Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise today to make a brief statement about the interim report of the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, tabled today. And I want to give my thanks to our chair, the member for Menzies, the deputy chair, Senator Carol Brown, the member for Corangamite and all my fellow members of the committee for what has been a really important process and what I think is a really good interim report. I also want to thank the secretariat, headed by Bonnie Allan, for their brilliant work in supporting the community.

But most of all I really want to thank and take my hat off to the people with disability, their families and carers, and health professionals and providers who have yet again fronted up to tell their stories in the hope that we can get the NDIS right. The reason we have the NDIS is that people with disabilities and their families campaigned for years for a better system to give people real choice and control over their lives, something that most of us take for granted every day. They have kept fighting for that on this committee. We hear some of the same issues we've been hearing for years. The NDIS is a great idea, as the member for Maribyrnong has said, but we need to get the implementation right. The recommendations of this report will go to that, and I urge the government to adopt them. I think it's important to note that there is bipartisan agreement on these recommendations from the committee. All members have agreed because it is about addressing issues that have been ongoing.

Through this process we heard a lot of evidence that is quite disturbing. Obviously there are many things I would like to talk about, but I can't mention them all. But one that really struck me was Mark Tonga from the New South Wales Disability Council. He's a quadriplegic and has been for around 10 years since an accident. He was speaking on behalf of the people he represents but also his own story, and he said that he just hopes that one day he can live at home with his partner and receive the supports that he needs. This is so basic. This is why we have the NDIS, but it's not delivering that for everyone, and it needs to. I pledge to those people who gave their stories in this process that we will not give up the fight on seeing the NDIS really deliver on what was promised.

I just want to focus on one recommendation, the first recommendation of the report, which is around draft plans. It is so important and so obvious that people should be able to see their draft plan before it's locked in. Currently the only way it can be changed is through a time-consuming review process. We heard through the committee that there is a soft launch of a joint planning process, and people have been hopeful that this might be the answer, but, in the careful questioning of understanding that process, it appears that it is not, because what is being proposed is that people see only part of their plan, without all the costed supports in it, and then, when they have the meeting with the planner and the local area coordinator, there's actually no scope for them to change that plan without going to review. This is not good enough. It will be so much more efficient for the NDIA to get plans right the first time and not send people through a cycle of reviews.

I want to echo the comments of the member for Menzies—that this isn't a criticism of the hardworking people at the NDIA, who are understaffed and don't receive the training they need. That is another key recommendation of this report. People need to receive training in different areas of disability and in basic understanding of the needs of people with disability, because we heard some really troubling things about the lack of the understanding and lack of sensitivity to these people's needs. In my personal view what we've heard does point towards a sort of cultural problem with the NDIA. We're not focusing on choice and control; we're assuming that people are somehow asking for things they don't need or trying to get something they're not entitled to. They're asking for the basic things to let them live their lives and achieve their goals in the way that most of us take for granted every day. Again I urge the government to accept the recommendations of this report and I pledge that we will keep up the fight for the NDIS to deliver for people with disabilities.

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