Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

The government rejects many of the assertions in the motion, although—and I will come back to this later—I think, Senator Steele-John, we share a commitment to the NDIS and its importance in the lives of people with disability. I will speak about that briefly.

I want to start by reflecting on the role of public interest immunity in the way the Senate historically has sought to manage its business. This government is committed to transparency. I made a contribution in the chamber just an hour ago, running through our record since coming to government in responding to the questions that are placed on notice here in this chamber and in the estimates process, and also running through the statistics that you can observe from the previous government, who took a very different approach. Public interest immunity provides an important avenue by which governments may protect the interests of the public in the service of good government. The minister representing the Treasurer has outlined that the government has claimed public interest immunity over this document. Disclosure would prejudice relations between the Commonwealth and the states and territories, and the harm that would be caused is this: that disclosure would harm the government's ongoing relations with the states and territories on this and other matters—and these are important matters.

I recognise that there are people in this chamber who, on this occasion and other occasions, seek to dismiss the importance of public interest immunity. I question the motivation for this, particularly for those that are members of parties that claim to be parties of government. I'll just run you through the grounds that are conventionally accepted by the chamber: disclosure of cabinet deliberations; Commonwealth and state relations; disclosure of privileged legal advice; damage to commercial interests; prejudice to international relations; protection of personal information; commercial confidentiality; and prejudice to legal proceedings. These are matters that parties of government should think about when putting information into the public domain. People on the other side who wish to assert that these matters are not of significance should, I think, reflect on the consequences for our system of government and the capacity of governments of all persuasions to undertake the business of government in the public interest and to protect that.

Senator Steele-John, at the heart of your argument today is a set of arguments about the significance of the NDIS to people with disability. Labor is proud of its record on the NDIS. We created it, and, under Labor, it is here to stay. There are now almost 600,000 NDIS participants, and they report increased freedom and control over their lives to be in their community to work, to make friends and to spend their time as they choose because of the scheme. There are things we need to do to get the scheme back on track, and our core purpose in doing that is to improve outcomes for participants and ensure the sustainability of this scheme for current participants and future generations. It's why, since coming to office, we've invested in NDIA capacity, capability and systems to improve participant experience. As the budget papers outlined, this has helped reduce further growth in the scheme by $15.4 billion over the forward estimates. We've increased the number of people with lived experience of disability at the heart of decision-making in the NDIA. Fifty per cent of the board and 30 per cent of the NDIA executive now consists of people with disability. Our core purpose is this: we want to make sure that people get the help the system was designed to provide, and we are committed to doing the work to make sure that is the case now and into the future.