Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

One of the biggest groups amongst the 13.6 million Australian taxpayers who are going to benefit from Labor's tax cuts on 1 July is the hard-working people in the disability sector. The most recent numbers indicate there are about 398,000 people who work in the NDIS area. The vast majority, probably about 90 per cent, earn less than $100,000. Seventy-nine per cent of these disability workers are women and 40 per cent are casuals. Forty-five per cent of the people who look after our Australians with severe disabilities are over 45.

The award wage for a disability support worker level 2, which is one of the most common occupation categories, is 35 bucks an hour. Thank goodness Labor got elected in 2022. They've had about an 11.2 per cent movement in that award wage. They earn about $63,000 a year. Because of Labor's bigger, better, fairer tax cuts, they're going to get $1,292 extra in the next year.

If you're a disability support worker level 4, which earns you about $44 an hour, you're going to get approximately $2,000 in lower taxes. We're seeing that, for the disability sector, the vast, vast majority are very lucky that Labor has developed the tax cut plan that we have. The other group, who I haven't mentioned so far, are allied health professionals. Many of the allied health professionals, especially in their early years, don't earn much more than $120,000 a year if they're lucky, but an occupational therapist who might have been working for several years in the NDIS will get over $3,000 in tax cuts. This is all very good news, but this is on top of the changes we're making to the NDIS generally.

I do acknowledge that the opposition is making the right noises about working with us to improve the performance of the NDIS. We look forward to bringing forward the first tranche of the legislation in the autumn session. Our aim for the NDIS is to make sure that it's here to stay for future generations, that it is true to purpose and that every dollar gets through to the people for whom it was designed. We want to make the NDIS a more humane experience. We want to make it an experience which is less bureaucratic. We certainly want to evict the shonks from the industry. The NDIS was created to look after Australians with the most severe and permanent disabilities. What we will do by ensuring that it's true to purpose is, for the first time, to help start building out what we call foundational services, working with my colleague the Minister for Families and Social Services. The Prime Minister and the premiers had a real breakthrough where we got state governments to step up with us to provide services outside the NDIS. But one thing is for sure: if you're a disability support worker in Australia, the Labor tax cuts are the best way to go, and we thank you very much for your work for the disabled.

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