Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The elected officers of members of parliament do a lot of individual work for people in our electorates—people struggling with Centrelink, the ATO or aged care. If things go wrong with the front line of services, our offices know—we all know; every MP in this parliament knows—what is happening at the front line, so there should be no claims of 'I didn't know' from MPs when it comes to the failure of this government to manage the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The delays, the inaction, the understaffing and the stress on people with disabilities, their families and their carers are visible to us all.

Let's look at what's going on here. The federal government's much heralded 2019-20 budget surplus will be boosted by a $1.6 billion underspend on the NDIS. In the 2014 budget—way back then—the Abbott government introduced a 3,000 person cap on direct employees of the NDIA, although the original plan was to employ about 10,000. It has risen slightly since then, but, still, enormous amounts of money are going to outsourcing the skills that we need in this incredibly vital area. At the end of last year, 32,425 NDIS participants had lodged formal complaints about the NDIA. That's 6.5 per cent of all people who have sought access to the scheme. According to research from National Disability Services, the failure in implementation of the NDIS means one in 10 disability service providers have discussed closing, 28 per cent of service providers made a loss or deficit, and more than half, or 54 per cent, of Australian disability providers say they will have to reduce the quality of services under the current pricing model. And the NDIS is struggling even though it's only servicing about 244,000 Australians, when it was designed to support 460,000 Australians.

I want to move to one example in my electorate—one of many. One constituent in my electorate ran out of money in her plan in February. She has high needs and three carers, so she applied for a review of her plan. The review took until April. During that time, her three carers worked unpaid because they couldn't just leave her at home unable to get out of bed or eat. They took care of her for three months, building up back pay of $34,000 which the NDIS promised to pay. Now, in July, they still haven't been paid, in spite of several approaches to NDIA, and there is desperation on their part, as they are not exactly highly paid workers and are $34,000 out of pocket from February to April this year. My office made the first inquiry on 12 July. We've made two follow-ups since then and we haven't had a response either. That's not unusual at the moment because the responses have blown out—to 59 days in one case. Everyone on the government members' side knows what is happening in their electorate, and I urge you to talk to your colleagues about fixing this.