Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

We've seen this week some pretty remarkable revelations out of Senate estimates in relation to a major part of this portfolio—the NDIS. It's troubling that the minister is not here, but I will ask questions of the assistant minister to feed through to the minister for the NDIS, who, let's be frank, has a lot to answer for. This week alone we've seen that Australian taxpayers are funding an NDIS which is now being used to pay for drugs, as was outlined in Senate Estimates by the agency itself. Heroin, cocaine, narcotics—essentially, you name the drug, and it's on the list. That was the evidence that was given. This follows revelations that we saw in the past, of the NDIS being used for the procurement of prostitutes and of recently released prisoners using it to harass care workers within the NDIS. All of these problems are seemingly getting worse on the watch of the minister.

Let's recall that the minister came to government saying that the NDIS was tracking just as predicted, that anybody who spoke about sustainability within the NDIS was opposed to the scheme and that it was improper to raise those questions. In fact, the immortal quote from the then shadow minister for the NDIS was, 'You can't walk down a hall of parliament without a Liberal politician talking about the sustainability of the NDIS, and I'm here to tell you that that's a lie.' Well, all we've heard from the minister since then is that the NDIS has sustainability issues. In fact, he has spent his time trying to make an argument against himself, when he said in opposition that the scheme was entirely sustainable. Now, clearly, the NDIS is going to have sustainability issues if you've got a minister who can't control it and if you've got money going out the door for drugs, prostitutes and—to name a couple of others—a $73,000 car, holidays, and, to be frank, God knows what else. The agency itself said that up to $2 billion per year is being wasted on those things. I suspect that that's a fairly conservative figure. I suspect it's much worse.

There are a range of questions that the minister needs to answer: Why, on his watch and with his hand-picked CEO out of the Andrews Labor Victorian government, are these things being allowed to happen? Why are Australian taxpayers, who support the NDIS in good faith, being asked to fund a program which is being utilised for drugs and prostitutes? Can the minister now level with the Australian public: does he believe the scheme is sustainable or not? He seems to dodge that question.

How many NDIS participants have had their funds slashed, notwithstanding the fact that this government and minister went to the election saying that no plan would go backwards and that there were no sustainability issues? Why have plan-review wait times more than doubled since this minister has been in government and since his hand-picked CEO has been administering the scheme? How much cash is in the pay system that has seen a blowout of review wait times for NDIS plans? Why are we consistently hearing—it continues to this day—active review cases taking as long as six months, if not longer, to be resolved? Will the minister reinstate monthly summary reports, which were brought in by the former coalition government? What information is the minister trying to hide by removing these monthly reports?

Can the minister outline how on earth the government's going to meet its eight per cent growth cap when, at the first hurdle, it seems as though that growth cap is going to be missed? We saw that in the most recent budget, of which we're speaking about now. We're sadly seeing a scheme which is being totally rorted and misused and a government that's seemingly hapless in its ability to ensure that every dollar goes where it should—to people with disabilities.

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