Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Since the beginning of this year my office in Shortland has received over 100 calls about NDIS failures under this government. The people in my electorate are fed up with being constantly denied information and waiting in endless queues for care they are entitled to receive. This government has turned the philosophy of the NDIS from 'choice and control' to 'reasonable and necessary'. The NDIS was meant to give agency back to Australians with disabilities, the chance to choose, when it came to their care. Instead, in its bungled rollout of this scheme, this government has left people feeling hopeless rather than empowered.

Take Mr Carlos Morrow, for example, a bilateral amputee who has recently undergone self-funded surgery at a personal cost of over $35,000. Mr Morrow underwent this procedure because he wanted to keep working and contributing to society. But the prosthetic leg and wheelchair he needs from the NDIS are nowhere to be seen. He's been trying to get a new leg for over two years and it's nowhere in sight. These issues should be taken seriously by the NDIA and they should be clear to recipients about the status of their claims. Unfortunately, people who ask about them are greeted with the same answer. They are told: 'Under section 100 of the NDIS Act 2013 there is no legislated time frame to make an internal review decision. However, this agency will endeavour to make a decision as soon as it is operationally practicable.' There is no accountability or transparency and, as a result, I and many of my Labor colleagues deal with individual claims daily.

Today the government got up in question time and sought to lecture us about aspiration. That must sound a bit rich to people like Carlos Morrow. The message from this government is clear: aspiring to make more money for the big four banks is fantastic, but if your aspiration is simply to have choice and control over your own life they can't help you.

The truth is that the NDIS is a fantastic concept that every single member of parliament supports, but problems have been rife in its implementation. We've seen issues around plans. If you're a great advocate or you've got a great advocate working with you, you can get a plan that suits your life and gives you some control over your life, but if you don't have that, if you come from a less privileged background or have less information, you are faced with a cookie-cutter approach. Even if you get the plan that you want, the plans are subject to annual reviews that change it, and the process of reviewing those plans is incredibly problematic and complicated. I know of one constituent who had to put in a 27-page rebuttal to the review of their family member's plan.

If we're serious about the NDIS empowering the lives of so many Australians with a disability, we must get it right. We must give them clear choices, and we must empower them rather than get them mired in endless bureaucracy that disempowers them and reduces the quality of their life.