Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024. I wish to start by associating myself with the excellent comments made by Senator Steele-John on this bill. I also want to thank him for his incredible work alongside the community on this.

The Labor government seems determined to take disability policy back decades, back to a time when Australia was ranked as one of the worst amongst OECD countries for the wellbeing and prosperity of disabled people. The NDIS was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do better for disabled people, and the Labor government has utterly failed to realise this opportunity.

This bill only serves to take the scheme further from its roots, further from the vision outlined by disability activists who worked so hard for the NDIS to be realised. Its passage through parliament will mean fewer people will be able to access NDIS support and fewer people will be able to access sufficient, high-quality, personalised support. It will mean that disabled people are not empowered to live the lives that they deserve. It will mean that disabled people will continue to live in fear of when the next cuts are coming. It will reinforce to disabled people that the government does not want to listen to them. That is, of course, thoroughly disappointing, but it is not unsurprising to see the Albanese government turn their backs and betray yet another community.

The disability community engaged in the bill inquiry process in good faith, providing the committee with invaluable information, however short and truncated the inquiry was, even during a time of significant exhaustion for many following the NDIS review and the disability royal commission. Yet, despite the strength, resilience and continued advocacy across the country, which continues to provide input, advice and proposals for reform, the government has ignored them. Instead, the government chooses to listen to consultants and bureaucrats more concerned with News Corp reports of cost blowouts than with the lived experience of disabled people.

In drafting this bill, the Albanese government had the perfect opportunity to listen to what the community is asking for, to listen to practitioners, to listen to families, to listen to caregivers, to listen to representative bodies and then deliver what they're asking for. But they have ignored the demands of the community, rushed through the inquiry process and bowed to the demands of conservative politicians and media, more concerned with balanced budgets and tax cuts for the rich than with the safety and wellbeing of disabled people. Instead of listening, the Labor government has fostered an ill-informed narrative that focuses on fraud, criminality and cost rather than engaging with the real issues and listening to those whose lives are so deeply impacted by the NDIS. Not only has the Labor government failed to listen to disability communities; it has actively sought to manipulate community sentiment, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money on focus groups and messaging. This is a real rort.

The Labor government says this bill saves us billions, but what of the costs of cutting $14.4 billion of NDIS funding? Have they considered the cost to family members who would need to leave employment to care for relatives who are no longer covered by the NDIS? Have they considered the independent support workers who will no longer be able to provide care and who will be out of jobs? Most importantly, has the government considered how these individuals feel? They feel completely abandoned by a government that promised them so much and delivered so little.

The Labor government should be ashamed bringing this piece of legislation into the Senate. They can find billions in their budget for nuclear submarines and billions more to subsidise climate-wrecking fossil fuel companies, but they can't find the money to ensure the rights of disabled people are protected and to ensure that disabled people can access the care that they need and live a life that they deserve. This bill is a complete contradiction of the principles of choice and control that are so central to ensuring high-quality care. As the Greens stated in their dissenting report to the inquiry into this bill:

Removal of individualised reasonable and necessary supports …

…   …   …

… is a blatant attempt to control the choices that participants make. Choice and control is one of the central pillars of the NDIS and removing it in this way makes it clear that the Government prioritises their bottom line over the wellbeing of the disability community.

Yet here we are. This bill further removes power from the individuals on the NDIS, shifting power back to bureaucrats with no lived experience of disability and who may have minimal understanding of the individual before them.

As usual it is the people who face intersectional discrimination, who are disabled but who are also from First Nations communities, who are from communities of colour, who are living in poverty or who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, who will be worst hit by these changes. As the government strips back the NDIS, restricting access and restricting support, it is those with the most resources, those with the most social capital, who will continue to be able to access support, while those who are multiply marginalised will be left out in the cold.

In recent months I have heard from many constituents who are really scared. They are scared about the government taking away supports that they have worked so hard to have in place. They are scared about having to secure housing that might be taken away. They are scared that they will no longer be able to direct the support that they need and that they choose. They are scared by a government that backs further and further away from its promise of genuine, authentic co-design.

Disabled people deserve to live a life free from the fear of where the next government cuts are coming from. They deserve to be listened to and to have their voices heard. They deserve to have the same choice and control over their lives as everyone else in the community. This bill does the opposite of that and it should not be passed.