Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The NDIS is so difficult to navigate, especially at the appeals and review stages—so difficult, in fact, that there are dedicated community advocacy groups that have been set up to assist. Because these groups are so underfunded and the demand is so high, many people with disability and their families are being left alone to navigate this complex bureaucracy. They're essentially having to beg for choice and control and for their medical evidence to be taken into account. It is exhausting for individuals with disability and their carers and relatives, who are already dealing with the challenges of daily life with disability. In so many instances, the NDIS is providing no updates to my constituents and no accountability for the turnaround time, especially in change-of-circumstance applications. My team should not have to ring up the minister's office or MASCO because a case has dragged on for so long that it has become an urgent and imminent welfare threat.

This bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024, proposes the most significant changes to the NDIS since it started more than a decade ago. Understandably, the disability community and NDIS participants, along with families, carers and NDIS workers, are concerned about the changes being proposed. Let's discuss this bill in the context of Labor's latest budget—a budget where the government has chosen to prioritise giving handouts to fossil fuel companies, weapons manufacturers and countless other megacorporations, and, at the same time, has chosen to gut money from NDIS participants to the tune of $14.4 billion. We have a government carrying on about the budget surplus while slashing funds from Australians with disability. It is absolutely shameful.

This bill is Labor's thinly-veiled foundation for future NDIS cuts. The NDIS is already struggling, with my constituents genuinely fearful of how much worse waiting times can get and funding cuts will blow out. This bill was created behind closed doors, with representatives of the disability community forced to sign nondisclosure agreements. The government is so concerned about its terrible plans for the NDIS becoming public that it made people, under fear of prosecution, sign nondisclosure agreements. How is this genuine co-design?

This bill intends to transition every NDIS participant from an old framework plan to a new framework plan over the next five years. The supports that are working so well for people, whether that's support to be active community members, go to work, help in their homes—so much more would be put back in the hands of agency staff. Essentially, this means each and every NDIS participant's future on the scheme is in question. This bill will make it easier for bureaucrats to prevent people from accessing the NDIS. It will also make it easier for bureaucrats to remove people from the scheme entirely. This bill is set to prescribe specifics of what you can and can't get from the NDIS, which is in and of itself an incredibly significant change from the original intention of the NDIS.

The NDIS is supposed to be a scheme that enables each individual disabled person to achieve their goals. But here we have Labor trying to return us to the days of disabled people's lives being dictated by out-of-touch politicians. This bill will see a restriction of support available through the scheme. It will limit the ability to have NDIS plans that are based on individual needs, and it will replace 'reasonable and necessary' with a new single definition of 'NDIS supports'—supports that meet a narrow, new definition.

This bill attempts to set up a way of pushing people off the NDIS into supports it suggests will be provided by states and territories. The reality, however, is there is no possible way the states and territories can provide those supports in time, especially not in a way that is nationally consistent and that will guarantee no disabled person becomes worse off under Labor's NDIS plan. Removing people from the scheme to services that don't yet exist is outrageously poor planning with obviously harmful consequences.

One of the most concerning aspects of this bill is the precedent it sets for future cuts and changes. This bill will enable the agency to make significant changes to the scheme in the future without community consultation. The Greens acknowledge the second reading amendment from Mr Sukkar and support the call to release the modelling that underpins the NDIS Financial Sustainability Framework and to provide a detailed outline of the inevitable cuts participants should expect as a result of these changes. I, along with my colleagues in the Senate, have been calling on the government to release this framework for matter of months, but the Labor government has been unwilling to provide transparency to this parliament or to the Australian people.

Despite the Greens' support for the release of these documents, we are not able to support the overall amendment. The Greens will actively participate in the inquiry into this bill and we will be bringing forward significant amendments to this legislation. But, as the bill stands, the Greens will not support Labor choosing to cut support to disabled people.

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