Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on this motion moved by the member for Cunningham, I think there are a few things worth highlighting. The first is that since the election we have seen a lot of rhetoric from the government and very little action. No doubt Australians will make judgements about the government in due course, and I think everyone will reasonably give the government time to implement some of the things that they have spoken about or, indeed, to address some of the issues that they have critiqued in opposition. The issue that many participants are having at the moment is the very significant change in rhetoric from the minister for the NDIS before the election to what the minister is saying now. Before the election, regrettably, in my view, the then shadow minister, now minister, sought to turn the NDIS into a partisan political issue in a way I hadn't seen any other parliamentarian do.

Back in 2013, the coalition and Labor government of the day, in a bipartisan fashion, established the NDIS. It was really quite a coarse and toxic political environment that the now minister brought to this debate by turning it into a hyperpartisan issue. In that time, he simultaneously accused the coalition of cutting the NDIS to spending too much on the NDIS. So consistency certainly wasn't his strong suit in these arguments. But probably most significant for the participants in the NDIS, before the election, Minister Shorten, when he was shadow minister, said, 'There are no sustainability issues with the NDIS; there are none.' In essence, he ran around the building saying that anyone who talks about sustainability of funding for the NDIS and its cost curve is somehow trying to undermine the scheme. Before the election, when he was asked whether he thought the scheme was sustainable, he said:

I don't buy that there's some catastrophic disaster happening to the NDIS.

Earlier in the year, he also said:

You can't move around the corridors of Parliament in Canberra without tripping over a Coalition Minister whispering the Scheme is unsustainable … I'm here to tell you today that is a lie.

Before the election, the minister, when he was trying to run a hyperpartisan and really regretful campaign that politicised the NDIS, he was saying that it's completely sustainable and anybody that says it is not trying to undermine it. Fast forward to the Labor government and their most recent budget, we now see the rhetoric drastically change. The minister is now saying that there are sustainability issues with the cost of the NDIS, and it's something that will need to form part of the government's thinking and, indeed, their review. Why is that such a significant breach of faith? In my view, the minister went to the election knowing he was sending a very strong message to those 500,000 NDIS participants and their families that he could, in some magical way, address all the problems and wave his magic wand to address all the problems in the NDIS. I suspect lots of people supported the government based on those promises. Now we see a completely different view.

The question for the government has to be: do they believe it's sustainable or not? If it's sustainable, as they said before the election, let's see how they plan to fund the expected growth in the scheme in a way that doesn't drastically change it. If they are now trying to use the review as some way to break that promise before the election, the minister should have the decency to fess up now because I can tell you that there are many NDIS participants and their families who are very nervous because the rhetoric has changed so drastically from before to after the election.

This is ironic coming from me as a shadow minister, but the minister still does sound like a shadow minister. He's running around critiquing all the problems with the NDIS, commissioning a review—a significant review in one case—without actually offering any solutions. Nothing's changed. The queues and the time that it takes to get into SDA accommodation have not changed. The minister's happy to talk about it to the enth degree, but he has been the minister for six months. Hurry up. Make sure the action meets the rhetoric.

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