Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Moore, for your question. This government has an absolute ironclad commitment to the NDIS. This government has an absolute ironclad guarantee to deliver the NDIS in full. And colleagues need look no further than the budget papers to see that the funding profile to deliver the NDIS is laid out over the forward estimates.

Colleagues will also be aware that the NDIS currently has seven trial sites. Colleagues will also be aware that to give effect to the full NDIS requires the negotiation of six bilateral agreements with states. The Australian Capital Territory already has a bilateral agreement in place for the trial site. It is a whole-of-jurisdiction trial, so this jurisdiction is already on transition to the full scheme. Western Australia, colleagues will know, is following a different path in relation to trial: there is an NDIS run trial site and there is a Western Australian government run trial site. There will be a comparative evaluation of those two trial sites, which will help inform the Western Australian government's decision as to how they join the NDIS.

So there are six very important, very detailed, very complex bilateral agreements which I am in the process of negotiating with those jurisdictions. Each negotiation, as you would expect in bilateral agreements, will follow its own path. As I indicated to Senator Siewert a couple of days ago in this place, because she raised New South Wales specifically, that particular bilateral negotiation is going extremely well, and I hope to have some good news for colleagues in the very near future. (Time expired)