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

I too rise to speak on the Disability Services and Inclusion Bill 2023 and its associated bill. I will start by saying I endorse many of the things that my Greens colleague Senator Steele-John has said here today. While we don't agree on many issues, I think many of the things that Senator Steele-John—as well as Senator Ruston and others—has said on this ring true. They resonate powerfully with me and, I know, with many others. While we look at things through very different philosophical frameworks, one could argue that the Australian disability strategy and the NDIS, as a policy and a program, are fundamentally very liberal. I say that because the NDIS and the Australian disability strategy, which Senator Ruston, as Minister for Families and Social Services, and I, as NDIS minister, were proud to implement, go to the heart of one of the things Senator Steele-John has been talking about today—that is, inclusion. As Liberals, we look at it as the right of all individuals to realise their own life aspirations and to have power, control and responsibility over their own lives.

As the NDIS minister, I came to learn about the history of how this nation has treated people with disability in previous years, and still there are echoes of this today—far too loud echoes of a time when we looked at people with disability as people not to include in mainstream society but to define by their disability, not to define them and support them in line with their many abilities. People, particularly those with serious and permanent disability, were locked away. Parents were told that the only option for them was not education or supports to help them realise their own aspirations, to have self-control over their lives and the course of their lives and to have the dignity of risk.

We have a shameful history, looking back, of institutionalisation of people with disabilities, where many were isolated and had their lives defined by their disabilities, and they were not supported, either, as they should have been. Too many were subject to coercive controls, physical and chemical. Shamefully, that still continues today. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people with disabilities who have been forcibly sterilised, who have been involuntarily subject to birth control and who still do not get the supports they need to realise their own life aspirations and to be included in our society.

Much has changed since the current act was legislated, so, on this side, we are supporting this bill. But, like pretty much every other piece of legislation those opposite have brought forward, it is deficient. I'll go through some of those deficiencies later. It does go some way to improving the situation, but, again, not as much as we would like. On a personal note, I agree with Senator Steele-John in terms of the need for a dedicated cabinet-level minister for disability, not only for the NDIS but also to take responsibility for all disability related services and supports so that finally we can have a single minister responsible for coherent disability policy. It's a little bit of a shame that the Labor Party hasn't taken that opportunity to make those arrangements, but it is never too late.

Over the last decade, since the introduction of the NDIS, we have adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and we are now on our second decade-long national disability strategy, which we in the coalition were very pleased to deliver. I also remind all colleagues in this chamber that not only did we release the Australian disability strategy, which was a transformative new strategy backed by a $250 million investment to provide a robust framework to deliver real and positive life changes for people with a disability, but we also appointed the wonderful Dr Ben Gauntlett as Disability Discrimination Commissioner. He was also appointed by Minister Ruston at the time to chair the strategy's advisory council to support the implementation.

The strategy itself does set out priorities and plans for governments at all levels, and I think that it is a positive step forward. From my perspective, the most important aspect of the strategy, which unfortunately we've seen very little evidence of this government embracing and implementing, was that it was signed off by all states and territories, because, to really move forward in disability strategy over the next decade in this nation, states and territories have to step up. They've done what many states and territories do best. When the NDIS came into being a decade ago, they defunded their own disability strategies, which was the complete opposite of what they were supposed to do in their agreements with the NDIS, and continued to provide community supports for the four million people who were not eligible for the NDIS, because they didn't have at the time what we saw as the most serious and permanent disabilities.

We've heard a lot of rhetoric from Minister Shorten, but we've seen no action at all yet on renegotiating the intergovernmental agreements on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. States and territories must accept their responsibilities under Australia's Disability Strategy and in the recommendations of the royal commission. Again, this government has demonstrated no urgency or progress in implementing the royal commission's recommendations. This government, halfway through its term, hasn't even released the independent review of the NDIS yet. By all accounts, they have no intention of releasing that or this year's actuarial report, the AFSR, which would give us some idea of how they intend to make $74 billion worth of savings out of the NDIS over the next decade, apparently without cutting a plan or participant numbers, which is completely impossible. The sector knows that. We know that on this side. But those opposite are still maintaining that myth, which is a cruel fraud and hoax on everybody with a disability and their families.

Coming back to the bill itself, the bill does establish an updated framework for the funding and regulation of programs that support one in six Australians with a disability, their families and their carers. It also makes some consequential arrangements to other bills and arrangements. While we support this bill and the updating of this framework, as usual, it is deficient in a number of areas. We hope that the government will now start looking at amendments. Why they did not address these areas in the drafting of the bill is completely beyond me, because that seemed like such a logical thing to do. If they were going to bring forward this bill, they should have made sure they brought forward the best possible bill.

But then we look at the complete debacle of yesterday. In 30 years working in this building, I have never seen such incompetence. The government knew since June of the possibility of the High Court's decision, and they waited until yesterday to present a highly deficient bill. Fortunately, they did accept the coalition's amendments to strengthen the bill—but, time after time, they keep bringing forward these deficient bills. We have issues with this bill that need to be addressed. The first is that it does not define target groups that will be eligible for support and services. On the one hand, you understand broadening it, because there are a lot of complexities with individuals with a range of complex disabilities. But, knowing the incompetence of those opposite, a bit like with the NDIS, they refuse to have some form of standardised assessments, which has made it all too easy now for states to move people into the scheme without any controls. Arguably, those are people who should be looked after under state schemes and not the NDIS. This is a departure from the current legislation, and the implications of that are not yet very clear.

Also, under section 8 in the current legislation, the Disability Services Act, the targets groups consist of people with a disability that:

(a) is attributable to an intellectual, psychiatric, sensory or physical impairment or a combination of such impairments;

(b) is permanent or likely to be permanent; and

(c) results in:

(i) a substantially reduced capacity of the person for communication, learning or mobility; and

(ii) the need for ongoing support services.

While not having a legislated definition of a target group may provide, as I've said, greater flexibility and access to services and supports for those who are a little more challenging to diagnose, there will certainly be unknown practical, consequential impacts on the provision and delivery of timely supports and services for those who most need it. I think that, in bringing forward this bill, those opposite have learnt not a thing about the flaws that they baked into the NDIS legislation 10 years ago, and that is a portent of what will now happen with this legislation. It was very clear very quickly that they couldn't have baked greater flaws for an insurance scheme into the legislation 10 years ago, when they were last in government. Where did they go wrong with that scheme? First of all, there are two drivers of scheme cost for Australian taxpayers. The first one is participant numbers, and the second one is the average cost of individual participant plans. What did the geniuses then in government, who are now back in the government benches, do? They made sure that the government minister of the day couldn't control either lever of cost. They gave it to an independent board who was not responsible for managing the budget that the federal taxpayers and the federal government had given them.

When those geniuses developed the legislation, not only did they not give the government control of those two levers; guess what else they did? They baked into the federal legislation that neither of those levers could be changed without the unanimous support of the state and territory governments. And what state or territory government is going to give the federal government control, when they have just shunted financial responsibility—which the federal government can't control—to the federal government?

As minister, I went to Bill Shorten, the shadow minister at the time, and said, 'Let's work together on a bipartisan basis so we can put this scheme on a sustainable financial future, so that those who most need it—those with serious and permanent disability—can be assured that they will have this scheme to make sure that they can live a life in accordance with their own aspirations, that they have self-determination over their lives and that they have dignity to live their lives, take risks and have risk in their lives as the rest of us do.' But no: Mr Shorten instead has played politics with this. He is still playing politics with this. He has now created this mythical promise which everybody in the sector knows cannot be delivered.

You cannot make $74 billion worth of savings and not cut participant plans and participant packages. In fact, it's on track now to be over $74 billion. What the government have done is banked the savings over the next 10 years based on baseline data from last financial year. But guess what: not only is it going to be more than the $74 billion that they have saved—or that they say they have saved. From the eight per cent they wanted to moderate cost to over the next decade, they've gone from 12 per cent to 15 per cent in one quarter alone. So, while we will accept this legislation as better than nothing, like every other piece of legislation and everything those opposite touch in the disability sector, it is making people's lives worse. That is the tragedy.

We are working across the aisles together with the Greens because, even though we come from different philosophical bases, we want people—all Australians with disability—to have the same life opportunities. The Greens say 'inclusion', but we call it realising their own aspirations. Those opposite are making sure that's going to be harder and harder. (Time expired)