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

We know what's happening here: the government are trying to hide their cuts to disability services. They're trying to hide the efficiency dividend cuts through giving virtually useless responses to these questions on notice. They were very cagey about their cuts to the NDIS in Tuesday night's budget. It's coming to light now, thanks to the forensic investigation of Senator Steele-John.

Seventy-four billion dollars is being cut from the NDIS, and you know what? Some of the tiny little bits of sugar that they've sprinkled around to other cohorts of desperate people who deserve far more are not kicking in anytime soon. They have to wait a few months. You know what's kicking in on 1 July? The cuts to the NDIS. As if it weren't insult enough to find $74 billion for some pathetic surplus off the back of people with a disability, those cuts are going to come in virtually straightaway and everybody else's meagre sprinklings of inadequate support have to wait. The priorities of this government continue to surprise and deeply disappoint me and, I'm sure, many people out there in the community.

So we're here today because they weren't properly answering questions on notice about cuts to disability services. That itself is troubling—the lack of transparency and the lack of respect in actually responding to questions that were very reasonable and deserved to be asked and to be answered. But this government hasn't responded properly, and now it's disguising the fact that there's a $74 billion cut to NDIS in the budget.

If you take a look at what else disabled people got served up on Tuesday night, there was a tiny, tiny increase to income support for young people and for people who are seeking work—tiny, $2.85 a day, almost insulting in its uselessness. Sure, every dollar will help, but it is so far below the poverty line. But you know who didn't get that increase? People on the disability support pension. The government didn't even have the decency to increase the DSP, but they certainly had the temerity to cut $74 billion from the NDIS and have that cut kick in from 1 July. It's absolutely shocking. I recall Labor promising that they wouldn't make changes to the NDIS without a co-design process with people with disability. That was an appropriate commitment. But where was that co-design process in cutting $74 billion? It did not happen. As Senator Steele-John has said, the disability community will fight these cuts and the Greens will be there every step or roll of the way.

This budget leaves millions of people behind, including people with disability. Budgets are about choices, and their wafer-thin political surplus is off the back of people with a disability. It's off the back of women who are seeking support in fleeing violence, where frontline services still don't have the funding they need to help everyone who seeks their help. It's off the back of people who deserved far more of an increase in the pathetically inadequate income support that keeps people jobless because they can't afford to get to the job interview, to have a decent shirt to wear or to be job ready.

This is a budget that just so deeply disappoints and leaves so many Australians behind. I thought that was meant to be the tagline. Well, you're not doing what you said on the tin, and I'm afraid people are going to notice. You can't really get away with it. When you have a wafer-thin surplus and inadequate provision for people who really need it, but you're failing to cut $254 billion of unnecessary tax perks to mostly wealthy white men, people are going to notice. Budgets indicate what your priorities are. Nuclear submarines—billions of dollars. Fossil fuel subsidies—$41 billion over the forwards. Billions of dollars in perks to property investors and moguls that are part of the problem and part of why housing is so unaffordable—$254 billion to wealthy white blokes who already have enough money and certainly don't need any more support. That's who is getting benefit from this budget, and yet you're hiding the fact that you're cutting $74 billion from the NDIS. I thought we had a change of government. We expected a change of policy and a change of approach. Do better.