Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator McKim, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

It is in the public interest for the government to release all information related to the NDIS Financial Sustainability Framework and commit to making publicly available all recommendations from the review of the NDIS, with both critical in guiding the decision-making of government as to the future of the NDIS.

Today, I am proud to bring to the Senate a matter of significant importance to the disability community: the future of the NDIS. Let me provide some context for the Senate this afternoon.

Right now, as we sit here, the disability community is attempting to get from the government an answer to a simple question: what did premiers, chief ministers and the Prime Minister sign up to at the April National Cabinet meeting in relation to our NDIS? All we know is that those powerful people got into a room and made a decision on something called the financial sustainability framework for the NDIS. This was behind closed doors and we know that subsequently, in the budget, it was confirmed that it would constrain the expected projected funding pathway for the NDIS to about eight per cent annually, and that the government, on the back of that, would book $59 billion in savings. That's the single-largest so-called 'saving' in its budget. There was no detail on what the framework includes and no detail on how the government will achieve the reduction in the predicted spending trajectory.

The lack of transparency and detail was, from the moment it was announced—blindsiding as it was to the disability community—a source of extreme concern among that community. We here in the Greens have been calling on the government to own up and to release the detail of that framework from the moment it was announced. We want made clear what the impact of this framework will be, not only on the plans of the nearly 600,000 participants of the NDIS but also on their friends and family members—the people who they love—and on the support workers who work with them. What will it mean for them also?

And what have we had in response from this government? We have had gaslighting. We have had dismissal. We have had derogatory commentary from those running the NDIS. We have had an attempt from this government to convince disabled people that there's nothing to see here, folks; there's absolutely nothing to worry about, because efficiencies and more-effective administration will achieve $59 billion in spending reduction—nonsense! You are treating us as mugs and we are done with it, absolutely done with it.

The minister continues to express that the NDIS has become a 'life raft in an ocean'. Yet in recent weeks it has become clear that the Labor government's plan is not to build a bigger boat; their plan is to kick us into the sea. And we will not sit by and take it. We will not sit by while you plunge neurodivergent children back into the ocean. We will not sit by while you force disabled people with psychosocial disabilities back into the institutions, back into the absolute abyss from which we collectively liberated ourselves through the establishment of the NDIS. We will not go back. We will not go back to a time when our supports were defined by what people in government thought we should be given—what was convenient for them, what was efficient and effective for them. We will not go back to a time when disabled women and children were locked in institutions, unable to access their rights as human beings. We will not go back to a time when we fought day after day for basics like the wheelchair that we sit in. We will not go back to the time when we rationed the number of showers that we took per week, just so we could balance somebody's budget in Treasury. We will not. If you believe for a second that the disability community will sit by and let you take our NDIS from us, then we will see you at the ballot box.