Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on this urgency motion by the Australian Greens. I say first of all to my colleague Senator Steele-John: bravo. One of the things that, as minister, I always sought to do when dealing with everybody across both chambers was to make sure that we told the truth. We didn't politically play games with this scheme—certainly on this side of the chamber—but I guarantee nobody on that side of the chamber ever thought they would hear the Australian Greens talking about the NDIS minister in terms of gaslighting and perpetrating a cruel fraud. That is absolutely the case, and I endorse everything that Senator Steele-John has said—not wanting to damage his reputation irreparably, mind you!

But it is time for some truth-telling, and the truth on the NDIS is this: it was created in the spirit of bipartisanship—in fact, multipartisanship. It should be one of the best social programs in this nation's history, but mistakes were made at its creation which are rebounding and causing significant problems today. Those mistakes were made by both sides of the chamber at the time. Before the 2013 election, it was implemented too quickly, so the largest social policy reform since Medicare was rushed, the agency literally had no staff members and there were no procedures or policies. That was the first mistake. The second mistake was embedded in the legislation, which didn't provide the federal government of the day with the ability to control either lever of cost: the number of participants or the cost per participant. That was deliberately implemented by Labor. We didn't pick it up at the time, but that was clearly designed so that we couldn't change their scheme. Well, guess what? It has reverberated badly on Minister Shorten and the Labor Party now, because they can't either. A bit more truth-telling—that's the second thing.

The third is that the intergovernmental agreements are fundamentally flawed. Yes, my side of politics implemented most of them, but the clear intent of all states and territories and the federal government in the federated scheme was that it was to be a fifty-fifty cost split. It is now, I believe, a split of somewhere over 70 per cent to the Commonwealth government and 30 per cent to the states and territories. And that four per cent cap for states and territories was a big mistake.

Before the election, when I was minister, I offered the hand of bipartisanship yet again to Bill Shorten. I was very grateful for his support for the two pieces of legislation—which I don't think any other minister achieved, and I did that in the time Bill Shorten has been in government—for protections for participants and the Participant Service Guarantee and safeguards. I'm grateful for his support—which was very quiet, but support nonetheless—but he chose to politicise this scheme relentlessly. When blind Freddy could have read the budget papers over many years to know what I said and what my predecessors had said—that this was a scheme in trouble and it needed bipartisan support to change the legislation in this place so that the federal government could control the scheme—Bill Shorten did what he did best. He had the rhetorical flourish. He used great invective, saying that I was lying, that it wasn't the truth, and that there was no sustainability issue for this. Well, guess what? There was. He knew it, I knew it, and the Australian Greens knew it.

Instead of dealing with the issue, he has had this 18-month review, which will not solve the problem. In fact, it sounds like so far it's finding the same problems that the previous 30 reviews found. At the moment, from Professor Bonyhady's statements, it sounds like they're really not going to solve the problem, which is changing the intergovernmental agreements, getting the states to pay their way and giving the federal government the ability to control the levers. By doing that, they've implemented—this is the subject of the Greens urgency motion—a sustainability framework which they are being completely non-transparent on, although they have admitted it doesn't actually exist yet.

Somehow, this mythical sustainability framework for the NDIS is supposed to reach eight per cent cuts, and that is what they are trying to hide—how this framework that they've agreed with the states and territories will make the eight per cent cuts and nearly $60 billion cuts to this scheme. There is only one way this government can possibly cut $60 billion in the growth of the NDIS budget, and that is by either cutting participant numbers or cutting their plans. There is no other way, and shame on you for not being honest and dealing with the problems that you helped create. (Time expired)