Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today, I think, will be remembered as a day of shame for those opposite. I'd like to start off by noting that the larger and more audacious the fraud the harder those who perpetrate it will fall. Eventually those opposite, particularly Minister Shorten and those who supported the charade of the inquiry into this bill, will have to front the royal commission that I think will eventually, one day, come about because of the way this government has perpetuated this fraud. As we heard Senator Steele-John say so passionately and eloquently today, this is causing immense pain and suffering and anxiety for over 650,000 of Australia's most vulnerable Australians with disability and the many hundreds of thousands of their loved ones—their parents, their siblings and everybody else who cares about them. The shame of it is that it never had to be this way.

It's very important to go back to find out how we got to the position we are in today. Let's forget the monumental effort of spin by those opposite and the spinmeister himself, Bill Shorten, who has spent three years spinning the politics of this to his own advantage, instead of working with those across this chamber and in the other place to redesign the scheme to fix the obvious flaws, which were emerging four to five years ago now and which we kept calling out. As minister, I was very proud, despite the utter criticism and invective that I got from Bill Shorten, day after day, week after week, saying how stupid I was—that I obviously couldn't read the book, that there was no problem here.

Clearly there are problems that were baked into the scheme when the legislation was introduced in 2013. This would have been more of a problem had we not had the clear realisation, as these problems started to emerge in the scheme as it started to grow, that they were not just growing pains but were baked into the scheme, through the legislation and the intergovernmental agreements, as a federated scheme. As the scheme grew and as the budget started to blow out well beyond what the Productivity Commission and governments of the day had imagined, we went to those opposite, and to the sector, and said, 'We need to deal with these structural flaws.' Like with any other demand driven scheme, like the MBS or the PBS, just because they're demand driven doesn't mean they don't have controls on them. Of course they do. Of course they have controls in terms of the two drivers of cost: the number of people who have access to the scheme and the average cost—what they can get from the scheme. But neither of those drivers is manageable by the minister and the federal government, who are responsible for delivering the scheme.

It was very clear what was required, and what did Bill Shorten do, as the then opposition spokesperson? He ridiculed. He said there was no problem. He cruelly promised everybody on the NDIS and their families: 'Don't worry; we will have no cuts. We won't cut any of your plans. Don't vote for that mob; we will look after you.' He perpetuated the fraud and the fiction that this was a scheme that did not need reform. How wrong he was! And he must have known that, because budget after budget and quarterly report after quarterly report showed that this was a scheme that was spiralling out of control. In fact, today it is the third-largest Commonwealth expenditure item, and it's on track to become the second and, if not managed and fixed, it will be the most expensive, costing, by 2032, over $100 billion annually. That is clearly not sustainable, and the scheme will fail if we don't come together to fix it.

So let's have a look at the genesis of the legislation. I don't think I could have said it any better. What Minister Shorten has managed to do is completely unite the disability sector, families and participants against this, because they are not stupid, Minister Shorten. They understand the fraud you have perpetrated on them, and they are worried. Twelve of the largest disability representative organisations have said this about the bill:

The recommendations in the report of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Amendment Bill 2024 are profoundly disappointing and disrespectful … Our organisations are deeply disappointed that the Senate Committee—

not even the government but the committee of this place—

did not listen to the evidence and expertise of people with disability, our families, supporters and organisations, who made extensive, and detailed submissions about the flaws in the proposed legislation.

I participated in this inquiry, and the government gave less than a month, with two days of hearings--including one hour with the NDIA, if my memory is correct—to do justice to all of these submissions. We said, 'Give us another month so we can have more hearings into this legislation, hear the voices of the community and work with you, government, on this dog of a piece of legislation, which will make the situation worse, so we can improve it.' The marching instructions from Minister Shorten that there be no extension to the inquiry were a complete disgrace.

This is what the sector has also said:

We have engaged with the Committee over three hearings and provided substantial evidence and lived experience.

Anybody who sat through and listened to this evidence could not have failed to be moved, and how those opposite, who sat through, heard and read this evidence, still forced this committee report through and are now supporting the introduction of this legislation is beyond comprehension. It is unfathomable. This is what the sector also said:

People with disability feel a loss of trust in the Parliamentary process that promises to listen to us, as we contemplate significant reform to the services and supports provided through the scheme.

That process shames each and every one of us in this Senate chamber, and I hope that, when that report comes to this chamber, we will throw out not only this bad legislation but that report, which was a complete abomination and an insult to every single person in this chamber.

After saying that there was no problem with this scheme, what did Minister Shorten do? He came into government. We'd already had 30 reviews into various aspects of the NDIS. We knew the problems three or four years ago. We knew where the solutions lay: tough discussions three years ago with the states and territories, and changing the legislation so that the scheme could be managed effectively. But no. They didn't have the guts to go through that process. Instead, the minister got his mates and did another review, an 18-month review. There were some reasonable things in the review, but none of them were new. They went out, and the government have been trumpeting how many people they have been engaging with and listening to. That review reported in December, with 26 recommendations and 139 specific supporting actions to implement. Some of them I agree with and some of them I don't, but there were a lot of reasonable suggestions in there and a number of things that actually tackled the structural problems with the intergovernmental agreements and also the legislation.

That report was provided in December, and before that, a draft of the report was provided to the government, but we still do not have an Albanese government report. We have no government report in relation to their position on this report, but what we do have is legislation that purports to implement the review. But it doesn't. It does not implement anything of substance in the review. There are three parts—maybe 3½, if you're generous—of the 26 major recommendations that are touched on in this legislation, but it claims that it's going to be entirely responsible for the $60 billion of cuts that this government has made to the scheme over the next 10 years—between $14½ billion and $15 billion over the next four years alone, over the forward estimates.

The government has not been able to say where and how this legislation is going to realise those savings. They haven't released any of the modelling or any of the assumptions that underpin the modelling—not one. When we go into Finance estimates, Treasury estimates or community affairs estimates with DSS and with the NDIA, all of them say, 'Yes, we've got these numbers, from the poor NDIA actuary.' And I said to him that I feel he is the unluckiest man in this country because everybody is looking to his planning and his heroic assumptions that underpin the $60 billion worth of savings. This bill is all about those savings, and they don't have the courage to release them. I suspect they don't because it completely reverse engineers.

What has been pretty clear is that the government have said, 'We're going to make these cuts.' They cobbled together this legislation that actually has almost nothing to do with the review, which I suspect is why we haven't seen the government response to the review, but they've made $60 billion worth of cuts on the assumption that they can get what they said was a 14 per cent year-on-year increase. In fact, over the last 12 months under Bill Shorten, year to year, the third-quarter results—which are the last ones we've got—show there is a 21 per cent increase. So they are making $60 billion worth of cuts, they say, under the sustainability framework, which is more elusive than the scarlet pimpernel. No matter where we look and no matter how we try, we cannot find anything to tell us what the sustainability framework is or what assumptions and modelling underpin it.

So not only are the government going to drop the current rate from a 21 per cent year-on-year increase down to 14 per cent, they're going to get it down to eight per cent. And the only way they could get agreement with that, tentatively, from states and territories was by saying, 'We'll take the current four per cent cap up to eight per cent, so you'll have to pay, year on year, an increase of eight per cent, after the next two years, and then we'll pay the rest.' But what they haven't made clear is that they've also promised the states and territories that there'll be a 'no worse off' clause. How is that going to work? Who is going to pay for the increase? Clearly, the Commonwealth taxpayer will. So part of the big fraud that lies behind this is that this legislation is designed in the most chaotic way that will cause, and is already causing, great angst and concern amongst the most vulnerable in our community, but the savings that the government are going to have to get and the supplementation from the budget they're going to have to keep getting is well beyond the $60 billion they've already ripped out of the scheme.

In conclusion, Bill Shorten could have actually spent less time and less money on spin. I would like to remind those in this place that the government and Bill Shorten, through the NDIA or the review—I'm not quite sure—has spent $400,000 on research and communications on four thick reports to tell them how to spin the legislation. And guess what? It is all about to how to sustain a values based conversation about fixing fraud in order to stop the exploitation of Australians. They don't talk about the cuts in this communications advice. So guess what? Bill Shorten, in his speeches, which no doubt have been written by his new speechwriter, who is getting paid over $600,000 for two years of work despite Mr Shorten having 400 communications staff across his agency and department, says, 'We are chasing down the rorts while we are building a better NDIS.' Have a look at Minister Shorten's speeches in the parliament, including his second reading speech. Everything he has said publicly is all taken straight from this RedBridge communications. It is all about the spin and not about the policy. Shame on you. (Time expired)