Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will do so very quickly, because I would love to get this one dealt with as well. This one relates to the function of the agency. We believe that the bill includes the principle that providing reasonable ministry support extends before financial support and capacity building to include a responsibility or function to ensure that people with a disability can live independently and participate fully in the community. This function is broadly similar to the idea of systemic advocacy that is covered extensively in the committee report. We touched on it in our additional comments and we took on board very strongly the comments made by, for example, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Mr Graeme Innes.

So this amendment provides that broader function for the agency. In particular, during the committee discussion it strongly came up as the intersection between the NDIS and delivery of mainstream services, and the discussion very clearly highlighted that it was not the idea that the scheme replace services that should be delivered from mainstream services and that, in fact, there is going to be a need to do some negotiating sometimes with some of those mainstream services. So we believe very strongly that this will enhance the functioning and powers of the agency. I commend the amendment to the chamber.