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

I would like to echo the sentiment shared by Senator Steele-John. I can assure you, as long as I'm standing here, the coalition will also be standing up for people with disability, participants on the NDIS and their families. This is absolutely shameful—a request for documents that would apparently damage the relationship between the states and territories? Some of us that have been around the NDIS space for a while know that former prime minister Julia Gillard gave a leave pass to every single state and territory government to absolutely abandon the playing field when it came to disability services that are supposed to be developed, produced and rolled out by state governments. Instead, they have vacated the field. They have left everything to the sole responsibility of the NDIS. I know this because community health services stopped for my son because he had a diagnosed disability. We were told we had to go to the NDIS. The NDIS didn't exist in the rural and regional town we lived in, but that didn't matter. The community health run by the New South Wales state government told us we could no longer access those services because of a diagnosed disability. It was shameful. You can only imagine the phone calls I made about that, and it was rectified for children across the Hunter-New England region. That's no longer the case—or it certainly wasn't 10 years ago.

It is absolutely disgraceful from a government that came to power claiming they'd be transparent and as opaque as possible when it came to the people who are the most vulnerable in our society. This government owes absolutely every NDIS participant and their family an apology. You are out there espousing, as a government, that there are savings to be made, that the growth will be capped. We don't know how. Are you going to start chucking people off? Are you going to start excluding disabilities? How is this going to be made possible? Apparently you know, because there is agreement between the state and the Commonwealth. But you are too cosied up and buddied up to be honest and up-front with people with a disability. Shame on you.

This is beyond disgraceful. But if we ever needed to see what a shambles this government is, and how much disrespect they have for this chamber—because they constantly show it—it is the fact that their depth of talent is so shallow that we have four ministers in this place and at the moment we have only one in the building. They are so incompetent and so incapable of treating not only this chamber but the Australian people with any respect. They govern for their union mates and themselves and nobody else. They certainly don't govern for people with a disability. They do not govern for people with NDIS plans, nor support their families. They are a disgrace. They should own up to the disgrace.

I look forward to standing up with Senator Steele-John—which is a very unusual partnership—to continue demanding these documents and anything else that will give certainty to those in our community who are most vulnerable. No wonder none of you can look up. No wonder no-one sitting in this chamber is from the government side. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.