Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend and my neighbour in the corridor, the member for Fisher, for sharing those thoughts and his personal story with us. It is such a worthy topic and is worthy of air time, and there are important issues to discuss. I will be old-fashioned and turn my attention to the words that are actually in front of us in the motion, and start with part (2). Part (2) of the motion is lovely. It calls upon us to recognise and celebrate the winners of the 10th National Disability Awards, and who could argue with that? The awards are there to recognise the outstanding contributions of individuals and organisations in improving the lives of Australians with a disability and in advancing the recognition of equality and human rights for all Australians. The winners include organisations and people who have seen a need and dedicated much of their lives or organisational capacities to meeting it. They highlight the real and meaningful change that can be effected when the barriers to access and inclusion are torn down. Whilst not distracting from people living their everyday lives and the core, important work of government—be it the NDIS, the DSP, employment and whatever else is needed—they serve a role to inspire, motivate and provide positive role models, where, at times, I think it is fair to say that if you look in the broader mainstream media and elsewhere perhaps those role models are not always as evident as we would wish.

I would like to briefly honour the two Victorian winners. Firstly, Nightlife Disability Services, based in Moorabbin—not in my electorate but nearby—were the joint winner of the Excellence in Inclusive Service Delivery Award. They provide consumer focused mobile care and provide high-quality drop-in and on-call services 365 days a year to support independence and choice. Kairsty Wilson, the legal manager of the AED Legal Centre, based in Melbourne, was the joint winner of the Excellence in Justice and Rights Protection Award. Many other winners were recognised for a wide range of contributions.

But I have to say that, aside from part (2) of the motion, the rest of it is, to my mind, fatuous, platitudinous and drivellous. Indeed, it is fudge, which does not surprise us given that the member for Gilmore often likes to remind us of her previous business, packing fudge. The motion notes that 3 December was the International Day for People with Disability—which was three months ago but, nevertheless, here we are—and it notes 'the important work being done in Australia to support people with disability', whatever that is; it says no more.

I would just like to touch on a couple of issues—firstly, the NDIS, a great Labor reform, introduced and fully funded by Labor. When we look at the history of social reforms in this country, such as Medicare, we see that we put it in and build it and those opposite get rid of it. We put in superannuation and needs based school funding. The debate goes on. We know our side of this debate. But the NDIS was fully funded, and your bad fiscal management is not our responsibility. The first 10 years were fully funded in the 2013-14 budget, and we cannot let that lie be perpetuated over and over again. The measures to fully fund the NDIS were supported by those opposite: the private health rebate, the Medicare levy and a range of other savings measures. But despite this we see mounting government stuff-ups on the NDIS rollout, which should be of great concern: failing to resource the rollout, stuffing up the IT rollout, failing to reach agreement with the states on time, reports about the ACT cap on services, and now threats to the very funding base of the NDIS, which, as the Productivity Commission told us when they provided that seminal report to underpin the design of the scheme, had to be predicated on funding from the budget—not funding from special little accounts or taking five bucks here and there off disability support pensioners, but funded as a mainstream core service of government, just like Medicare, at least under Labor.

Secondly, the disability support pension is critical support for people with a disability unable to work. Of course, again, when you look through history, that disability support pension was introduced by Labor in 1991-92. You might say it replaced the invalid pension, which again was introduced and came into effect in 1910 under the world's very first ever elected majority labour government. I checked my facts there, and it was in fact legislated in 1908 under a coalition government with the support of Labor. I do not mean your coalition; I mean our coalition before we won a majority in our own right.

The motion talks of support for people, but that is at odds with what we are seeing, with the ups and downs in the administration of the disability support pension. There will be more to say on that, I expect, in the future, with the public accounts committee report coming out after our disgraceful public hearings, where the department provided no submission—unprecedented—and we heard evidence of the cruel reviews targeting profoundly disabled people in state care, asking them to prove their Down syndrome had not been cured. We heard evidence of the process, the timing and medical evidence which is no longer assessed by a medical doctor but by a bureaucrat—and the list goes on.

See this speech in context