Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The NDIS has been life changing for so many Australians with disabilities and their families and friends. Every day I hear of people for whom the NDIS has been transformational. It's enabled them to live independently. It's enabled them to pursue higher education. It's enabled them to take on paid employment or start their own microbusiness. It's enabled them to see friends, have a social life, develop hobbies and play sports. Mostly it's enabled them to live meaningful and rewarding lives with dignity and respect. So many people have really positive experiences from the NDIS, but, of course, that isn't the case for everyone.

The NDIS was developed after decades of lobbying from the disability and carer sectors, which were looking for a service scheme that would support independence, respect and dignity. They wanted a scheme where the services you were able to access were appropriate for the individual support needs, not some sort of postcode lottery.

In 2009 the Rudd Labor government, with parliamentary secretary for disabilities Bill Shorten and minister for community services Jenny Macklin, produced a shocking report into the state of disability services across Australia. The report was entitled Shut Out. It detailed how people with disability were shut out of education, employment, housing, health care, recreation, sport—life. They were shut out of meaningful participation in the community and Australian society. Whereas previously they'd been shut in, in institutions, now they were shut out, and the experience of being out of sight and out of mind was the same. The frustration and the structural and institutional barriers to taking control of their lives were the same in so many ways, whether inside an institution or inside their own home. Accessing the services they needed was a constant struggle. As a result of this report, the NDIS was established, and it has fundamentally changed the experience of disability in this country and the experience of disability services.

The NDIS now provides services to 660,000 Australians and employs over 400,000 people in NDIS related occupations. For those Australians with disability and their families, loved ones and friends, the NDIS represents an expression of their rights as citizens in this country to the services that will provide them with a fair go for a meaningful, satisfying life and to participate in our community. For all Australians, it's the comfort of knowing that, should they, their family or friends acquire a significant and permanent disability, the safety net is there for them. In its 10-year history, the NDIS has changed hundreds of thousands of lives for the better. However, there have been problems.

Some of those problems have been at the individual level. Some individuals have received packages that have been inadequate for their needs. Some have inexplicably experienced sudden cuts in their packages. Some have had to fight to get the services that seem very straightforwardly required, including having to prove and re-prove permanent disabilities. Many have ended up in the AAT in order to get what seems like very reasonable services, and I have a personal experience of that for a family member. Like many, I found that, once I'd gone to the AAT and they realised I would actually turn up and argue the case, the NDIA was suddenly happy to settle in the favour of my family member, rather than continue to a decision that might set a legal precedent. Every interaction is seemingly a battle with bureaucracy, with hidden rules, magic key words and endless resources to continue the battle against individuals with disabilities. And, of course, on a systemic level the growth and the continued growth of the NDIS in the absence of any other disability service systems has been unsustainable.

The NDIS is currently projected to grow to more than one million participants and cost up to $100 billion a year by 2032. Clearly that is unsustainable. The NDIS was designed to help the people with the most complex support needs, but it was never designed to be the total scheme for all Australians with disability. We now need to finish the job of building a more inclusive Australia.

We also know on a systemic level that, when there is a pot of government money, there will be unscrupulous operators, criminals, who will be attracted to try and take a share of that funding. We've heard horrific stories of people with disability being taken advantage of, manipulated and provided with inadequate or dangerous service levels, and there have been tragedies. We hear about the so-called wedding tax where, just like when you're organising a wedding, the prices for services are suddenly so much more expensive. We found unscrupulous operators would hike up the prices for services when they heard the NDIS was paying.

When this government was elected in May 2022, Minister Bill Shorten, the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, knew there were problems with the NDIS as it had been rolled out and was operating under the previous government. At the time, he warned that 'the promise of the NDIS has been betrayed, not yet fatally but still substantially'. He committed to reforming the NDIS so it would, as it had been initially designed to, focus on meeting the appropriate needs of the individual and also be a sustainable, reliable safety net that Australians can rely on. This government is committed to improving the experience for all Australians with disability who interact with the NDIS as well as for their family and their carers.

The work began almost immediately. The NDIS board now has more people with lived experience of a disability on it as well as its first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander board member. We have slashed the 4½ thousand legacy appeal cases that were languishing in long queues at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. People were waiting 18 months and more to have their cases heard. Many, like me, were successful in their appeal, but, when this was for disability services that they needed, that was 18 months and more without those vital services. We're getting more people with disability who are eligible for the NDIS and medically fit for discharge actually discharged from hospital. This not only was frustrating for people with disabilities stuck in hospitals at risk of picking up infections but also contributes to the bed block we see in hospitals across the country. We've established a partnership between the National Disability Insurance Agency and the First Peoples Disability Network to collaborate on the new First Nations NDIS Strategy and Action Plan.

Early intervention is one of the key principles of the NDIS and the world-leading Inklings Program takes us from a wait-and-see approach to an identify-and-act approach for babies and young children who may be neurodivergent. Neurodivergent babies will still be neurodivergent and they will require support but early intervention is crucial for a life with less reliance on supports later on and provides a chance for every child to flourish.

We also promise to make the scheme safer for people with disability and to tackle fraud, waste and overcharging, so that every dollar goes towards a better outcome for the participant, not someone trying to make a quick dirty buck. I know this is a point of frustration for many people who've had an experience of the NDIS and also for every Australian taxpayer. Taxpayers want their money to go to services for Australians in need, not to criminals and not to waste.

Minister Shorten has stated that in reforming the NDIS Scheme Act 2013 we have four goals. Firstly, that the NDIS provide a better experience for participants. Secondly, that the scheme be restored to its original intent to support people with significant and permanent disability. Thirdly, that the scheme be equitable. Fourthly, that the scheme be sustainable. We're coming at this from a number of angles.

In its first year the Fraud Fusion Taskforce that we established has investigated more than a hundred cases involving more than $1 billion of NDIS funding. Mr Michael Phelan—a former director of the Australian Institute of Criminology and a decorated former police officer—is now the acting commissioner of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. The commission will feature in a new taskforce, alongside the ACCC and the NDIA, to weed out those charging more for equipment and services simply because a person has an NDIS funding package. This is the so-called wedding tax I referred to earlier, but I don't want to trivialise it and we should call it by its rightful name—price gouging—which is an outrageous abuse of the government scheme and taxpayer funding.

We undertook an independent review of the NDIS, which was completed in 2023. Over a 12-month period the review heard from over 10,000 people across Australia and read almost 4,000 submissions. I'd like to thank those in my electorate of Boothby who participated in that review, whether they be people with disability, their family and carers or the disability workers, who I know had lots of valuable information for the review. The NDIS review was designed to put people with a disability back at the centre of the NDIS, restore trust and pride in the scheme and ensure its sustainability for future generations.

The NDIS review resulted in 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions including a range of legislative reforms to return the scheme to its original intent and improve the experience of participants, which brings us to this bill. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill packages a series of amendments that enable the government and the disability community to start improving the scheme. These amendments are needed so that the government and disability community can start improving it. The legislative approach taken is to establish an enabling architecture for rules and future reforms to restore the original intent, integrity, consistency and transparency of the scheme. These rules, together with all legislative instruments provided for in the bill, will be developed with all states and territories following genuine consultation with the disability community.

Collaboration with the disability sector on design is essential. This was a clear message from the NDIS review panel. It will be complimented by the design and development of foundational supports to assist people with a disability, including those outside NDIS. These foundational supports have been agreed with state and territory ministers. The 'getting the NDIS back on track bill' will provide clarity on who can access the NDIS. It will enable better early intervention pathways for people living with psychosocial disability and children younger than nine years old with developmental delay and disability. It will improve how NDIS participant budgets are set, making them more flexible and providing clearer information on how they can be spent.

Many of the changes to the scheme will be implemented through the new NDIS rules, which will be put in place following the initial amendments made by the bill. The NDIS rules will set out the details of how the scheme operates. The new rules will be co-designed with the disability community, continuing to keep the voices and needs of people with disability at the heart of all NDIS reform.

Importantly, this bill also includes amendments to quality and safeguarding, providing greater flexibility for the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission in exercising compliance powers and building on our comprehensive forward reforms. These changes will boost the commission's ability to undertake compliance action.

I know the concept of change in this area makes people very nervous, and there is certainly some misinformation circulating in the disability community. Minister Shorten has stated that the term 'reasonable and necessary' remains the core basis on which support needs will be met. He is committed to ensuring that the process is a dignified, person-centred approach; that the result should be a consistent, fair and accurate budget; that the assessment will look at your needs as a whole and won't distinguish between primary and secondary disabilities any longer; and that you will be able to spend your budget flexibly, because you know your needs better than anyone else. But you will need to manage your budget, and the NDIA will be clear about what is and is not eligible for funding. However, importantly, until the new planning rules and legislative instruments are made, current planning rules will continue with no change. This bill is the first step.

I'd like to finish by thanking the Minister for the NDIS for the important work being done on this scheme. The NDIS is life-changing. It's life-supporting. Many, many Australians rely on the NDIS on an everyday basis. We need, as a community, to have confidence in the NDIS. We need it to be financially sustainable. We need to know that services are safe and that they are quality. And we need confidence that illegal actors, criminals, price gougers, are shut down. This bill continues to do this, and I commend the bill to the House.

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