Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] As we have heard, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Improving Supports for At Risk Participants) Bill 2021 responds to five recommendations of the Robertson review into the adequacy of the regulation of supports and services provided to Ms Ann-Marie Smith, an NDIS participant who died last year in truly horrific circumstances. In the course of his review, Mr Robertson took the opportunity to consider wider issues of safeguarding of people with disability who are particularly vulnerable. It's almost inconceivable, then, that the Morrison government has utterly failed people with disability who are particularly vulnerable to the COVID pandemic. Professor Anne Kavanagh was right when she said just three days ago that the vaccine rollout for disabled Australians was 'negligent' and 'a failure', and the consequences could be dire amid a surging delta outbreak.

If we ever needed proof of the consequence of the Prime Minister's botched vaccine rollout, it was the news delivered to the disability sector last week by the Minister for the NDIS that only around a quarter of Australians in the scheme are fully vaccinated. The federal government's highest priority group is behind the national average. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people with disability who have not had their jabs. Days ago we heard that only about 26.9 per cent of the 260,000-odd NDIS participants aged over 16 in phase 1a or 1b of the rollout were fully vaccinated. As for the workforce, with 164,000-odd people helping care for people with disability, 55.6 per cent have had their first jab and 36.7 per cent have had two doses. It is not good enough; it is not nearly good enough. Having just over a quarter of all Australians with disability vaccinated is a national shame. That fewer than 50 per cent of people with disability who are living in group homes are vaccinated is a crisis.

The Prime Minister is insisting this week on trying to treat Australians as if we're all goldfish—that we'll do one lap around the goldfish bowl and forget everything that he's previously said and everything that he's failed to do when it comes to the two huge priorities of this year: the vaccine rollout and fit-for-purpose quarantine. We're not goldfish though, are we? We will remember the failures, because they're failures for people with vulnerabilities, like people who are on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, like our First Nations Australians, for whom vaccine rates are far too low, and like many of the pockets of disadvantaged communities where the vaccination rates are much lower than the state and national averages.

There is a lot of work to be done to get all Australians in this country vaccinated. But if we can't get this priority group of people with disability vaccinated then we will continue to suffer from a national shame. As we all watch and celebrate the Paralympics and cheer on our local heroes and people from across this country who are absolute testaments to resilience and success, let's remember that people with disability need to be vaccinated and that the NDIS needs to reach all the potential of its introduction.

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