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

Given that you have acknowledged that the government has not responded to the royal commission recommendations and will not be responding on a case-by-case basis to recommendations of the royal commission, why has your government brought forward this legislation at this time? You have just said you won't even vote for a second reading amendment which simply asks the chamber to adopt a view that your government should establish a disability minister. You have voted against that on the grounds that you as a government have not yet given a full response to the disability royal commission. Yet we are being asked this afternoon to vote for the repeal and replacement of one of the most significant pieces of legislation in relation to disabled people: the Disability Services Act, which provides the Commonwealth with the power to provide disabled people who are not on the NDIS and their families and carers—all three million plus of us—with services and supports.

You want to do that today, not when the government finalises its comprehensive and coordinated response. You are pushing this today, when you could spend months—the months left in this year and the months left between the beginning of next year and the time when the government hands down its recommendations on the royal commission—consulting with disabled people and implementing the suggestions made to you by no less than 26 peak bodies and organisations as to the changes that are needed within this act. If your government is so concerned about not even taking a view, a theoretical view offered by a second reading amendment, on just one of the recommendations of the disability royal commission until the government finalises its response, then, Minister, why have you brought this legislation to this chamber, when you could have brought it as part of a comprehensive package that responded to the disability royal commission's recommendations?