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

Senator Farrell has come in yet again—welcome back, by the way, Senator Steele-John. We're back for 2024. Welcome back, colleagues. Yet here we are again. We thought we were going to have NDIS Monday. We didn't sit yesterday, so we've got NDIS Tuesday. Transmission Tuesday, I'm sure, will be back again this year. But here we are again because Senator Farrell has, I think, for the third or fourth time now refused to provide an effective and full response to a request by this Senate to show us how the sustainability framework is going to work.

To Senator Reynolds's point, Senator Birmingham this morning made the point in the chamber about how important it is to tell the truth. Not only is it important to tell the truth but we went to the election with now Prime Minister Albanese saying ad nauseam that his would be a government of transparency. His word was his bond. We all know now how true that is. The bond is about as strong as tissue paper when it comes to the strength of it, because so many promises have been broken by this government, despite claiming there would be no changes to superannuation, despite claiming they would take $275 off Australians' power bills and despite claiming they would stand by the stage 3 tax cuts that they voted for.

I'm the mother of an NDIS participant, and I received a text message asking for assistance from the father of an NDIS participant. I can assure you that those on the NDIS and their families do not trust you and do not believe you, because we have heard nothing about how this eight per cent figure has been reached. Senator Reynolds's points are completely correct, as are Senator Steele-John's points. The only way you do that is by cutting the number of participants or cutting plans.

One of the things that I'm very proud of since I've been in parliament was being a member of the Senate Select Committee on Autism, along with Senator Steele-John. It was the first time ever a committee inquiry had been held into how autism affected people with the condition, as well as their families, through the whole of an affected person's life. Our first recommendation was the development of a national autism strategy, which was an accepted recommendation. When we were in government, we committed funding for that to be developed, forcing the then Labor opposition to stump up the same amount of funding to develop the National Autism Strategy.

We're now getting very close to two years of this government, and yet we're still waiting for the strategy. I think this is important because we know autism is one of the most highly diagnosed conditions on the NDIS. We know that effective, early intervention will change the trajectory of an autistic child's life. But we also know that, since the change of the DSM, too many of the children being given autism level 2 and 3 diagnoses don't have permanent and lifelong disabilities. The NDIS should not be the only lifeboat in the ocean. State governments should be supplying lots of community supports for things like OT, psychology and speech therapy to give kids with a little bit of developmental delay a bit of a bump, a bit of help, a bit of assistance. But those kids should certainly not be on the NDIS for their whole life.

We know that there will be cuts to participants, and we know that there will probably be cuts to the participants that get to stay on their plan, because there is no other way to do it. We know that, when Peter Garrett was a member of the Labor Party, he told us: 'Don't worry. We'll say one thing before the election, and we'll change it when we get in.' That's what's happening now. Clearly, the Labor Party has not changed its stripes.

The other thing that's really disturbing for a lot of NDIS participants and their families is that there is no interest in getting the NDIS to work better, including to encourage parents who are capable of self-managing their plans, which would reduce costs and open up the choice of therapists. We know that all Minister Shorten is interested in is boosting the number of HSU members. This is actually about driving membership to the HSU, not about supporting participants. During a conversation this morning I was saying that it would be nice if they even put a veneer on it not being just about a union membership drive, but we know that's what they want to do by making it harder to self-manage and harder to access providers who aren't part of the big providers and who aren't union members. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.