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

I'd like to indicate to the House that the government proposes that it may suit the convenience of the House to consider the amendments in the following two groups. The first group is amendments (1) and (2), (4) to (48), (50) to (67), (69) and (70). The other group is amendments (3), (49) and (68). I move:

That Senate amendments (1) and (2), (4) to (48), (50) to (67), (69) and (70) be agreed to.

I'll briefly talk about the amendments. This is landmark legislation, and I am grateful for the effort of the Senate in voting it through today. It's fulfilling a commitment by the Australian government to legislate important changes called for by the independent review of the NDIS and following much engagement with the disability community, stakeholders and state and territory governments. The government has made a number of amendments to strengthen this important legislation. They're in response to the feedback, and we'll continue to listen once the legislation is passed, if it's passed, as the reforms are co-designed.

Specifically referring to a range of the amendments, in June the government took the bill to the Senate. We proposed 18 amendments to reflect the recommendations of the Community Affairs Legislation Committee. The amendments respond to recommendations made by the committee, including governance, whereby first ministers are also recognised as ministers for the purpose of category A rule making; consultation, whereby a consultation statement will be tabled accompanying the legislative instrument that sets out consultations undertaken on the instrument; and safeguards, whereby government will clarify the circumstances under which the additional powers granted to the NDIS CEO through the bill will be used. The final amendment headed off concerns about the ability of the assessment to deliver a whole-of-person budget deemed a benefit of the legislation for participants and government alike. In addition government introduced further amendments to the Senate last week. These amendments are a combination of strengthening scheme integrity and responding to feedback on the bill from the disability community.

The integrity amendments are adding integrity as a statutory function of the NDIA. This gives the NDIA the focus and authority to support more fraud and payment integrity work in the future. They're setting minimum requirements for payment claims. Basically, this is a form to be completed for a claim to be valid and paid. This will help discourage fraud. They're also setting a maximum time for a payment claim. A claim needs to be made within two years of being provided. It stops a loophole that we have detected where claims are made from so long ago no-one can actually verify if the support was delivered or not. Also, we want to ensure that a debt can be waived if a participant unintentionally or unknowingly breaches the acts or the rules. At the moment in the current legislation your disability isn't a special circumstance to waive a debt, yet clearly in some cases we have seen where debts have been incurred the participant has, by virtue of their disability, erred and for no other reason. So this prevents debts being made in the circumstance where a person's disability triggered the mistake.

The amendments that respond to feedback require participants to be notified which impairment or impairments they've met to access the NDIS for and be transparent about whether the participant has an intellectual, cognitive, neurological, sensory and/or physical impairment that meets the access requirements to the scheme. They will also allow it to be reviewed. I would like to acknowledge Senator David Pocock's contribution in developing these particular amendments to impairment notices and for engaging in good faith with the government and the community to deliver a good outcome for people with disability.

We are also going to seek to create an exceptional circumstance clause to the list of banned supports. This would allow a participant to buy another otherwise banned support where it's just more appropriate and cost-effective than a disability support. As a brief example, a vision impaired participant could purchase a Samsung Galaxy watch for $500 to use voice assistance to read writing. It's cheaper than using a support worker for $73 an hour to walk around with a participant. However, not every person should be buying Samsung watches with NDIS funding. It's about looking at the person.

There are further amendments following discussions with the states and territories this week to enhance co-governance arrangements of the scheme. These additional amendments were introduced into the Senate to contemporise the co-governance arrangements for the scheme. The arrangements that are being adopted reflect the significant number of forms required to the NDIS over the next two terms of parliament. These changes are overdue. Since co-governance arrangements have not been changed since the inception of the scheme, they modernise the approval process.

The NDIS bill will implement a number of key changes that will need unanimous agreement as the majority of changes will be made through category A rules. The states will need to agree with these changes to enable implementation across the country. These amendments include a newly defined category A rule that's subject to a dispute resolution process which includes an escalation model to bring disagreements to the attention of the Prime Minister and first ministers for resolution. Once escalated, the approval can be achieved not from a veto requiring the acceptance of every state but from just a majority agreement by states. There are also strict timeframes introduced for the prompt consideration of category A rules under the new process. There is a conversion of ministerial legislative instrument-making powers in the bill to newly defined category A rules, with exceptions for instruments that are required from commencement, which will remain instruments until the rules are agreed. There is an abbreviated process for making changes to needs assessed in budget-setting tools where there are no substantial policy financial implications.

The bill will also include scheme sustainability in the short to medium term and support the National Cabinet decision to achieve the eight per cent growth target. I acknowledge particularly the work of Premiers Rockliff and Malinauskas on this. The amendments mean the states will be required to develop a co-designed reform with participants, the disability community and the Commonwealth to give effect to NDIS reforms and foundational supports. I also wish to put on record the constructive negotiations I have had with the shadow minister, the member for Deakin, in trying to get a good outcome for people with a disability.

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

This is the culmination of a longwinded and, in some respects, tortured process. I know it was a suboptimal process for many in the disability sector. But, to touch on the minister's final couple of remarks there, I think it was an indication that, where the government and opposition start in two different places but come together in good faith and in the best interests of our country, we can reach agreement. We will be agreeing with the first tranche of amendments moved to this bill.

I said at the beginning 'a tortured process'. There have been 97 amendments to this bill from its inception, which fly in the face of claims from the government at the time that this was a perfect, fully formed bill, not requiring much attention, including their later claims that the work being done by the Senate inquiry was unnecessary and just costing the scheme. We've seen dozens of amendments flow out of that further Senate inquiry. In that respect, I want to place on record my gratitude to all of the senators who undertook a lot of painstaking work hearing from advocates as part of that inquiry and making up for the shortfalls in the consultation that the government undertook. In that respect, I want to thank, in particular, Senator Hughes for her leadership in that Senate inquiry.

What has ultimately driven the opposition to support this bill and, in particular, these groups of amendments is the overarching objective, as stated by the minister, to ensure a number of things, but, first and foremost, the sustainability of the NDIS into the future. We on this side of the chamber have been talking about sustainability for a long time. We have been talking about sustainability in the NDIS when it wasn't a bipartisan view, when, in fact, we had a lot of opposition from the then opposition Labor Party in relation to those views. We were very critical of the opposition at that time for not being constructive in opposition and for using the NDIS for political purposes. Because we had made those accusations of the Labor opposition, it would have been wholly hypocritical for us to have gone down the same path and used this for political purposes, which, quite frankly, I could have as shadow minister and we could have as an opposition. So, in the vein of not being hypocritical, we have sought to support the government in a number of worthy amendments to the scheme.

These are things that have been self-evident concerns of many for a very long time. I don't underestimate how hard it's been for the minister at times in facing down a lot of the unprincipled attacks, which, quite frankly, we faced when we were in government, including from the then opposition; nonetheless, he has faced those down. That's a credit to him for doing that. In that respect, we're very happy to support these amendments. These amendments encompass negotiated amendments between us and the government. For those people in the gallery and for those people watching—of whom I don't think there are probably that many at nearly five o'clock on a Thursday—there is a lot of argy-bargy that goes on in this House but also a lot of good work and negotiation that has gone on behind the scenes between my office, the minister's office and our respective leaders. In the amendments that we progressed with the government, we were very keen to ensure the integrity of the scheme. The minister used the term 'integrity' a lot. When we talk about the financial sustainability of the scheme, intertwined with that is the broad public support and acceptance of this huge amount of money, and nothing erodes that broad public acceptance more than some of the abuse and the affray that we see splashed over our papers on a daily basis.

That is why we were very keen to move self-evident amendments of what people could use their plans for—that doesn't include prostitutes, that doesn't include alcohol, that doesn't include drugs—things that we think build on the acceptance, we hope, of a community that this is a scheme that is changing people's lives and that is ensuring that government does for people with a disability what it should be doing. When you boil government down to its absolute barest, if government is not here to support Australians with a disability, what on earth are we here for? Ensuring that the scheme has broad support in the community will be enhanced by these amendments. That's why we will support it. That's why we will support the ultimate bill.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today is a very sad day for the disability community. They have been absolutely betrayed by the Labor government, a government that has broken its promise. The promise was that there would be no discussion about cutting the funds to the scheme. What passed the Senate today will see the most significant changes to the NDIS since it started more than a decade ago. This is a huge blow to the disability community, a proud community that deserves so much better from this government. So today I'm angry, I'm sad and I'm so disappointed that I will have to return to my constituents—people who I admire and who have come to me for help to navigate the already plagued system of the NDIS—and I'll have to tell them that this government has ripped billions of dollars of funding from a system that was supposed to support them.

We already know that the NDIS can't handle the current workload even with its current funding. It doesn't take a genius to realise that a $14.4 billion funding shortfall and an increase in workload for staff mean that people are going to fall through the cracks and suffer. It's so clear that this is a thinly veiled attempt to remove support for people or kick them off the NDIS altogether. They're going to restrict support, remove provisions for individualising plans and try to standardise assessments—mandatory assessments that this government is trying to make people, who will likely have had their funds cut, pay for themselves.

Disability is not standardised, and it should never be treated as such. We've already seen the fallout of this sort of attempt at categorisation in menstrual products being wrongly classified. The minister apologised for this mistake only after advocates brought it to the attention of the media. That's fundamentally the problem with the sorts of lists that they're proposing in this bill. They just shouldn't exist. They attempt to categorise complex human needs into bureaucratic tick boxes, ignoring people's needs, their experiences and their choices.

Many people on the NDIS have shared with me already the feeling that the government doesn't care about them, and this rubs salt into those wounds. Labor has sent a very clear message to disabled people. They don't care about your goals, your aspirations or your agency. The Albanese government boasts a $9 billion surplus, but, to be crystal clear, that surplus is off the back of the NDIS, off the back of every single person that has needed to access this support. The government should be ashamed.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is of the utmost importance to those who depend on it. It enables disabled people to receive the supportive treatment that they need. It's inevitable that any significant changes to the scheme engender significant uncertainty in NDIS recipients. We know that the scheme needs to change and that its cost has blown out to unacceptable levels. The disability community knows that change is inevitable. But the apparent haste with which this legislation has been put together, the lack of detail about the changes anticipated and the extent to which they have been left to the delegated legislation has resulted in insecurity, fear and even trauma to scheme recipients and those who care for them.

The minister has said in the last 24 hours that passage of this legislation will be 'the construction of the scaffolding' that will enable co-design to begin. That means that work will start now on exactly how needs assessments will work and how these foundational services will work. But the disability community remains apprehensive. After all, they are the people whose daily lives will be impacted by this law. The rest of us will move on, but this is their life. They may resent the NDIS. They may rail against it and against people like us who make huge laws with huge impacts on their lives. But they need the NDIS and many, many people say that, for them, it has been transformative.

Many in the community remain really nervous about this legislation and about the changes that have been made even in the last 24 hours—changes which will affect them every day in their daily lives. They say it's imperfect and incomplete, and I agree with them. They say that they are struggling to trust the process and in the government, and I can see why that is. It's not just the lack of detail in this legislation; it's the fact that the government has been so slow to respond to the NDIS review previously and then its recent inadequate response to the recommendations of the disability royal commission.

The co-design process is so important. It should have started months ago. The government should have secured agreements with the states and the territories on the nature of foundational services months ago. This legislation gives the government significantly increased powers over the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. In the absence of detail on how those powers will be implemented, of course those people are nervous.

I've really struggled with whether or not to support this bill and these amendments. The opposition is now supporting it, despite having previously criticised it and despite the shadow assistant minister for the NDIS saying, as recently as yesterday, that this bill 'will throw good money after bad'. The Greens are going to vote against it. Let's face it: it's easier to say no than to say yes. It's always easier to tear something down than to build it.

In recent months, I have worked hard with the minister, the department and the agency. I thank them for accepting the amendments moved in this House in my name and in the Senate today. Those amendments go some way, but only a small way, to addressing the concerns of the disability community.

I'm going to support this legislation today because I know that there is an urgent need to improve the NDIS. But I note that this is just the start of that process. The most important pieces of this legislation are not yet written. They'll be in the delegated legislation, and we will see them in tranches over the next few months to years. So I ask the many individuals, the carers, the disability organisations and the health care professionals who care about how that delegated legislation looks and how it will work to help me and my colleagues review that legislation as it comes to hand. Together, we will continue to hold this government to account. Together, we will continue to work with all sides of this parliament to make the NDIS better. I commend this legislation to the House but with reservations and with a commitment to continue to work to improve it as it evolves.

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

I'm going to briefly respond to the member for Ryan's intellectually dishonest submissions, which the Greens party has been perpetuating. She didn't actually go to any of the amendments that are in front of us, but I'm going to call out the lies.

The member, who clearly doesn't know too much about the NDIS—although she might have helped some constituents through contacting my office to help them—said that we are proposing lists and that this is a terrible new development. I have news for the member. There have been lists since day one in the scheme.

If you read the act, you'll see that it spells out that there are things which are the responsibility of other services, and then it says there are things which money should be spent on and things that it shouldn't be spent on. All we are doing is converting from an operational guideline to a regulation.

Furthermore, on the cowardly outrage fanning the flames of fear from the Greens, they neglected to say that the disability community, for the first time, is being consulted on the list. I note that neither you nor anyone in the Greens party in the last 10 years has ever complained about the list not being consulted on. But, all of a sudden, the member for Ryan has found her voice. What's worse about it is that the Greens political party put up several amendments, but they've been running behind those amendments—wisely, the member for Ryan didn't even bother—and accusing the government of getting rid of the concept of 'reasonable and necessary'. 'Reasonable and necessary' will be at the core of the scheme. I don't expect the Greens to have the honesty to withdraw the lie, but they're wrong; I've put it on the record. We will keep the concept of 'reasonable and necessary'. We're told by the Greens that there is no co-design. Under me, the NDIA has 23 co-design groups, and you're welcome to come and visit; I'm not holding my breath. So there have been lists.

The real debate here is that there are three options for the future of the scheme. Unlike the member for Ryan, I was there at the start of the scheme. I was there before there was a scheme. You weren't. There are three options for the future of this scheme. The first is to do nothing—to just let it keep growing at 20 per cent. That would be very dangerous. Heaven help Australia if the Greens political party were ever actually in charge of the NDIS. You would be a train wreck for people with disability. They say that this is a cut. Lies, lies, lies! Every year that Labor has been in—and, to be fair, every year that the Liberals have been in—the investment in the NDIS has gone up, not down. We want a growth of eight per cent; 20 per cent is unsustainable. The Greens are lucky enough to live in a world where money doesn't matter, where it just grows on trees—all things to all people. I love the NDIS.

There is another option to the Greens' neo-conservatism, to the 'do nothing' approach. There is slash and burn—cap it; we're not doing that.

The third option is just to make it better for the participants. I haven't been stuck in a traffic jam of the Greens and their white political limos coming to see me about their constructive future. They are willing to drive past the rorts, the frauds and the overservicing. When I proposed new regulations to make it illegal for a service to provide a higher price to an NDIS participant than someone not on the scheme—the so-called wedding tax, where someone sees the NDIS badge and ups the price—do you know how much correspondence I got from the Greens on it? Zip, because they don't know what's happening. Every time Labor proposes a change, they look at it through the political calculus of 'How can we gain a few more votes?' Don't shake your head. The reality is that the Greens political party lied about the standardisation, they've lied about the lists and they've told lies about cuts. The reality is that we want this scheme to grow.

Under Labor—and now with the support of the coalition, which I acknowledge—we're aiming at an eight per cent target. We do want to build supports outside the scheme. The Greens have very little to say about building inclusion outside. The NDIS is a great chapter in the history of disability in Australia, but it's not the book. We want to write a new chapter about foundational services working with the states. Heaven help us if the Greens were ever in charge of the NDIS, because they are dangerous.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That Senate amendments (3), (49) and (68) be agreed to.

These are amendments moved by Senator Thorpe. Senator Thorpe has proposed amendments that the government is willing to support. They amend section 127 of the NDIS Act to provide that the minister must ensure at least one board member is an Indigenous person. Fortunately, we've already done that, even without the requirement of legislation. We've got a great Larrakia man on the board with lived experience—Dr Richard Fejo, whom I appointed in March 2023. I'm pretty sure I never had a letter from the Greens on that.

I accept a future minister may have other ideas of who would be best on the board, but this is an appropriate way to ensure that the board always has Indigenous representation. We are pleased to support the amendment, which, as a recommendation of the disability royal commission, is consistent with Closing the Gap priority 1 to establish formal partnerships and shared decision-making. I acknowledge Senator Thorpe's significant work and contribution on priority reforms, embedding Indigenous leadership in the government's NDIS and highlighting the importance of culture in the social and emotional wellbeing of participants of the NDIS.

Question agreed to.