Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I appreciate the call to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Strengthening Banning Orders) Bill 2020. Since the NDIS rollout began in July 2014 until the end of June this year, some 391,999 people have become participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. When this scheme is fully rolled out right across Australia, some 432,000 Australians will be participants in the scheme. This comes at a very considerable cost of $23.4 million in funding in the full year of rollout of the scheme.

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission was established on 1 July 2018, and its essential functions are to ensure compliance with the act and to promote quality services and safeguards. Between 1 July 2018 and 30 June 2020, the commission received some 5,784 in-scope complaints, which it has dealt with. As part of that process, the commission has banned some 23 entities, 22 of which are individuals. Fifteen of those bans were based on the suitability of the person concerned. The NDIS strengthening banning orders provisions are to provide further powers to the commission. They broaden the circumstances in which the commission may ban a worker or a provider from delivering services, even if that worker or provider is no longer operating in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The commission may also take pre-emptive action against an individual or an organisation and, of course, it can make publicly available its decision and its resolution to ban a particular person. These are sensible additional amendments to the legislation to give the commission the power that it needs to ensure the safeguards of individuals in the scheme.

As the chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme of this parliament, I wish to mention a couple of inquiries in the context of the NDIS that the committee is currently undertaking. One is into planning, which we hope to be able to finally report on soon. Another one is on general issues, on which we expect to issue a progress report by the end of this year. Importantly, we have two other inquiries underway, one into the work of the quality and safeguards commission and one into the role and the future workforce for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. These inquiries go very much to matters covered in this bill and also the broader NDIS itself.

Two issues are important for the future success of the scheme. One is obviously having an adequate workforce in terms of the number of people who can provide services. Another issue is skills and training, and the competency of that workforce. It's expected that we'll see a trebling of the number of workers in disability services over the coming few years, and that's at the same time that we'll need a trebling of the number of workers in aged care. So there's going to be significant demand and competition, if you like, to have an adequate workforce to provide these services. Without an adequate workforce, the services can't be provided and the scheme cannot live up to the expectations that so many Australians have for it. Equally, the quality and the training of the workforce is important, which is where quality assurance comes into play. How do we encourage service providers to prioritise quality and ensure that that quality is risk averse in terms of what's provided to the participants in the scheme? A simple tick-a-box approach is not as good as a genuine commitment to actually providing quality of services in this scheme. I sometimes wonder whether the approach that we've taken on both sides of parliament under the political hues of both the Liberal-National coalition and the Labor Party in aged care, for example, which has relied largely on a tick-a-box approach, has perhaps precluded the development of quality assurance by the providers themselves at a level that we should be able to expect from a scheme such as aged care and, now and in the future, in relation to disability services. In relation to the commission's function, developing a nationally consistent approach to managing quality and safeguards for people who have a disability and who are receiving supports or services is one of the core functions of the quality commission.

The parliamentary joint standing committee will continue to look at these issues over the coming weeks and months, particularly in relation to the quality and safeguards commission and also the workforce itself. In the meantime, this is an important piece of legislation and I commend it to the House.

See this speech in context