David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I have a few questions for the minister, but before I get to that I wanted to make a few observations about what I've seen happen over the last few months. There's this massive gap between when you actually talk to people on the NDIS about their experience of it and how life changing it has been for so many families. Sure, there is some fraud, and I welcome the minister's focus on that. But seeing that most of the narrative has been around painting NDIS participants and their families as criminals who are somehow living it up, living the good life on the NDIS, it does a real disservice to this debate and this really important issue.

Most of the participants you talk to are incredibly grateful for the support they receive to make a modification to their house to help them live comfortably. They're grateful for the hours of support they receive that help them access the community, go shopping and meet new people. I think we need to remind ourselves that the point of the NDIS is not just to allow people to survive but actually to allow people to be part of society and to contribute. That is the core of this system that was set up.

In truth, the biggest issues that are raised with me around genuine fraud are about providers inflating their prices to draw as much out of the NDIS as possible. I've seen invoices where a provider has charged an extremely vulnerable person around $60,000 for a week of respite care. That's clearly not good enough. Again, I thank Minister Shorten for focusing efforts to ensure this doesn't happen.

Minister, I want to ask about co-design. Clearly a central concern that's been raised from the beginning is about the genuineness of the government's offer to ensure reforms are co-designed with the disability community. I want to draw your attention to a consultation that's currently underway on the draft list of NDIS supports. The bill we are debating right now will enable this list to become a regulation, and this is a pretty big reform. It will essentially determine what's provided by the states and territories in some cases and what can be provided through the NDIS. This list is only open for consultation for a period of two weeks—two weeks! Organisations are contacting my office, raising concerns, saying they don't have the resources to respond to all of the issues in two weeks at the same time as they're watching this bill go through. So I am keen to get on the record your outline of what co-design means to the government and whether a two-week consultation would meet that definition.