Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I was in continuance on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Streamlined Governance) Bill 2019 when we were previously discussing the bill. I'll remind the chamber as to where I was up to on this. We, along with the opposition, had contributed dissenting reports to the inquiry into this bill. The bill changes the appointments and terminations to the National Disability Insurance Agency, the NDIA board, and the Independent Advisory Council, the IAC, from one that requires unanimous support from the states and the territories to a process where the minister can override the states and appoint his own picks, thereby allowing the minister to potentially, if a minister was so minded, sack the board and the IAC.

As I said in August, there was a Senate inquiry into the bill. The evidence given to the hearing and the submissions overwhelmingly recommended against the package of the bill, due to their concerns about the ability of the government to influence the independence of the NDIS, which is very important. The government has not consulted with any disabled people or their representative peak organisations in writing this bill, meaning that their first formal ability to have a say on this bill was through the committee process.

We heard from the disability community and their peak organisations that there was overwhelming opposition to the inquiry. Nothing substantive has changed about this bill from the inquiry and the deeply overwhelming and concerning provisions remain, and the sector continue to express their concern. We are strongly opposed to the passage of this bill, and we implore people to listen to the evidence from disabled persons and from their peak organisations, who are saying, 'This is not the way to go.' We're also urging the crossbench to support the wishes of the disability community, who are so clearly working to improve and want to see the NDIA be as strong and as effective as possible. That is the background. I thought that I needed to go back over some of those issues, since it's a while since we debated this.

The board has been filled largely with former corporate CEOs from the banking and finance sector, people who are good at looking at balancing the budget but don't necessarily have experience in what is necessary to improve the lives of people, particularly disabled persons, in our community. It is absolutely essential that disabled people and people with that lived experience are on the board, for a start, but people need to be assured that the board is making, and has the experience to make, the best possible decisions for the NDIA. I think it's fair to say that, to date, people aren't confident that the NDIA or the NDIS are delivering. My colleague Senator Steele-John has pointed that out extensively not just in this debate but in other forums and in other debates in this chamber. An example of this is the past CEO, Robert De Luca, who was the CEO of the NDIA until earlier this year. He was previously the CEO of Bankwest, which doesn't have much relevance to disability. I'm not for one minute saying that Mr De Luca wasn't very mindful and understanding of disability, but the fact is he didn't come from that sector and he didn't have lived experience to take to the position of CEO of the NDIA.

This government is making and has made decisions that, in our opinion, have undermined the NDIS. There are not enough staff. Staff numbers have been capped. Even though the Productivity Commission recommended that the scheme needed at least 10,000 staff, the cap was put in place. That was a mistake, because this is a massive scheme and we needed to get it right from the start. Unfortunately, we haven't got it right from the start. We've heard overwhelming criticism of the NDIS. We've seen that people have not been getting packages, that people have been getting inappropriate plans, that people are still not able to access their plans, that people are waiting for months and months to get a package and that there have been awful situations where people have passed away before they got a package. We've seen inadequate training. Planners are asking participants inappropriate questions about their disability because they simply don't understand. They're making really bad calls.

I can never understand and will never understand why participants are not able to have a look at their plans when they are in draft so they can consider them and provide feedback. The answer to one of my questions in estimates, not that long ago, when I was asking about participants being able to see their draft plans and not be forced to sign off on them without seeing them properly was: 'We could turn the laptop around during the consultation process.' For crying out loud! It is ridiculous, plain ridiculous, that some of those fundamental things are not being done. While there are moves to improve the training, it is still inadequate. When you've got people who are asking and are continuing to ask—we've had feedback not long ago, haven't we, Senator Steele-John?—