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

My apologies—Minister Shorten. What did he do? He played politics, which he does extraordinarily well. 'Ah, there's no problem with the scheme. There's nothing to fix and nothing to see here. When we come into government, there will be no cuts, because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this scheme.' I think, deep in their hearts, many in the sector knew that he was promising something that he could not deliver. In government, instead of taking the hard decisions that need to be taken now—we've already extended the hand of bipartisanship multiple times to Minister Shorten—they just hope they can keep up the pretence that this scheme is sustainable. As Senator Steele-John has said: how are they doing that? They're hiding the figures. They're hiding the sustainability framework, which apparently is magically going to solve this. The problem is that they've also said that the sustainability framework doesn't exist. They have reduced the forward projections down to eight per cent, but they have not said how they're going to do this.

I now see why they hid the AFSR for so long. It's because they're saying that this is changes to assumptions, and that can only be in two areas; there are two levers of cost. Either they are going to significantly reduce the number of NDIS participants or they're going to cut plans. There is no other way to do that. Somehow, mystically, magically, the states and territories have agreed that they will fund the difference, one presumes, and apparently they're also going to fund all of the additional autism supports that are needed, particularly early intervention. Of course they're not. Apparently they're also going to now provide the support for the other over two million people with disability who have psychosocial disorders or any other disability. Apparently they're going to find the funding, the extra billions and billions of dollars, not only to fill this gap but also to provide those community services in less than three years time.

You only have to have a look at the AFSR to see very clearly what it is hiding. We've got the projected scheme expenses, which even the Labor Party and the actuary say, in this, will go up to 2026-27. They've actually got the projections of people and package costs. But, all of a sudden, there's a big gap till 2032-33. They've just made these wild assumptions about these big cuts that are going to happen to the NDIS, but they've hidden the data. We don't have any of the actuarial data that actually underpins how they're going to make these cuts. As Senator Steele-John said, people with disability and their families, people in this chamber and the rest of Australians are not stupid. But the Labor Party is now going into an election year perpetuating the myth, the cruellest of all myths for people with disability, that this is not going to be cut. I say: shame on you. People deserve much better than that. (Time expired).