Gordon Reid (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. How are the Albanese Labor government's reforms to the NDIS ensuring that the scheme is restored to its original intent and participants are put back at the centre of the scheme?

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the saxophone-playing, Indonesian-speaking emergency doctor from Wyong, the member for Reid, for his very good question. Even though it was his birthday last Friday, he understands that the NDIS is changing lives for the better. We are returning the scheme to its true purpose. We are making sure that support gets through to the people for whom it was designed and that it's sustainable for future generations.

The legislation is currently in the final stages of consideration by the Senate, and I do acknowledge the constructive engagement with the opposition. If this legislation is passed, it's a significant step towards a stronger NDIS. The legislation does a few simple things: it'll stop the automatic top-up of participants' plans which are exhausted early; it'll create the architecture to implement the NDIS review's recommendations to put a total capped flexible budget in place for all of the participants; and it'll exclude supports that are supposed to be funded by other service systems or, indeed, supports which were never intended to be funded by the NDIS. If we're able to pass it this week, the necessary legislative framework to improve the participant experience will deliver fairer decisions which will be more transparent and more consistent. It will allow us to get on with the work of designing the finer practical elements of NDIS reform with participants, the people who love them, the people who work with them, and their advocates.

There are a number of amendments in the Senate contributed by the disability community, and we will continue to listen to stakeholders, including the states, the opposition and, of course, people with disability and their representatives. This has been a huge body of consultation. The review, which we set up after promising it at the election, talked to 10,000 people, took 4,000 submissions and listened for literally 2,000 hours. I've personally attended 18 town hall meetings, where I've heard from over 10,000 attendees. Indeed the first of the Senate inquiries went for 12 weeks and heard from 200 stakeholders. This is very thorough.

What I hope we can tell Australians who support the scheme by the end of this week is that we've got the foundation of a new budget-setting process, that we're also clamping down on fraud, that we've got clarity about what you can spend, and that we've also got the registration taskforce to make sure that we register providers so that we know who's actually providing the services. I commend the legislation when it comes back here, hopefully on Thursday.