Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

to you and to my husband, who I can't answer the call from! They have also continually underspent to prop up what they describe on the macro scale as their budget bottom line. They have left vulnerable Australians, in the course of that action, tangled in a nightmare of red tape and dysfunction. This reality cannot be allowed to continue. The horror stories of the NDIS under the watch of this government, now in its third term of office, cannot continue. There must be change. This poorly named 'streamlined governance' bill is wholly inadequate to the task.

There's a young boy with cerebral palsy in Tennant Creek who was forced into out-of-home care after the NDIA withdrew his funding. This is not a story from a time past; this is happening right now, in our time, on our collective watch as Australians under the failure of leadership and miserly containment of the NDIS that is characteristic of this government over the last six years. There's a young girl of seven in my duty electorate of Robertson, on the Central Coast, who was refused any NDIS plan despite a clear diagnosis of autism, leaving her without support for weeks and forcing her family, already trying to do the very best for their young daughter, to engage in a process of appeal. A young boy in Queensland had to be pushed around his family farm in a wheelbarrow because the NDIS delayed granting him a wheelchair, despite his mother spending hundreds of hours on the phone to the NDIS. In Minister Stuart Robert's own seat a mother, Shannon Manning, has been refused support for herself and her children again and again by the NDIS and was unable to even get a wheelchair for her daughter. These are the people that the NDIS should be looking after. These are the people that the NDIS should be supporting. These are the people that ordinary Australians around the country believe the government is supporting. But as soon as you start to look behind the veil of 'we support the NDIS' that we hear from those in the government you see failure after failure.

I acknowledge the ongoing effort and hard work of my colleague in the other place, the shadow minister for the NDIS, Mr Bill Shorten, who has been doing what this government refuses to do. He has been out meeting families in forums across the country, hearing their stories and advocating for them, doing the work that should have been done by the department support and the agency support that should have been set up by this government. Six years of neglect is what Mr Shorten is trying to clean up. At one of these forums on the Central Coast, just last month, we heard from families who have had to borrow money from a lender to buy groceries to feed their family, because they needed to use the money that they would normally pay for groceries to pay for the reports necessary for their NDIS assessment for their child. I don't know about you, but I think most Australians would think that is a disgraceful thing to have happening in our time. The NDIS is about supporting people, not forcing families under huge financial pressure and subject to wage stagnation and job insecurity to spend their grocery money to comply with really arbitrary, difficult government processes that build a barrier between them and the NDIS that they richly deserve.

Labor created the NDIS. We heard all the weasel words on the other side—'Yeah, we support it too'—but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this government is not delivering anything like the support that is required to make this program a national success and an international beacon of Australia's capacity to care for the most vulnerable. That is our first responsibility as human beings. It is absolutely our responsibility as legislators and leaders in this country to deliver the care that is required. Labor created the NDIS, and Labor will always protect it from Liberal and National party cuts and mismanagement. There are an estimated 460,000 people who will be using the NDIS at full rollout. This system needs to work, or the lives of those who receive it will be at risk. The families who support them as units are at risk. Indeed, we have heard, and it has been documented in the public space by the fourth estate, our colleagues in the media, that people have died as a consequence of the failure of the NDIS to provide them with their urgent needs. Implementing a scheme is not always easy, and teething problems can be expected in any major policy rollout, but they are made worse by chronic underfunding, by delays, by short-term management techniques and by the disingenuous action that I think characterises this government's response to the challenge of rolling out the NDIS.

Critical to the NDIS is the work that the NDIA does in support of it, and the NDIS can only roll out properly when the NDIA has stable and dedicated leadership. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Streamlined Governance) Bill 2019, which is the subject of discussion here in the Senate today, amends the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 to alter governance arrangements between the Commonwealth and the states and territories regarding rule-making and decision-making under the NDIS Act. It also mandates that any appointments to the NDIS Independent Advisory Council would be made with the agreement of the majority of jurisdictions—the Commonwealth and the host jurisdictions—rather than the Commonwealth and all states and territories, as applies now. Labor does not support the introduction of the term 'host jurisdictions', because it fails to acknowledge the central role that states and territories play in governance of the NDIA and the important financial and policy contribution they make to the scheme. I am concerned that the changing agreement requirements might reduce the participation of states and territories in important governance decisions with the board and the advisory council. This is about Australia. Everybody has to be invested in it, and certainly the states and territories have to be highly invested in it.

This bill comes less than a month before the Liberals and Nationals announce the findings of a full review of the NDIS Act and rules, which will focus on streamlining the NDIS processes, with scope to consider the NDIS governance arrangements that are subject to this bill. There have now been 20 reviews already conducted into the NDIS. We don't have time for more reviews. There's no need for further review. Action must be taken by this government on the myriad of issues already identified in the system by participants, carers and service providers. If this government is genuinely serious about the current review, it should wait until the review is complete before this bill is passed so that the NDIS Act and rules can be considered alongside any findings that may impact governance arrangements and the broader policy context. This is why Labor will move an amendment to the motion for the second reading of this bill to defer further consideration until after the findings and recommendations. I support amending the motion in the terms that Labor will advance. If this amendment is not successful, Labor will be very concerned about any implications of the government's management of this bill in an ongoing way.

This bill won't stop the farcical lack of leadership in the NDIA, where the coalition failed to instil a new CEO, leaving the agency leaderless for 170 days, and it comes on the heels of an exodus of senior executives, with four leaving in the space of seven days in July this year. When Labor left government in 2013, it left a healthy framework and a rollout plan. Instead, despite being six years into the rollout, the government is still unwilling to iron out access problems and has claimed the $4.6 billion underspend as a victory for their budget bottom line. So let's be clear about what's going on with the cases that I described in my opening remarks—the cases of families having to go and borrow money to be able to feed themselves so that they can pay for the reports to have their child considered eligible for the NDIS, and the delays, the interruptions and the appeals. That process has been so well rolled out by this government that it saved the government $4.6 billion, and they think that's good. I tell you what: the families that needed the money five years ago and still needed it a month ago don't think it's good, and I don't think they'll think it's great that that $4.6 billion, which could have been part of it and could have been helping them, is now being banked by this government and advertised all over the country as a great outcome.

Debate interrupted.