Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise to speak on this motion, which, whilst well intended, really does miss some very fundamental issues that are more than evident now with the NDIS. I say at the outset that, after six years of Liberal governments fumbling the implementation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, we on this side of the Chamber would welcome any improvements, particularly those around the funding of health supports and helping participants avoid getting stranded in hospital while waiting for vacancies to come up in appropriate forms of housing—and I'll go to that issue in a moment.

The very real fact is that the Liberals have ripped $1.6 billion from the NDIS. They are attempting to balance a budget on the backs of some of the most vulnerable people in our nation. This underfunding and imposition of a staffing cap has had very real flowthrough effects for people with disability and those who are caring for them. It has had an effect on the time frames, the quality and the amount of care that is able to be given, and the speed at which goods and services are able to be deployed to those who need them. Arbitrary rejections of participants needing wheelchairs and hoists are rife in the scheme, as are participants waiting for more than a year to get these simple but life-changing assistive technologies. As the NDIS is being rolled out, people are falling through the cracks. I'm in an area that was part of a national trial site, so I am more than three years ahead of many parts of the nation. In Newcastle, we see much of what is about to happen for others in the nation. There has been very consistent feedback from NDIS participants, providers and carers and state and territory governments about the very poor implementation that is happening now.

I would like to raise the case of a young woman, Casey Miller, 29 years old, who came to see me in my electorate office during the parliamentary sitting break. Back in 2013, when she was 23 years of age, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour due to treatment that she required when she acquired a brain injury. Devastatingly, Casey's latest prognosis is that her cancer is terminal and that she only has six to nine months to live. She no longer lives in Newcastle—in fact, she lives in the electorate of Lyne. I am writing to her now local member, Dr Gillespie, the member for Lyne, hoping that he will meet with Casey, because in the very limited amount of time that Casey has to live she is having enormous issues with the NDIS which need speedy resolution.

Casey has also put her mind to developing a proposal for housing that would ensure that people are no longer inappropriately housed in nursing homes. So often young brain-injury sufferers like Casey end up in aged-care facilities. She rightly says that that's not on. She has dedicated her time to developing this proposal around appropriate housing, yet she has entered the private rental system in the electorate of Lyne. She is trying to get some modifications to a bathroom so that she can have some dignity in the personal care that she requires in the remaining six to nine months that she has to live. I can't tell you the trauma that she is going through in order to get what most of us in this chamber would regard as a fairly basic right, to be able to attend to her own personal hygiene, to have a bathroom that is accessible in the remaining days that she has to live, to help improve her quality of life. At the NDIS she has faced obstacle after obstacle. I hope that the member for Lyne will meet with Casey, take up her case and ensure that she gets the bathroom modifications that are required to provide some dignity in her life.

On that note, we on this side of the chamber also note that some important issues around transport plans and respite were not considered at the last Council of Australian Governments Disability Reform Council. These are red-hot issues for people with disability, and I look forward to ensuring that the minister takes them up and follows through on his word to do so.

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