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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Once again, we see the government come in here and refuse to comply with the Senate's orders using the same, tired, worn-out talking points that they have been parroting in this place for month after month. Let's just be really clear; the independent review of the NDIS's final report is not relevant to the orders of the Senate. It does not contain the documentation that the Senate has requested. The information tabled by the Treasurer is not relevant to the orders of the Senate. It does not contain the information that the Senate has requested. The government is in flagrant violation of the orders given to it by the Senate and has repeatedly failed to provide documentation proving that its public interest immunity claim has any grounds. All that they would be required to do is present to the Senate a letter from the state and territory premiers and chief ministers backing them up. They can't produce that information because it doesn't exist.

This is a critical issue for the Senate. The National Disability Insurance Scheme matters. It affects the lives of over 640,000 disabled Australians. We deserve to know what the government has already committed to in relation to our NDIS, because let's remember that in the middle of last year, halfway through the independent review, the government brought down a budget and, on the basis of a so-called sustainability framework, booked over $50 billion of so-called savings to our NDIS—the very framework which the government is refusing to release to the public. What are we seeing now? I can tell you what I am seeing. I am seeing more participants coming to my office in critical need of help with plans that have run out of funding and without access to the supports that they need—to have a shower, to get their catheters, to get their basic supports, to get the support hours that they need—than I have done in seven years.

We were able to identify some of the drivers of these wait times and these terrible situations that people are confronted with. It is the botched rollout of the pay system by the NDIS, combined with a seemingly complete inability to plan for the very predictable outcome that, given the government refuses to release this baseline information about what it intends to do with the NDIS, more people are contacting the agency than they previously have done. Why, I have to ask, is it that the pay scheme is being rolled out in such a way that it is failing so profoundly? It is failing profoundly. We heard at estimates that the agency has been unable to provide the public with aggregate data in relation to the NDIS since September 2023. They are unable to comply with the participant service guarantee. In simple terms, this means they're not able to tell anybody what the wait times are, why the wait times exist, what people are waiting for, how many people are waiting for access to the scheme, how many people are waiting for a review or how many people are requesting a change to their plan. It is unable to tell us any of this information, because of the botched rollout of the pay scheme.

At the same time, they seem to be already implementing some of the changes which have been flagged by the review to only take place in the context of new services that do not currently exist. They are rolling out a program right now, the community connections program, which requires participants, it seems, to fill in a community connections plan. Now, the agency swears that this is not mandatory for access to the scheme, yet participant after participant comes to us and says that this is what they're being told. This is resulting in another unnecessary delay.

The government has a responsibility to be transparent with the Australian public, particularly with disabled people, to whom they pledged greater transparency and consultation. The government must now comply with the Senate's orders.