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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Here we go again. At the beginning of every Senate week, the Senate requests of this government, of this Minister for the NDIS, the release of information about the impact of their so-called Financial Sustainability Framework. The Labor government continues to refuse to release the documents that relate to the impact of its commitment to limit spending on the NDIS and establish a growth target for the scheme of no more than eight per cent by 1 July 2026. This decision was made more than a year ago, before the last budget, yet still the community have no clear idea or commitment from the government of where the cuts in the NDIS are coming from.

This government have made a deal with the states and territories behind closed doors. They have refused to release the NDIS Financial Sustainability Framework. Now they have developed their new NDIS legislation, whose goal must be to reach their eight per cent growth cap, and that legislation too has been made behind closed doors with disability advocates made to sign non-disclosure agreements—all of this uncertainty, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Labor: cutting the supports of disabled people and their families.

In their last budget, they ripped $74 billion out of the NDIS. Disabled people and our families tonight have a knot of fear and anxiety as we wait to hear how much further Labor will go to balance their budget on the backs of disabled people. This government have reduced disabled people and our families down to numbers on a Treasury spreadsheet. To them, we are now little more than a financial burden to be reduced so that they can carry on giving subsidies to fossil fuel corporations and buying nuclear submarines. Imagine being so out of touch, so uncaring, that you decide to cut the supports of disabled people and their families, forcing them to choose between food or power or rent or disability supports, in order to continue spending money on nuclear submarines.

We know that removing $74 billion from the NDIS will have catastrophic impacts on disabled people, and we now know that this government have taken every step possible to cover up the implications of that decision, including paying thousands of dollars to polling companies to help them work out a message to enable them to sell these changes to the disability community, while eliciting a degree of qualified tolerance for their otherwise unpalatable changes that disabled people have identified as those which would cause us harm. They have tried everything to achieve their political goal of being able to spend more money on US submarines than disabled people, who are trying to get a fair go.

This Labor government are prioritising secrecy, they are passing the buck and they are actively choosing to make changes to the NDIS that will leave disabled people behind in a cost-of-living crisis. The Greens see what Labor is doing. The Greens and the disability community will not let them get away with it. You will not balance your budget on the backs of disabled people, and tonight you will not be allowed to crow about your surplus when so many are struggling to keep their heads above water.