Larissa Waters (Queensland, 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. It's clearly on the wrong track because this is a terrible bill that will cut $14.4 billion out of the NDIS and will make huge changes that will result in significant harm to the 660,000 people who rely on the NDIS. It got sent to an inquiry for three months. There were three hearings held and over 200 submissions. Day one of the hearings saw witnesses condemn the bill and implore senators to recommend that it not pass in its current form.

The legislation, which proposes the most significant changes to the NDIS since it commenced over a decade ago, was developed behind closed doors with representatives from disability organisations, who had to sign non-disclosure agreements. On day one of the inquiry, the committee heard directly from disabled people. Just some of their concerns with this bill include:

… this will do nothing in achieving good outcomes. This will do nothing in protecting human rights. This will kill thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people.

Also:

This bill is the most dangerous piece of legislation since the changes to the DSP and robodebt.

Another was:

… this bill enables the NDIA to force me out of my home if I need eight hours of support or more. I will be forced to choose between living with my wife and my vital support needs.

Another concern was that disability:

… varies so greatly that you cannot possibly put a black-and-white mechanism, a computer algorithm, in place, much less one that is beyond being able to be challenged by a participant.

Another quote was:

Fundamentally, this bill ceases to be fit for purpose because it does not understand what it seeks to achieve, unless all it seeks to achieve is to save a bunch of money at the cost of very many lives.

There has been significant community backlash to this bill, with organisations and disabled people and their families sharing the harm that it will do to them.

The budget included a cut of $14.4 billion from the NDIS that will be achieved by this legislation. In a cost-of-living crisis, this Labor government is choosing to remove $14.4 billion in funding from the NDIS. That will lead to disabled people not getting the support they need when they need it. This government has taken an active decision to abandon disabled people. They have abandoned NDIS workers and are passing the buck to the millions of Australians who undertake informal caring roles, mostly on an unpaid basis. The Labor government have decided it is more important to fund billions of dollars in handouts to weapons manufacturers than it is to support the disability community and the many disabled people that rely on the NDIS to live happy and healthy lives.

It is clear that there is not an essential service that Labor won't cut to fund nuclear submarines and fossil fuel subsidies and handouts. This government have done nothing short of betray the disability community, and they should be ashamed of themselves. I sat listening to my colleague, Senator Steele-John when he gave an incredibly impassioned speech opposing this bill, and I implore people in this chamber to think carefully about their position on this bill. I think I heard the opposition say, after complaining about it, that actually they will support the bill. So it's going to be rammed through with the support of both of the big parties in this chamber. The disability community have every right to feel deeply betrayed by both of those parties.

Just on the process, the bill was created behind closed doors and is now being rushed through. As I mentioned before, in order to even be consulted about the bill, disability organisations had to sign a non-disclosure agreement. That is not standard practice and it's very disturbing. It comes off the back of the public revelations that the government spent $600,000 on a speechwriter for the NDIS minister. They also spent $400,000 on a RedBridge commissioned focus group with messaging to help them manipulate community sentiment. The RedBridge work provided the government with the messaging they needed in order to reach a level of community acceptance that would allow this bill to not be questioned. I'm going to quote from the RedBridge report, which is report No. 4, and it's very disturbing:

When we presented rorts, fraud, and unreasonable pricing as posing an existential threat to the NDIS, we were able to create an environment in which respondents were amenable to reforms designed to counter these things.

Informed by the RedBridge messaging work, the government has been talking about fraud, dodgy service providers and participants spending money on things like holidays and alcohol to distract the public from this terrible bill—a bill, I might add, that does nothing to address any of those concerns, if they did have any validity. Despite those claims of fraud being made by the NDIS, when my colleague asked in Senate estimates for the proof, for the receipts, none of that was able to be provided, and neither are those issues addressed in this bill. Those issues were a dangerous distraction to help this bill sail through.

So let's come to the substance of the bill. It sets up the framework for pushing people off the NDIS and into supports that the government says will be provided by states and territories. Well, reality check: there is no possible way that the states and territories can provide those supports in time in a way that's nationally consistent and that would guarantee that no disabled person becomes worse off. Removing people from the scheme and onto services that don't even exist yet is outrageously poor planning, with obviously harmful consequences.

This bill would also make it easier to prevent people from accessing the NDIS, and it would make it easier for bureaucrats to remove people from the scheme. The bill is set to prescribe specifics of what you can and can't get from NDIS. This is a blatant attempt to control the choices that participants, until this bill might pass, have been able to make for themselves. Choice and control is meant to be 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.

This bill would see a restriction of supports available through the scheme. It would limit people's ability to have NDIS plans that are based on their individual needs. And it would replace 'reasonable and necessary' with a new single definition of NDIS supports. This new NDIS support list would only provide funding for supports that meet a narrow definition as defined by the politicians holding the NDIS's purse strings. Be afraid. This bill would also allow bureaucrats to demand that NDIS participants undergo mandatory psychiatric or physical examinations within 90 days in order to make a decision about whether their scheme access should be revoked. Not only would this traumatise and retraumatized so many participants, and could result in people getting unfairly kicked off the scheme, but how is someone meant to get an appointment within 90 days with a psychiatrist to undergo an assessment, when the waitlists are over a year in some areas? This is a deliberately designed system to kick people off the NDIS, to help this government save $14.4 billion off the backs of disabled people, because they would rather give the money to nuclear submarines and big coal companies in the form of accelerated depreciation and cheap write-offs. What an absolute affront to the disability community and the 660,000 people who currently rely on this scheme to live some form of decent life.

There are so many methods and processes mentioned in the bill that haven't even been defined, including the method for turning an assessment of support needs into a budget. These vague references to methods that calculate budgets are a recipe for robodebt 2, and the Greens cannot stand for that. We will not allow it. We won't sit for it and we won't roll with it. This bill would enable the minister to make significant changes to the scheme in future without further community consultation. There used to be a phrase 'nothing about us without us,' and it's a crucial phrase that should be applying here with a system that is designed to support and assist the disability community. Yet the bill enables the minister to make changes to the scheme without further consultation with the disability community—or with anyone in the community, for that matter. I am struggling to find an example of executive overreach that has such paternalistic damage associated with it in any other piece of legislation. Imagine if a minister could just snap their fingers and remove a life-saving support from anyone's life. That is what this bill is proposing to do. It is an extreme executive power that should be resisted with every fibre of the being of this chamber.

My office and my wonderful staff provide a lot of support for people who already have some challenges accessing appropriate support under the NDIS scheme, and I want to share an example of some of the issues that we should be dealing with in this chamber, some of the issues that do need fixing, instead of considering a bill that cuts $14.4 billion out of the scheme, allows participants to be wantonly tossed off the scheme and gives the minister virtually unfettered executive power for future changes. I want to share some details of a family whose daughter, an NDIS participant, has faced some seriously egregious delays that have threatened her wellbeing and safety and that of her carers and her parents. I have permission from her family to share her story.

The NDIS participant had outgrown the stroller that she requires every day to be safely moved around by her parents and carers. After an initial delay the NDIS agreed to provide the stroller, three months after the first application, but that was then delayed by a further two months. It took five months for the NDIS to approve a simple and straightforward assistive technology request. The lack of a suitable stroller during that time—that five-month period—meant that the participant was not only deeply uncomfortable but risked falling out of the stroller and sustaining serious injury. This is totally unacceptable, and I'm sure it's just one of thousands of similarly heartbreaking cases. This is the sort of issue that this chamber should be seeking to address and fix, not this dangerous slashing of a scheme that has been supporting so many people. Sure, it has its flaws, and, yes, we need to address those, but this bill does none of that.

This bill is a wanton attack on the disability community. It was staged in a super dodgy way, requiring organisations to sign nondisclosure agreements, and it gives the minister an open chequebook for any future changes, without having to consult with anyone, least of all people with disability, their families or the organisations that support and represent them. The bill absolutely should not pass. It needs to be sent back to inquiry to give the community a decent amount of time to make their concerns known in the hope that someone in this chamber, beyond the Greens, might actually listen to the community. We need to make sure that this bill and the amendments proposed therein are properly scrutinised. Disabled people and those who love them, and anyone who cares about the integrity of government social services, should have the opportunity to make their feelings about this bill known. This Labor government is so deeply disappointing, raising $14.4 billion off the backs of people in the disability community and, instead, spending money on weapons of war and subsidies for fossil fuel extraction. I don't even understand why they wanted to be in government if this is the sort of policy that they come up with.