Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Worker Screening Database) Bill 2019. This bill establishes the legislative framework for the commencement of a national worker screening database for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the NDIS. In line with the nationally consistent way that NDIS workers are screened, this bill will establish a central database administered by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, with the assistance of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, in order to provide current and accurate information to registered providers providing support to NDIS participants, among others.

One of the principal purposes of the database for nationally consistent worker screening is to minimise the risk of harm to people with disability from those who work closely with them. The Council of Australian Governments Disability Reform Council agreed to establish a nationally consistent approach to worker screening in which states and territories would collect and analyse worker screening applications for the NDIS, and the Commonwealth would establish and maintain a national database. The national worker screening database will make it more difficult for workers with poor records in one jurisdiction to move to another jurisdiction and continue to work with people with disability.

Labor welcome this legislation because we know that people with disability are at a greater risk of abuse than others in our community. Too often this abuse comes at the hands of those who people with disability should be able to trust the most. There are many horrific cases of people with disability being abused and assaulted in institutions and in residential and educational settings. According to Disabled People's Organisations Australia, 92 per cent of women with an intellectual disability have been sexually assaulted, with 60 per cent of these assaults occurring before they turn 18. Children with disability are at least three times more likely to experience abuse than other children are.

The government says that the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework, including the national worker screening database, will be enough to protect people with disability. This is of course not true. While the national worker screening database will be an important tool to prevent abuse occurring in the future, it can never investigate the crimes of the past and will not cover other mainstream sectors, including health, education, mental health and justice. The voices of people who have been abused must be heard. That is why Labor campaigned for and welcomed the fact that there would be, finally, a royal commission—the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. This is a policy that Labor announced in May 2017. It is a critically important step for Australia. People will now, finally, be listened to and believed. It will be a difficult and traumatic process for many people and it will be shocking and confronting for us all, but the abuse of Australians with disability is a national shame. The royal commission must be a turning point for our country. It must lead to deep and lasting changes not just in the way governments and services work but in the way people with disability are regarded and included by society. Australians with disability deserve full and equal citizenship. That means equal opportunities in all parts of life, including education, employment, health, justice and civil society. We have a long, long way to go before we can claim that Australia is a genuinely inclusive and accessible place. This royal commission must play a critical role in leading the change people with disability and their families and carers have long campaigned for and deserve.

Of course, this legislation before us only covers people who are in the NDIS and receive services and support. While Labor welcomes this legislation for the protection it offers people, we know that this will not address the failings of the Liberal government and their management of the NDIS. The Liberals try to pretend their management of the NDIS is perfect. The reality is that the Liberals have ripped $1.6 billion out of the system, leaving people with disability and those who care for them without support they need. When the government's budget was released, the underspend of $1.6 billion was exposed. The underspend means that around 77,000 Australians will miss out on the NDIS because of delays in the rollout. The government are using the underspend on the NDIS so they can prop up their budget position. It's because of the government's incompetence in the rollout and their deliberate actions that we see this underspend, and they're doing it all at the expense of Australians with disability. The effect of this underspend is that NDIS participants are, on average, $20,000 worse off and that, because of the Liberals' maladministration and their lack of any leadership, people are falling through the cracks as the NDIS is rolled out. This is the consistent feedback of NDIS participants, providers, their families and states and territory governments. The very poor implementation of this scheme is clear from the state of the agency responsible for its implementation—without a CEO, with a mass exodus of its senior leadership in the past few months, a staffing cap that means longer waiting times and less access to services for NDIS participants, and a substantial lack of proper representation and understanding at the staff and board level of lived experience of disability.

We have seen countless examples of the real-world impact that the Liberals' cuts and neglect have had, including families who can only get a response from the NDIA or the government when they start a community campaign exposing the neglect, like Angus and his mum in Queensland, who rely on a wheelbarrow for transport on the family farm because Angus couldn't access a suitable wheelchair. That story appeared in the Courier-Mail on 1 July. A wheelchair-bound man in Brisbane with progressive spastic paraplegia was initially told that he 'wasn't disabled enough', despite being almost paralysed from the waist down. Again, that was a story in the media on 5 July. There are countless people with disability who end up in hospital because they don't have suitable NDIS plans. There are inconsistent and inadequate transport arrangements, like the cap on subsidies in Tasmania that will leave people with disability isolated. NDIS advocates and participants have voiced concerns as the NDIS is not equipped to replace the taxi subsidy in Tasmania. The transport subsidy, which the Tasmanian government will cap at $1,000 this year and then reduce to $350 from July 2020, was designed to complement the NDIS and to meet the transport needs of people with disability, especially in regional and isolated geographic areas. This has resulted in buck-passing between the Australian government and the state Liberal government, with the Tasmanian Liberal infrastructure minister, Jeremy Rockliff, telling the Launceston Examiner newspaper that his government 'stepped in to pick up the shortfall of the federally operated NDIA.' In response to that, a spokesperson for the NDIA, whose responsible minister is federal Liberal MP Stuart Robert, told the newspaper that 'NDIS supports were not intended to replace state and territory responsibilities for ensuring accessible public transport and community transport.' That shows how little regard both these governments have for people with disability and their families.

Labor wants to ensure that Australians with disabilities get the support they deserve. Labor wants to ensure that the NDIS delivers on the promise that so many Australians expect of it and that Labor intended, and that it improves the lives of Australians with disability.

We support this legislation because we recognise the importance of creating a central national database to store and disclose information as required on worker screening information, which is also, of course, about state and territory arrangements. We welcome this legislation because we know how important it is for people with disability to receive high-quality care. I commend the legislation to the Senate.