIS. It should be looking at the issues that have been raised by the sector. It should be supporting pensioners. It should be supporting people into work. It should not be proceeding with big multinational tax cuts, cuts that we know will deliver more profits for the banks. Government has always been about priorities, and the priorities of this government are wrong. Its behaviour this week in attaching NDIS funding to welfare cuts demonstrates again just how wrong it is.

Labor opposes this bill again. This is the second time that I have spoken on this bill, so it does feel like a bit of deja vu, but when the omnibus bill comes up it will have been the sixth time that I have spoken against those cuts, those zombie cuts that the government seems determined to ram through the parliament. It is unfair. Labor had a plan to fund the NDIS. Labor had a plan for the safe rollout of the NDIS. I call upon the government to look at those plans, to make sure that the people who most need our support and need opportunity—people with disability and their families—get the support they need. Stop the politicking, stop the division and do what is right.

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