Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise today to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024. Senators, as you know, the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, which I chair, completed our inquiry into this bill in recent weeks. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank everyone who participated in our processes, particularly the witnesses.

I will just put some facts on the record about that process. We received over 200 submissions to our inquiry. We heard from nearly 50 witnesses. We held two lived experience panels. We heard from the agencies on two separate occasions over two different hearings. We held hearings across three days. Those hearings were supported by government senators on that committee. I want to thank everyone who participated in those processes and everyone who contributed to our work.

Our report made four recommendations to this place to improve the bill before us. It did this on the back of a number of government amendments which were also moved in the House of Representatives in response to concerns raised by stakeholders. There were significant concerns raised by stakeholders and those amendments sought to address many of those. As chair and with the support of other committee members, I made a number of other recommendations to strengthen the bill which go to issues like consultation and the rules. I think they are important recommendations and reflect the evidence we heard. They are a genuine attempt to try to address some of those concerns we heard, in addition to the government amendments.

I think this is a really important bill, and I think it's really important that we pass it. It is one step in a broader series of reforms that we need to make to the NDIS, that need to be made to secure the long-term sustainability of the NDIS and to ensure that every dollar of NDIS funding goes to those in our community who most need it. It is not the whole process of reform required; it is one part of it. It facilitates further reforms which came out of the broader review.

The NDIS is a proud Labor legacy. I'm proud of it. I'm proud of everything it has done to support over half a million adults and children with disability today. I'm proud that for a long time it has enjoyed bipartisan support. It is something we as Australians believe in, it's something we in this chamber have believed in and it has been a godsend for so many Australians living with disability and for their families, friends and carers, including family members of mine who are on the NDIS. It has been absolutely life-changing and a godsend for my family members who are participants in it.

But we know it could be doing more. It is not perfect. We know it could be operating far more efficiently. We need the NDIS to remain sustainable so it can continue to support future generations of Australians. We need it to remain sustainable so it can continue to maintain the support for Australians. We as a government are committed to improving the experience for all Australians with disability who interact with the NDIS, as well as their families and carers.

The Prime Minister, alongside premiers and chief ministers, announced last December that initial legislation would be introduced in the first half of 2024 to ensure the NDIS is best supporting the people it is intended to support. This included addressing several priority recommendations made by the independent review of the NDIS which was undertaken in 2023. The NDIS review was designed to put people with disability back at the centre of the NDIS, restore trust and pride in the scheme and ensure its sustainability for future generations. The review conducted deep engagement with the disability community over a 12-month period, engaging with around 10,000 people from across Australia. Its resulting recommendations included a range of legislative reforms to return the scheme to its original intent and improve the experience of participants. We have heard those recommendations. This bill is a significant step to allow governments and the disability community to start improving the scheme to get the NDIS back on track.

This bill addresses priority recommendations from this review, provides clarity on who can access the NDIS, enables better early intervention pathways for people living with psychosocial disability and children younger than nine years old with developmental delay and disability, and improves how the NDIS participant budgets are set, making them more flexible and providing clearer information on how they can be spent. Further, it strengthens compliance powers for the NDIS commission while governments consider the findings of the disability royal commission. This bill comes off the back of the NDIS review led by two prominent Australians, Professor Bruce Bonyhady AM, who we heard from in our inquiry, and Ms Lisa Paul AO PSM. The review met people where they were—virtually, face to face, online or over the phone—and we have heard that this review represented some of the best consultations the sector had ever seen. The bill implements recommendation 3 of the NDIS review to provide a fairer and more consistent participant pathway for NDIS participants. It makes it clearer what supports the NDIS provides to participants and clarifies how participants will come onto the NDIS with a needs assessment process.

At our committee inquiry we heard from witnesses who said they value the NDIS, but we also heard from witnesses who said they know it needs reform. This bill provides a framework for those changes. In addition to implementing recommendation 3 of the NDIS review, it also gives effect to interconnected elements in recommendations 5, 6 and 7 and partially implements recommendation 17. Recommendation 5 is to provide better support for people with disability to make decisions about their lives. To implement this, the bill will create new framework plans for participants, which will include a reasonable and necessary budget that participants can spend on NDIS supports without having to apply to the NDIA again and again for reassessments when their support needs change. This bill makes sure flexible funding is available to participants who need NDIS supports which aren't stated supports. This change allows greater flexibility in how participants can spend their budget, and, importantly, flexible funding is included in the plan as the default.

Recommendation 6 is to create a continuum of support for children under the age of nine and their families. This bill sets up a new early intervention pathway for children who enter the scheme. This will provide targeted early intervention support for children, which may mean that they will not need to be on the NDIS for their whole lives. Recommendation 7 is to introduce a new approach to NDIS supports for psychosocial disability focused on personal recovery and developmental health reforms to better support people with severe mental illnesses. The bill makes it clearer how to measure the reduced functional capacity of someone with psychosocial disability and how early intervention support can help someone with psychosocial needs. The bill is abundantly clear that it will not remove anyone with psychosocial disability from the NDIS and it will not disproportionately affect the mental health community.

Recommendation 17 is to develop and deliver a risk-proportionate model for the visibility and regulation of all providers and workers and strengthen the regulatory response to longstanding and emergent quality and safeguard issues. The urgent measures in this bill will help fight against fraud in the NDIS while protecting people with disability from exploitation by increasing the number of quality and safety commission officers with compliance powers. It also prohibits banned people from becoming approved quality auditors.

As I said in my opening remarks, this bill is one step, but an essential step, on the journey towards NDIS reform. It sets up pathways and supports which will be designed in NDIS rules and legislative instruments. During the inquiry, we heard loud and clear from the disability community that these rules need to be not just developed in consultation with people with a disability but truly co-designed with them. The committee's report made four recommendations in response to the evidence we received. These were a genuine attempt to try to improve this bill and to respond to concerns raised by stakeholders.

Our first recommendation was that, as it is increasingly premiers and chief ministers, via National Cabinet, who have direct involvement in decision-making on NDIS reform, and because it is clear that the impact of these reforms extends right across government's work, whether that's in health, education or budgets, the bill be amended so that first ministers are also recognised as ministers for the purpose of rule-making—that they are directly consulted on the rules made under this bill.

Secondly, in response to members of the disability community who requested reassurance that the rules made under this legislation involve genuine consultation, we recommended that a consultation statement be tabled, accompanying legislative instruments under the bill, that sets out the consultations undertaken, making it clear to the parliament and the community whether that consultation has occurred.

We also heard concerns from witnesses about the powers the bill provides to the CEO of the NDIA to gather information on NDIS participants, impose conditions on their funding and adjust or cancel a participant's plan. The government has already begun to address this feedback through the amendments I referenced, made in the other place, which would limit the CEO's power to request information directly from NDIS participants.

The committee has recommended more action. We recommended the clarification of the circumstances under which these additional powers will be used. But ultimately we recommended, once these things had been taken into account, and in line with the additional amendments made in the other place, that the bill be passed, because it's clear the urgent passage of this bill is necessary to restore certainty and sustainability for participants and their providers and to tackle fraudulent practices.

I appreciate that, over the course of a Senate inquiry, there are always more conversations and more engagement to be had on any piece of significant reform we look at—any piece of legislation. I am supportive of the three hearings we had and grateful to the witnesses who participated in our hearings. I think our report reflects a genuine desire to address the concerns raised by participants in our inquiry by making those four recommendations to this chamber in its consideration of the bill.

That said, NDIS reform is important work. It's urgent work. We all agree on how important the NDIS is for all Australians. It's necessary for equity in our country, for opportunity and for the fair go that we pride ourselves on as Australians. We also all agree that those who attempt to manipulate and defraud the NDIS should be shut down and face the severest of consequences. We remain, as a government, determined to put people back at the centre of the NDIS and to get it back on track. So I commend this bill to the Senate.