Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I was responding to an interjection. Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President: families that are involved in the NDIS, participants that are involved in the NDIS—families and people rely on the NDIS to be an important part of their life going forward so that they know their child will be taken care of when they are no longer there, able to care for them themselves. Absolutely shame on you, hiding behind this PII claim when you are undermining something that is the most important thing in many families' lives and many people's lives to ensure that they are able to participate every day.

They hide behind states and territories, saying the government's relationship might be damaged. Let me tell you what the problem is with the states and territories relationships. The Labor government may have introduced the NDIS, but they completely mucked up the design by protecting the states and territories from any increase in costs, saying: 'Don't worry about it. Just sign on, and the Commonwealth will pick up the tab for every increase in cost.' You know what the states and territories did? They said, 'Excellent; the Commonwealth's going to pick up the fees, so we're going to vacate the field.' There's no more community health speech therapy. There's no more community health occupational therapy. Teachers' aides in classrooms? You've got to be kidding me! There is no support in the education system. The states and territories have vacated the field. So, if those opposite are hiding behind a relationship with the states and territories, I'll tell you why they are hiding behind it. It is because the states and territories don't care about people with a disability. The Labor government introduced the NDIS, and this Labor government continue to give them a leave pass.

If the government were serious about sustainability, any conversation would include how states and territories need to be brought back to the table. They need to be shown a copy of the Constitution. You're big on the Constitution at the moment; maybe you can show the states and territories what they're responsible for delivering. That includes health, education, mental health—all of those things. Do you know a lot of people go on the NDIS for psychosocial disorders? This lot, when they got into government, couldn't wait to cut the number of services that were available through the Better Access to mental health care, because they don't care. It's all about helping their unions.

I come to this because we know it's not about making sure we have better services, choice and control for participants; they're trying to push as many people and as many providers as they can through to a union platform because they've got to give their pound of flesh back to their union masters. This is what we're seeing in their IR reforms. The IR reforms are almost a blatant attack on Mable, which is a horizontal platform that people with disability use every day to get support workers.

What those opposite don't understand is that it's actually a platform that people with a disability use to allow themselves to get into the workforce. Remember when it was called same job, same pay? It's now some loophole thing; clearly it didn't poll well as a slogan. What happens to people with a disability who have negotiated agreements with an employer? Say there's a cleaner who takes a third or two-thirds longer to provide that service and a company is now forced to pay someone with a disability and a cleaner without a disability the same. Do you know what's going to happen? The person with a disability is going to lose their job. But they don't care about that over there, because that person is probably not a member of a union. They don't care. They will continue to hide.

We keep seeing these media drops, and they're going to start excluding conditions. Is autism out? Are we going to start doing something about just cutting out autism? We know what Minister Shorten wanted originally. Rather than looking at taking data from the early childhood pathway and looking at functional assessments like Vineland and the Mullen scale to actually determine what level of assistance a child needs and whether or not, in a very objective way, you can say to a family, 'You've made great gains, and your child does not have a permanent lifelong disability, so we can move them off the scheme,' these guys have no interest. They have no understanding and no capability to manage this scheme, which they built. All credit to the scheme; it's absolutely life changing for people. But they mucked it up in its implementation and they're continuing to destroy it.

Question agreed to.