Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is the most significant reform to national health and welfare services since Medicare. As you would expect, the NDIS is a Labor initiative—one which, to their credit, the parties of the right have been prepared to support. By 2020, annual NDIS funding will top $21 billion and account for a little over one per cent of GDP. Around 460, 000 Australians will be directly supported.

I recently visited a local service provider of long experience with the Hon. Jenny Macklin, shadow minister for families and social services. It is devastating to hear from my constituents, some of whom I looked after as children, that they fear they will be worse off under the NDIS. I have recently been recontacted by the service provider with reports that this will be the case—reports of families in my area suggesting that they will consider relinquishing care of their family member with a disability as a result of restrictions to respite care; reports of people with a disability having to pay out of their own pockets for any form of transport delivered by service providers; and reports of participants who cannot read or write being sent crucial planning documentation in written form, with no alternative form of communication available to them.

No one expects that everything will work perfectly from day one. These are huge reforms. But such failings and fears need to be addressed quickly and with a constructive, not a defensive, mindset. It is absolutely crucial that as a country we get this one right.