Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Streamlined Governance) Bill 2019, and I echo the remarks of my colleagues so far. This bill wants to change how we appoint and terminate folk to the NDIA board and the Independent Advisory Council. It wants to change the process from one where unanimous support is required from the states and territories to a process where the minister can override the states and appoint his own picks. Of course, this will allow the minister to stack both the board and the IAC. We've got some amendments to fundamentally change that and to say that, no, of course we should be respecting the input of the states and territories and that, in fact, we would like a majority of the states and territories to agree with the proposed selection. But we'll see how we go on that amendment.

This government has truly got form in picking jobs for its mates. The list of examples of that, particularly immediately prior to the last election, is longer than anybody's arm. Once again, we have a government that simply wants to tap its mates on the shoulder and slot them in and doesn't want any piece of legislation or this parliament or the states and territories to get in the way of its selection. I'll come back to the backgrounds of the sort of folk that it's chosen so far.

In August this year, we had an inquiry into this bill, and the evidence that was given in that hearing and in the submissions overwhelmingly recommended against passing this bill. The concerns, of course, were the ability of the government to influence the independence, or rather undermine the independence, of the NDIS. We usually have inquiries into bills to hear from experts, to hear from affected members of the community and to genuinely have a consultation process, but it seems that this was a 'tick and flick' exercise, because here we are, against all of the evidence given in that process, and this government just wants to put itself in charge and just wants to put one minister in charge of picking his mates to give them jobs. So I am sorry for all of the folk who took the time to participate in that Senate inquiry. I'm sorry that your views appear to have fallen on ears that are completely unreceptive to them. Yet here we are. This, of course, builds on the fact that the government has not consulted with any disabled people or their representative peak organisations in writing this bill—the same people it heard from through that inquiry, who, of course, overwhelmingly opposed this bill.

I want to note one of those submitters in particular. The Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance said:

The NDIS board, its advisory structures and its relationships with all participating governments must have direct line of sight to the variety of communities and cohorts the NDIS must interact with. The States and Territories knowledge of their communities and their services is critical to the eventual national success of the NDIS and must be retained in the selection process for these bodies.

We agree with the position of that organisation, the Young People in Nursing Homes National Alliance, and with a number of others that appointments—and terminations, for that matter—to the NDIA board must remain as a majority decision model, and it must not just be the minister deciding who's in his good books that day to give them a plum job.

The other point I want to make at this stage is that we have also proposed that the NDIA board have a legislated, mandated quota of 20 per cent of its membership being people with disability, and we want that quota to be achieved by 2021 at the latest. That should not be an unreasonable suggestion. This should not be a radical proposition that a body that is meant to be delivering services to people with disabilities actually have some people with lived experience in the decision-making roles. We have proposed that in our dissenting report. It's an issue that Senator Steele-John has a marvellous track record on, and I'm sure he will continue his advocacy in that regard. We will be continuing to push for people with lived experience to not just be consulted—the government didn't do that this time, and then they ignored them when they participated in the Senate inquiry process—but actually have direct input into the decision-making of this crucial body. We know that that 20 per cent figure would reflect the population of Australia who have disability. We think that for this crucial decision-making and strategic priority-setting body it makes perfect sense for there to be at least 20 per cent of the NDIA board legislated as mandated for people with a disability.

I mentioned our dissenting report. The Labor Party also did a dissenting report into the inquiry, and nothing has changed in the bill since that inquiry, those dissenting reports or the views of the submitters. Those deeply concerning provisions remain and the sector continues to express its concern. We are strongly opposed to the passage of this bill and we implore the opposition to stick with their dissenting position following the inquiry. We note that they have some amendments, which we support, that I'll come to. We also urge the crossbench to please support the wishes and respect the lived experience of the disability community, who are so avidly working to improve the NDIA. I fear that the government has the numbers to ram this bill through, otherwise we wouldn't all be here talking about it right now, but I would urge at this very last minute for the crossbench to reconsider, to look at the evidence that was provided in that Senate inquiry process and to respect the experience of people who live with a disability, who deserve top-quality service and not just a minister's mate heading up a really important body.

It's not just the minister's mates who are getting picked; it's the minister's mates in the corporate sector who are getting picked. You've probably heard the Greens talk before about the very cosy relationship between this government and the corporate sector. It is a very cosy relationship indeed. They scratch each other's backs. Plum jobs flow and political donations flow. Well, people have had it. They want their democracy back and they don't want this board to be used as a plaything and a toy for political favours for the corporate sector. If that is an incorrect assertion, I will stand corrected, but that is the perception of what is going on here. The government, if they want to avoid that perception, should drop this bill. The NDIA board should not be a province for the minister's corporate mates. I haven't checked whether they have made donations in the past, but considering there was $100 million of corporate donations to both sides of politics I'd hazard a guess that those very folk and their organisations have donated to the government and possibly also to the opposition in the past. I haven't checked those particular figures; I will go and do so. The key point here is that the NDIA board and the Independent Advisory Council should in fact be totally independent from the government to allow them to act in the best interests of disabled people who are participating in the NDIS.

Coming to the board: it has already largely been filled with former corporate CEOs from the banking and finance sector. I'm sure they're very good at banking and finance, but do they have lived experience of disability? Do they have that connection to the community and to the advocacy bodies? No. The government is deliberately standing in the way of that happening with this bill. One particular example is Mr Robert De Luca, who was the CEO of the NDIA until earlier this year. He used to be the CEO of Bankwest. I don't know whether Bankwest really have much to do with disability service provision, but I would find that extremely unlikely. You need people with experience and, most importantly, you need people with lived experience to be in these crucial decision-making roles.

This government is really doing its best, in our view, to break the NDIS. They have capped staff at 3,300, even though the Productivity Commission said it would need at least 10,000 staff. I acknowledge that we have an amendment from the opposition that would remove that cap. We will be supporting that amendment because there should not be a cap, and it certainly shouldn't be a cap that's one-third of what's actually required to properly administer the NDIS and to deliver the services that everyone in Australia should be entitled to rely upon. But it's not just the staff cap; there's also inadequate training. Planners are asking participants inappropriate questions about their disability simply because they don't understand, because they haven't had the appropriate training. This government has not taken the appropriate financial decisions to ensure that that's being delivered, and, not only that, there are also not enough services to go around, and that's particularly the case in rural and regional Australia.

Obviously I'm from Queensland and I'm going to share with the chamber some particular examples of where my office has sought to help people in regional areas, but far from remote situations, where they simply haven't been able to access services they've been funded to get, because those services don't exist yet. The first case of my office helping out was with a lady in Toowoomba. Her daughter, who is an adult now, had been housebound for three months—three months—because the NDIS wouldn't install ramps for her wheelchair. That was Linda and her grown-up daughter, Emma-Jane. She wrote, in great detail, to my office begging for help. We did what we could, and ultimately her ramp was installed. We are so relieved that that's the case, but she shouldn't have had to wait three months. Sadly, the examples don't stop there.

A lady in Toowoomba had been waiting for six months for a determination of the review of her NDIS plan. I want to read some of the email that she sent to my office seeking our help—and we certainly did provide the assistance we could to her. She wrote: 'I've been waiting six months for a determination of a review of my NDIS plan. I had a plan going, but as soon as my specialist placed quotes to request assistive technology equipment, the NDIS chose to put my plan into review. They promised me that I'd have my essential equipment, like my power chair, my shower chair, my hoist and my ramps, before the birth of my daughter, but instead of helping me they sent me to review five days after she was born. This was despite numerous emails from my OT and support coordinator detailing that my health was deteriorating.' Not to mention the fact that she'd just had a baby. 'I'd become so swollen that my skin split open and I got pressure sores from the inappropriate wheelchair cushions. I did the review at the Toowoomba office in August, as requested, and I was promised that I'd be reviewed within three or so weeks. They also told me that I should never have been reviewed in the first place and it was a mistake. They also made me redo my goals.' In February the following year she wrote: 'The review has not been completed. My support coordinator was told it had been sent on to the national review team before Christmas, but my health has deteriorated again in recent days, so I called them back at the Toowoomba office again. Yesterday they tried to tell me that I was not under review. Then another person decided that I was still under review and that nothing was approved. I was called by a senior officer from the Toowoomba office this morning to tell me that they are unreservedly sorry that I've been left under review for six months and that they'll fix it this coming week.' She goes on to say: 'The issue with this is twofold. Firstly, how did this happen? How could this be allowed to happen? And, secondly, they've told me that, because it's been too long, all of those quotes and the reports my specialist provided as to why my equipment is reasonable and necessary can no longer be used and must be resubmitted, so this means even further delays in getting approved. The new plan will be approved by those individual quotes, which will need to be singularly approved.' She goes on to say, 'This is just not good enough. My health is rapidly declining and I've been virtually housebound while waiting for the outcome'—I remind you that she's just had a baby—'I cannot keep living this way. What makes it worse is that the assistant minister to the minister told the office here that they must approve my AT in April last year. They disobeyed him. If the scheme is not answerable to the ministry then who are they answerable to? The scheme has major systematic failures.' That's the second example of a Queensland constituent who is already labouring under an underfunded NDIS. This bill does nothing to fix those problems and, moreover, continues the ability of picking mates to put them in charge of who sits at the top making these strategic decisions.

The last comment that I want the chamber to be aware of is from another Queensland constituent of mine, who makes the point: 'Under the NDIS there is little to no support for mental health conditions when it is not a primary condition under which the person is covered. This is an incredible travesty, in particular, as to how it relates to LGBTIQ+ people who've already heightened risk of mental health conditions and suicide. I know that the current Medicare system is inadequate for providing sufficient and affordable mental health treatment at the best of times, but when this is compounded by disability the need for more support is significant.'

Those are just a few examples of the real problems that people are facing that I hoped the government would actually listen to and start to fix, but instead $4.6 billion was cut from the NDIS in the budget. Because they were so desperate to win an election and to claim they were back in surplus, they are balancing the budget off the back of people with disability. They claim it's because there was an underspend when, in fact, these and so many other examples are due to delays, lack of services and the inability to use those services properly because of the huge bottleneck that's happened. That's not even to mention the fact that the IT system was borrowed from Centrelink. Gee, it's done so well there! There haven't been any problem with robo-debt there, have there, folks? So the IT system is compounding these other problems.

I've already talked about the fact that we need these systemic problems addressed and that we would like to see at least 20 per cent of people with lived experience with disability on the board, but I'll also now make just one final point. The majority committee report on this bill noted real concerns about the timing. The report said that legislative changes to the governance of this bill really should be postponed until the outcome of the review of the act which is being undertaken by Mr David Tune—it's known as the Tune review—and the review of the National Disability Strategy itself. It said the government should wait for that review to happen before making any legislative changes. That seems like a perfectly sensible suggestion to me, if you are reviewing not only the act but also the strategy. But here the government are trying to take away the input from states and territories and put the minister's mates in charge, probably with more links to the corporate sector because they made such generous donations to their re-election campaign. That's how things roll under the government. So not only are they moving ahead; they are actually moving ahead and not tackling the real issues that real people are raising with them about how this system is not working properly. Then they have the audacity to rip out $4.5 billion of funding from a program that was meant to be a real comfort and saviour to people. I hang my head in shame at the priorities of this government, as do so many other people around the nation.

I want to pay tribute in particular to the work of the disability organisations who participated in good faith in this Senate inquiry and expected to be heard and listened to and who haven't been, who've been ignored by this government, who don't have a legislative quota on the NDIA board and who, frankly, do amazing work every single day on scant resources, such as the Disability Advocacy Network in my home state of Queensland, who I met with, with Senator Steele-John. I also want to commend the patience of people who are living with disability and living under the NDIA scheme. You are trying your best to make it work, but bureaucratic hurdles are being put in your way because of the way the government have underfunded it and bungled the implementation and the rollout. I'm sorry, and thank you for your resilience. The parliament will try to fix this. Many of us in here do hear your concerns. They are valid and we will seek to act on them. But, at the minute, the government just haven't prioritised you, have they? Instead, they're prioritising the appointment process for the board. They want the minister to be able to put his mates in charge. They don't want to listen to the states and territories anymore. The states and territories can now give advice only. They can't have any input, just advice. This is just an apology on behalf of the Australian Greens that the government are so woefully underperforming in their duties.

Coming back to this bill, I say to the government: for heaven's sake, wait for the Tune review. Have some people with lived experience on the NDIA board, would you? It's not a crazy suggestion. Actually, what a marvellous idea it would be to have informed policy and genuine independence by not having the minister able to pick his friends to sit on the board. So we don't support the passage of this bill. We don't support diminishing the role of the states and territories in the decision-making process. We don't support the minister having unilateral power in hiring and firing members of the board of a so-called independent committee.

We will be supporting the amendments from the opposition about removing the staff cap; we think that's really important. I think there's an amendment about waiting for that Tune review; we support that as well. We have some of our own amendments that my colleague Senator Steele-John has flagged already, which go to the fact that the states and territories should still have input, and a majority input at that. With that, I again plead with the crossbench to please listen to the disability sector and to the lived experiences of people who are suffering under this system, and please don't rubber stamp this bill with whatever other side deal you've got going with the government. You should not be using people with disability as pawns. Please listen to their evidence and do not support the passage of this bill.