Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 is an utter betrayal of the disability community and NDIS participants by this Labor government. The bill proposes the most significant changes to the NDIS since it started, more than a decade ago. What does it do? It cuts $14.4 billion from the NDIS. This is in the same federal budget that dishes out nearly $50 billion in fossil fuel subsidies; $175 billion in tax handouts for property investors; and over $80 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy, including every politician in this place, who are still going to get $4½ thousand off their tax every single year. But, at the same time as it is doing all that, this budget will cut $14.4 billion out of the NDIS.

We need to be really clear about what this bill does. This bill threatens the future of the NDIS and the rights of disabled people to live a good life. And Labor had the gall to create it behind closed doors and pressured representatives from the disability community to sign non-disclosure agreements. This alone says all you need to know about what the government thought the community would think of this bill and say in public. This is not a genuine co-design, and Labor knows it. This is a shameful silencing of the voices of those who might speak against the bill. But, as this bill shows, this government doesn't genuinely care about disabled people.

Not only has the government ripped the funding out of the NDIS; it is going to make it harder for anyone to access the scheme. If you're already on a plan, guess what. This bill forces every NDIS participant to transition from an old framework plan to a new plan over the next five years. What this means is that every current NDIS participant's future on the scheme is up for question. That is over 600,000 participants needing review. We already know that the NDIS can't handle the current workload, even with its current funding. It doesn't take a genius to realise that a $14.4 billion funding shortfall and an increase in workload for staff means that people are going to fall through the cracks and suffer. It is so blatantly clear that this is a thinly veiled attempt to remove support for people or just kick them off the NDIS altogether.

The government are going to restrict what supports are available through the scheme, remove provisions for individualising plans and try to standardise assessments. Disability is not standardised and should never be treated as such. Anyone who has tried to get the NDIS, or work with it, knows how frustrating it is. The NDIS is run on a bureaucracy-heavy business model, with endless hurdles and hoops for people to jump through. Just when you think you've cleared a hurdle, or figured it out, they move the goalposts. People are spending years of their lives crushed and exhausted by trying to navigate the NDIS. This bill will only make that situation worse.

I've heard from people in my electorate that are already feeling the weight of all of this. My office has supported a participant and his support worker for months while he has begged the NDIS to urgently review his funding. Through no fault of his own his funds have dried up. He is now homeless, a direct result of the housing crisis, which heavily impacts disabled people in our communities. We warned the NDIS that things would get worse if they didn't act to review his plan. His funding ran out and he was on the streets. Not long after that he ended up in hospital after nearly taking his own life.

Another is a mother whose daughter's communication device broke months ago. She cannot communicate with the rest of the world without it. Again, for months we have been trying to get approval to get it fixed, but she is still left with a broken device today. That means, apart from her parents, she is literally shut off from the world and can't talk to other people and communicate with them. It has been months. This is unacceptable in a wealthy country like this.

Another is a man named Jack, a disabled man in my electorate who needs round-the-clock care. He was being supported in his home by his mother until her tragic passing recently. When Jack's mother passed away, Jack's life changed and so did his needs. Since January, he has been asking for a review of his plan. Since then, there's been nothing. Again, we warned the NDIS that if his plan was not urgently reviewed he would run out of funds. Now, his support workers have had to stop working and he's had to move from his trusted home into temporary respite to survive, all while he waits for the NDIS to approve the request. To be clear, Jack's mother passed away. He already had to deal with the passing of his mother, who was also his primary support care worker, and now he has to deal with the fact that the NDIS still hasn't updated his plan to reflect the fact that his primary carer, his mother, has died. It's already deeply humiliating and awful to go through that.

How many more situations like that are going to occur if this bill passes and $14.4 billion of funding is ripped from the scheme over the next two years? My inbox at the moment is flooded with support workers and participants who are highly concerned about the proposed changes in this bill. These are people's lives. They are not numbers on a spreadsheet. We have already seen the ramifications of overwhelmed workers and lack of funding, and now we have a Labor government that brings forward a bill like this. To be clear, obviously the government inherited the scheme with serious issues. I think everyone in the disability community would be patient about the idea of going and fixing those and increasing funding and making sure situations like that don't occur. But the Labor government has literally turned around and proposed a bill that will make the situation worse and rip $14.4 billion out of the scheme, again, in the same year that this budget found $175 billion over the next four years in tax handouts for property investors and $84 billion in tax cuts for everyone earning over $200,000 a year, including every politician in this place.

What the Labor government are saying with this bill and with this budget is that they have chosen property investors and big gas corporations, who they are still not taxing properly, over disabled people who rely on the NDIS. It is needlessly and indescribably cruel. Many people on the NDIS already knew at the very least that the government didn't care about them. This rubs salt in that painful wound. With this budget and this bill, Labor have sent a clear message to disabled people that they do not care about their goals, aspirations or agency. That's not good enough. It's not good enough for the Greens and it's not good enough for the people on the NDIS.

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