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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

The Senate once again gathers to demand basic transparency from the Albanese Labor government. All we are here for is to ask the Anthony Albanese Labor government for some basic transparency and accountability when it comes to our NDIS—in short, exactly what Labor promised at the election. Let's be very clear: this Senate has for months now demanded that the government release documentations which reveal to the Australian community what the implications of their decisions in relation to the NDIS actually are. All that disabled people want to know is what these policy changes will actually mean for them.

Let's be very clear: in Senate estimates last week, it was revealed that the CEO of the NDIS and the Secretary of the Department of Social Services have seen the documents that the Senate is demanding, which speak to the impact of these policy changes on people—the impact of the decisions the government has already made, because the government has already decided the targets that it has for the NDIS and that it will reduce the amount of funding provided to disabled people by tens of billions of dollars. That decision is baked into the budget that was announced last year. And all the Senate wants to know is: What does that mean for disabled people? How many disabled people does the government project will be kicked off the scheme? That is the question we've been demanding an answer to for months now. And from estimates we learned the CEO of the agency knows it and the secretary of the department knows it. The only people left in the dark are disabled people.

Disabled people are the ones left in the dark by this Labor government. Disabled people who put their faith and trust in this Labor government are being betrayed heinously by the decision of this Labor government to withhold from them key documentation and to withhold from journalists documents titled 'projections'. I bet you now that there are some autistic people in this country that would love to know what those projections mean and that there are some people with psychosocial disabilities that want to know what those projections mean for them, because it is those communities who this government has continually intimated are the ones that are costing too much money and whose diagnosis rate is higher than to be expected by people that don't even know how much an autism diagnosis costs and the ridiculousness of the suggestion that anyone would seek one willy-nilly when it can cost over $2,000 and you have to wait sometimes up to two years. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Let me end on this: in all my years in this Senate, I have never quite seen anything like the attempt of the government in the last session to avoid providing key documentation about the NDIS to the Senate committee process. If the Liberal Party had tried the tricks and stunts they pulled in the last session, Labor would have howled the house down. Let me be clear: there were some questions asked by Liberal senators during that session that made me feel embarrassed to be part of it—ridiculous, nonsense stories about people having their rats cremated on the scheme that made me feel, quite frankly, ick about sharing the space with them. But, on the issue of transparency and accountability, there must be consistency. If you released figures about the scheme last year, you must release them this year. And I tell you this: we will continue to pursue these documents regardless of how uncomfortable it makes those in Labor feel, and we will retrieve them eventually in the name of every single one of the 610,000 NDIS participants who have the right to know what this government has already decided about our NDIS.