Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024. It is important to start where Senator Whish-Wilson concluded—that is, with the committee process. Many in this place have heard me stand up and talk about the importance of the committee process. The committee process is what the Senate brings to the legislative framework of Australia. The committee process, at its finest, sees us deliver legislation on behalf of the Australian people that is better legislation. It doesn't always happen, because in the end governments have control and governments make deals, particularly with the crossbench. But the committee process at its finest gives us the chance as legislators to do our best work. And when we have truncated, shortened, very short committee processes that do not give particular issues the adequate consideration, review, a chance to weigh up the evidence or a chance to hear the evidence from a wide variety of sources then we as legislators may miss the mark. Governments, in their arrogance, in their belief that they are the font of all wisdom, can also severely miss the mark. That, I think, is what we are seeing in handling of this bill. We are seeing a particularly arrogant approach from this minister and this government towards a topic that is of great sensitivity.

To highlight some of the complexity in this area, I want to give an example of something I came across. It was very close to our family, some friends of ours. One of the children needed a little bit of help. They hadn't been diagnosed with any particular condition; the parents just wanted to get them a little bit of help, particularly with things like their handwriting and their fine motor skills. So they—privately—went to an occupational therapist. They were very happy with this relationship, and it was going along really well, until the point when the occupational therapist said to them: 'Look, I'm really sorry. I'm going out of this sort of practice. I'm going out of private practice altogether because, while I can charge $100-odd in this environment, I can do the same job within the NDIS and charge a multiple more.' The financial imperative for them became to step out of that space. So a parent who just wanted to get their child a little bit of help is suddenly priced out of the market by the settings put in place by government. Those parents, wanting to do the right thing by their child, wanting to get them the help they needed—not a lot of help, just a little bit of help to get over the hurdles they had—had to go and get a diagnosis for their child and, therefore, gain access to those services at a higher cost. There's something wrong with that system. There is something wrong with the interplay of that system with the wider health environment. There is something wrong with the settings we have in place, and that is why something like a Senate inquiry is so important, because these are terribly complex matters.

This is a system that, as we acknowledge and support, changes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians. We have a very strong and proud track record of supporting the NDIS. Contrary to what those opposite said when they were in opposition, we did fully fund the NDIS as a demand driven scheme, but we said at the time that it had to be sustainable. We can't ever walk away from that, because, just as we have responsibilities to NDIS participants, we also have responsibilities to the taxpayers of Australia.

Yet, when in opposition, Labor stood in the way of putting the NDIS on a more sustainable footing. Bill Shorten, the current minister, accused the coalition of 'pearl-clutching kabuki theatre', claiming that the NDIS was 'tracking just as predicted' and that the coalition was 'hyping fictional cost blowouts'. When he was the shadow minister for the NDIS, the member for Maribyrnong said:

You can't move around the corridors of Parliament in Canberra without tripping over a Coalition Minister whispering the Scheme is unsustainable.

I'm here to tell you today that is a lie.

This is what those opposite said in opposition, so how can you trust a word they say now, particularly when, as has been highlighted by so many others in this debate this evening, they now wish to have a truncated, rushed Senate inquiry and to ignore the many serious concerns of many in the disability sector—participants and those who work and provide services in that sector, but also health professionals outside that sector whose roles are potentially affected by the sheer size and complexity of the NDIS?

So we have a situation where we need to make sure that this system is delivering what we all want it to deliver. It isn't a simple system. It is a complex system, and we have to acknowledge that and be willing to deal with that as legislators. The one way that we have to deal with the complexity is through the Senate committee process, so, in the first instance, that is where we should be looking in order to guide us in our deliberations—not, quite frankly, this minister, who has an amazing capacity to say one thing when in opposition and then something else when in government and to dance around issues as political playthings rather than dealing with the complexity in a mature way. We're seeing that from this government in other spheres at the moment—an inability to deal with serious topics in a mature way. But I'll stay on this bill.

I've agreed a bit with those so far on the crossbench, including Senator Steele-John and Senator Whish-Wilson, but where serious issues of abuse and serious implications of criminal activity are raised—use of NDIS money for things that were never intended under the NDIS and the potential, therefore, for coercion and criminal elements to be involved in the process—I think that is very worthy of consideration by governments and very worthy of a strong ray of sunshine being shone on the system and what is going on within it. We've seen countless media reports highlighting stories where serious sex abusers, rapists and paedophiles have been receiving substantial support through the NDIS—sometimes more than $1 million—to live under supervision in the community after they're released from detention. Urgent review is needed to disclose how many individuals with serious criminal convictions are receiving NDIS funding. During a Senate spillover hearing in March of this year, we learned that 2,500 NDIA participants have interacted with the justice system. This is something that does deserve serious examination.

We've got issues with transparency. I note once again that, when in opposition, the minister—the then shadow minister—repeatedly called for greater transparency about the NDIS. Yet, in government, Labor has sought to reduce transparency within the scheme. Under Bill Shorten's watch as minister, from April 2023 the NDIA has no longer been publishing monthly reports. They're moving to quarterly reports instead. These quarterly reports are also being published late. I'm not sure why that would be the case. Most of the information is collected electronically these days—not all, but most. So you'd wonder why we see such continually late reporting of this important information. Once again, it's important not just to participants but to our entire society for trust and confidence in the system to be maintained.

NDIA officials also refuse, when questioned at Senate estimates, to disclose data that the NDIA already holds for these reports. Personally, I don't think that is acceptable behaviour. I cannot see any commercial-in-confidence or other public interest immunity claim which would justify the withholding from a Senate committee of information that will become publicly available. That is the job of Senate committees. That is our job at estimates. Without consulting the NDIA or providing any modelling, Labor came to the conclusion that the annual growth cap on the total cost was to be no more than eight per cent by 1 July 2026, without any explanation on how these cuts to the growth of the scheme would be achieved.

Sadly, we also see in this bill just some really fundamental process mistakes, shall we say, such as the explanatory memorandum, as it was originally circulated, just having references to sections in the bill that didn't exist. This is a quite extraordinary lack of attention to detail from a government and, quite frankly, from a minister who claims to have the best interests of this system at heart, when simple things like that slip through the cracks and repeated and multiple references are made to proposed subsections in the bill that don't even exist.

It is not clear from the bill what a participant can do if they don't agree with the outcome of a needs assessment. The bill is silent on that. Again, that is something that a Senate committee could actually get to the bottom of. It could recommend some amendments to the bill. I would have thought that's pretty fundamental. If you do have a needs assessment undertaken and a participant disagrees with the outcome of that needs assessment, surely the bill should contain the provisions, the process and the pathway that the person with a disability can take following that reassessment of their needs. The NDIA, quite frankly, has a reputation for being notoriously inconsistent and highly variable in its treatment of relatively comparable individuals. That again highlights the need both for a proper Senate inquiry and for the complexity of this system to be under that ray of sunshine to make sure that clarity is provided, not just for those on the scheme but also for those who work with the scheme, those who support them and all others in Australia who take a deep interest in this policy area.