Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Fair enough—you are known as a shrinking violet of the chamber! I withdraw 'bloody'. To be a disabled person in Australia is to be born into a world where your voice is automatically counted for less. It is to be born into a society which still tells you that you're wrong and broken and that you should get out of the way of normal people going about their lives. The NDIS was created and conceived to help end that discrimination, to be an agent of change for disabled people and their families. It was conceived as an agency that would be guided by people who have a profound understanding of disability, of the community and of the barriers that we face and would work tirelessly to tear down those barriers and give us a voice.

There have been in its life brief moments where it has met the challenge, where it has been that thing which people have needed. But far too often it has become an agent of the very opposite. This drift towards a broken promise, this drift towards a broken scheme, will continue if the board is continued to be allowed to be treated as something to which people with no expertise but a good relationship with the minister can be appointed. We must block this legislation. We ought to vote against this legislation. Listen to the voices of disabled people. Do the right thing in this debate.