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

Well, here we are again. For nine months in this place, Greens and coalition members have been locked as one to try and get the smallest degree of transparency from those opposite—and, yet again, they fail to provide. In some ways, it's hard to put in words how awful the situation that those opposite have put us into has become. It's been nine months of this place trying to get the most basic information from those opposite on the largest public policy reform over the last 30 years in this country. Time and time again, through motions in this place and in estimates, we have sought some accountability from the government—and debate on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 is coming up after this business today.

This government were in opposition when I as minister, and my predecessor, started saying that this is a scheme in trouble. It was created far too fast by those opposite, instead of having a long runway to design and develop the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to trial it, to work out how to bring people in a methodical way into the scheme, to make sure they had the support they needed and to make sure that the scheme was only used by those it was designed for. But it became very clear after the first few years of implementation that things were going badly astray. As we'll talk about more today, that was because of the original legislation. Giving the benefit of the doubt to those opposite, they didn't realise—and I don't think we did either at the time—just how flawed that legislation was.

Here we are, over a decade later, and this is a scheme that, by design of those opposite, has no brakes on it. With Medicare, the PBS and all other demand driven schemes, those who control the purse strings are able to manage the two drivers of cost: people who are eligible for the scheme and how much they get paid. But, for the NDIS, that simply is not possible. Bill Shorten, the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, has spent two years after coming into government saying that there were no problems with this scheme. He has spent more time worrying about how he could insult me and insult my intelligence—and he was still doing it yesterday in op-eds. He should have spent less time worrying about all his zingers of insults and more time worrying about the design of this scheme, three years after we rang the bell that we needed to work together to fix this scheme to make sure that it provided certainty for everybody with a serious and permanent disability. But, no, what has he done over the last two years? This minister has spent the two years conducting a review that was never needed because we'd already had reviews. We know what the problems are with the scheme. There are many. None of the real problems are easy to fix, but they can be fixed. He has now left it for three years and the scheme has got worse.

In fact, over the last year alone, under his watch, the cost of the scheme—taxpayers' money—has increased by over 21 per cent. Instead of working across the chamber—and on all sides of the chamber we've reached out to say, 'Let's work on this together'—the minister has had NDAs with the sector around this legislation. He's had a review that reported in December. We still don't have a government response to it. He's now developed and is seeking to implement legislation with a completely inadequate inquiry which they've sausage-factoried through. They've already come up with a whole raft of amendments because the legislation is so bad, and yet, today, we don't have the financial figures. They spend most of their time working out how they can avoid transparency in the Senate and at estimates. At additional estimates this year, they wouldn't even provide the figures for the additional estimates variation of over $1 billion. If they had put more effort into redesigning this to save this scheme, put the controls in place and renegotiate the intergovernmental agreements with states and territories, who have completely abrogated their responsibilities to the other four million people with disability that they were supposed to look after—