Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This debate could go on for days if we talked about all the issues where people are being left behind. Vulnerable people are being left behind by a government that is truly out of touch and does not care. Each and every day we are confronted in our electorates by people who are suffering because of the failure of this government to deliver and the failure of this government to actually care for people who need our help. If we judge society by the way it treats its most vulnerable then this government fails on every single level.

We just have to look at the understanding of things that we talk about such as government services—when we talk about what's happening in relation to Centrelink. The government is working to close Centrelink face-to-face services in the middle of the biggest recession in our lifetimes: the Morrison recession, on top of the COVID pandemic, when people are out of work. People are being stood down and have lost their jobs. They're struggling to put food on the table and struggling to pay their bills. And what's the government doing? It's shutting face-to-face services. You have to sit there and ask, 'Why would you do that?' Honestly!

We know how much the government really cares about this and how much they support it: the minister couldn't even come to the table. Minister Robert, who has failed at everything that he has put his hand to, could not even come to the table and debate a motion on his own portfolio. We only have to look at what's happening with the NDIS. The government likes to come into this place, mislead the Australian people and say, 'Oh, we fully fund the NDIS.' No, they haven't. In fact, what they've been doing consistently in their seven years is cutting and slashing support for the NDIS. You shouldn't need a lawyer to access NDIS support. It's a government service; it's what we should be doing to help people who are vulnerable. But when the government keeps squeezing the support from the NDIS, all we see are more and more people who are suffering.

The NDIS is a national service; it's something that we know is so important for people who need the help. The pattern of behaviour by this government and its neglect of the NDIS is a national shame. It's been slashed, mismanaged and diminished to such an extent that all that's left is a bureaucratic nightmare for the people who it's meant to serve. Reports lead to quotes which lead to more reports which lead to more quotes. In my very own electorate, a constituent came to my office in February because of ongoing issues which, by November, are still not resolved. You'd think that a bloke who spent thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars on internet could respond to emails and letters. But, no, he fails to do so. This poor lady needed her home modified just to move around her house—a basic human right; to live with dignity and independence. But in reality she's been strung along by the endless feast of NDIS mismanagement.

Some of the issues she's facing in dealing with the NDIS are repeated requests for information on different solutions and more quotes on different options. Each request for OT services eats into her funding and each request for a report, or a quote or an alternative adds to delays in getting solutions implemented. Each delay adds to the stress, anxiety and depression that many of these participants and their families are already struggling to deal with. I cannot emphasise enough that in many cases the NDIS only seems to make matters worse, not better. I know the stress that is put on my staff as we try to deal with this, day in and day out, in trying to help people living with disability and their families. And this government sits there on its hands and does nothing to support them. We're not all in this together: this government fails every vulnerable Australian there is.

Look at things such as robodebt or, as we like to call it, 'Robert-debt', because Stuart Robert is the one who created this mess, day in and day out.

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