Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

To Senator Steele-John's point around transparency, I would say that it wasn't just to the disability community that those opposite promised transparency. They promised transparency to the Australian people, yet as soon as they got their backsides on those government benches the clouds came in, the opacity increased and the curtains came down, and what we now learn in a number of areas—not even just around the NDIS but also, we understand, around the religious discrimination bill, and we see it with the fuel emissions standards—is that negotiations are happening in secret. Consultations are happening in secret and, in some instances, those that are consulted with are being forced to sign NDAs. This is a government that is petrified of transparency.

But where there is such an issue with this lack of transparency and with the disdain that this government is showing to the Senate by refusing to release these documents it has been told it must release is the fact that it has actually baked the savings into the budget. It is saying that there will be an eight per cent cap on growth, and it has baked those savings into the budget. In fact, it's now looking like it will be in excess of $60 billion. That is a big black hole, because what we do know about the growth of the NDIS at the moment is that it is tracking at around 15 per cent, so it is almost double what those opposite have put in their budget. This is a serious issue. This is $60 billion that's going to have to be found somewhere.

Now, this is a demand driven scheme, so there are two ways you can make savings: you can cut participants or you can cut the average value of their plans—that's it. But there are other efficiencies that could be made. I don't know who those opposite are doing this alleged consultation with. One of the issues we've got is with the price guide. No-one has come to talk to me about the price guide. No-one has come to talk to the NDIS joint standing committee about the price guide.

We know that those opposite have a slogan: 'same job, same pay'. They love that—same job, same pay—except if you're getting paid by the taxpayer. If you're a provider with DVA or with aged care, you earn less than if you're charging an NDIS participant, because the price guide for NDIS participants is set by the board and is at the highest level—higher than anywhere else. Therefore, businesses are charging more than if someone is a veteran, more than if they have a health care card, more than if they're an aged care participant and more than if they're just a general member of the public.

What has absolutely appalled me this weekend while I've been having a look at this—Instagram has very interesting algorithms for how you get things—is that I've been getting all of these NDIS advertisements on my Instagram and things that it has suggested I follow. They were particularly around supported independent living, which is an area that is ripe for reform. Lots of people talk about the number of participants with autism. Autism is about five per cent of the NDIS spend. The biggest part of the NDIS spend is in supported independent living. All of these ads and suggestions for me to follow on Instagram were advertisements to invest in housing for supported independent living, and the rates of return that these organisations were promising were wild. We're talking about a 25 or 35 per cent rate of return annually on these properties that you invest in to go into supported independent living, because it's funded by the NDIS.

We know that there are providers that are absolutely rorting this system. They are completely and utterly rorting this system. But guess who a lot of them are? They're the old block-funded guys. They're the guys whose workers are all members of the union. And guess where everything that Mr Shorten is looking at is? He's attacking unregistered providers. 'Unregistered provider' doesn't mean 'unskilled'. It doesn't mean 'unqualified'. It just means that they might be a sole provider. They might be a small business and can't afford the audit costs imposed on them by the NDIA. These providers are not unskilled. We do need to look at, perhaps, a scalability of registration. Why not have a website where they put their name, their ABN, what skills they have, their qualifications and their working with children and police checks, without the onerous NDIA requirements?

These are all savings that could be made, because the CEO actually told us in estimates that the least amount of fraud occurs within self-managed participants. Do you know why that is? It's because the participants work directly, quite often, with a sole provider who provides bespoke services. You don't end up with whatever worker these big old block funders send you each week without any goal provision being factored into when they are working for you. Many of these guys offer nothing but glorified babysitting services, which is not the intent of the scheme. But these are not conversations that we can have, because Mr Shorten's hiding. Mr Shorten won't talk to those in the sector, and this lot are baking in a $60 billion black hole that we're all going to have to pay for.