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

I, too, rise to speak on the Greens motion and, again, support and endorse everything that Senator Steele-John has just said. One of the things we have in common is that we believe truth matters in this place. It still matters, and it should always and must always matter. As Senator Birmingham said: lies, damn lies and the Lodge. It's not just in the Lodge that we're seeing that occur. We've seen it now for almost two years by the Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten. He, and the Labor Party, came to a fork in the road on the NDIS, on the scheme that they legislated, which, while doing wonderful things for hundreds of thousands of Australians, was flawed from its inception. When I was minister I called it out and I said publicly that this was a scheme that was on a rapidly accelerating pathway to failure without fundamental reform. He and the Labor Party could have taken the high road and actually said, 'Yes, we will join you in fixing this scheme and putting it on a sustainable pathway for participants and their families, who have now come to rely on this life-changing scheme in so many ways.' But, instead of doing that, what did Bill Shorten do?