David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024. This is a really huge budgetary item. It is a very large program. On the first occasion I ran to represent the people of Lyne, back at the 2010 election, the NDIS was just a discussion point, with the disability system run essentially by the states. But the deal was put together, where the states would contribute their current disability services budget to the Commonwealth, and it would all be bundled together. The Commonwealth would run the scheme, and people with a disability who were missing out or getting inadequate service under the state schemes would get a better deal out of it. It went through before I was elected in 2013, with bipartisan support.

Everyone wants the scheme to survive and do well, but this bill and the sentiment behind it have a mismatch between what is spoken about and what the actual costs are. There are many people who are concerned about the increasing numbers of entrants that used to be covered by the Health portfolio now appearing in the NDIS portfolio costs. There has been a rapid exit from any disability care by many states, which were expected to remain and be involved in some broad general foundational supports, which the minister talked about after the last COAG meeting.

In the last budgetary figures that I have here before me, the revenue that the NDIA receives will increase from $46 billion in 2024 to $59.3 billion by 2027-28. There have been subsequent other appropriations announced since this was printed, and that goes to the issue that everyone is talking about, which is the sustainability of the system. I served on the NDIS oversight committee in my first term of parliament and at that stage it was some $20 billion for the whole program, but people were still being enrolled. There are far more people coming onto the scheme than was planned. The idea that the states still bear some responsibility for normal developmental and foundational supports is very essential because the federal Commonwealth can't afford to keep this exponential increase in costs. In the budgetary statements, there was also the insurance agency itself with negative budgetary appropriations in 24-25, 25-26, 26-27 and 27-28. The sustainability issue requires much more tightening.

What we've seen in my electorate is a pre-existing huge disability care network based around the beautiful city of Taree, because of very philanthropic minded organisations that were set up in the sixties and seventies. First disability education, then disability employment services and disability housing—all through philanthropy. The Machin family were at the forefront, and many other prominent citizens of the Manning Valley. A lot of people moved into that region because it was quite a stand-out. There were many places that didn't have those sorts of services and Valley Industries has grown exponentially with it.

Across the country there are many existing similar philanthropic based organisations that seem to have been washed away with the change to the federal funding scheme. A lot of new entrants, who provide disability services, have taken all the easy physical disability services and left the philanthropic, long-term organisations dealing with all the difficult and challenging cases. With the increase in budgets, however, some of the more difficult and challenging high-cost people are having their packages shrunk. Yet there are very generous packages for those that have simpler and easier-to-provide services.

The system will need a lot of financial reanalysis. The minister has spoken at length about getting it back on track, and everyone does want it to get back on track because if it keeps going at this rate it will become unsustainable and we'll have to go back to square one. I call on the government to start the conversations with the states and the NDIA to not just slow the rate of increase, which is planned and will hopefully save $14 billion from the expected increase, but to actually get a tighter control of the charges that are being charged by providers of care in the NDIS. A lot of my NDIS participants come to me and say, 'Before the NDIS, my catheters used to cost this or my wheelchair used to cost this, but now it takes me months to try and get something out of the NDIS to replace it, and the charges are double or more what I used to pay.' That's part of the reason why the costs are there. We're all familiar with the fraud committed by pop-up organisations that aren't doing what they're meant to do. All those things need to be addressed, but the fundamental thing is that a lot of the excesses for what is covered have been elaborated on by the shadow minister and by people on the other side of the House. We really need to pay much greater attention to things than just slowing the rate. We need states on board and we need to explain to people what's reasonable.

This side of the House is concerned about the stories we've all heard in our own electorates about people getting enormous packages and having weekends in Sydney or going on holiday and taking their carer with them, paying huge amounts for luxuries. Their quality of life is going to improve, but it's the essential and necessary budget that's important—not the ideal situation where you can get sexual services. You can take people on long holidays and you can do all these things that weren't really the intent of the scheme. Those are the things that we need to control, and also the criteria which get people onto the scheme. In my experience, there are many people who seem eminently suitable for the NDIS to me but they spend thousands of dollars getting all their reports together and then they get knocked back. But other people seem to have a different assessor and get on. I think: 'How did you end up on a long-term package when you already had the disability support pension and you've already recovered from whatever the problem was? Yes, you have an impairment but you've got onto the scheme over this person.' I don't know what it is about the criteria, whether it's the assessors or the genuine natures of the reports that are assembled, but there are many issues in the NDIS that we need to get on top of. Otherwise, we will continue this exponential increase in costs, with the states totally absenting themselves from early childhood development, where there are some children who may be on the spectrum, or who may not be on the spectrum. All that needs to be addressed. If we don't actually state that, we'll never actually make the NDIS sustainable in the long term.

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