Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

I want to come back to this needs assessment because I'm becoming increasingly confused, which is very concerning considering the whole 5½ days of hearings that we had in this inquiry, which we've been assured is more than enough. One of the things that we heard throughout the hearings that we were allowed to have, that we were assured the government senators were available for, was that the needs assessments were going to be about fairness. They were going to be about equity. We heard the minister quote that families currently pay substantial sums of money to garner reports and the like in regard to their NDIS planning.

The needs assessment, as was told to us throughout these hearings, was to ensure there was equality of access; families would no longer be burdened with this cost because there would be this standard, functional needs assessment that would be made. Different disabilities would have different assessments. We were being assured, 'Don't worry; we will come to who is going to develop new ones versus using best practice already established so we can spend more money and make it more difficult and more complex to deliver.' You just quoted recommendation 3—and, to note Senator Reynolds's point, you were reading from the review, not the government's response or the legislation—which was for fairer and more consistent pathways. Again—equality of access, ensuring that everyone with a disability can have a functional needs assessment done and their plan made. They don't have to go and spend thousands of dollars with paediatricians, psychologists, OTs, speech therapists and behaviour analysts to deliver these reports for them, because they're going to have a functional assessment that the government is now saying, though it's not decided yet, that they may have to pay for themselves. I'm sure people in the disability community would want to know this: how much are they going to be charged?

And I know Senator Steele-John has asked questions about where the workforce is going to come from here, but is this an attempt to set up a new cottage industry? We're now going to have NDIS providers who deliver functional assessments. They are paid by the NDIS, no doubt at top dollar, to deliver these so-called NDIS approved needs assessments that will be delivered by outsourced providers. Is there another provider industry about to be set up? The point of this bill, the point of why we've been trying to work with the minister and what we've been saying since we were in government, is that sustainability is an issue. It was denied by Minister Shorten when he was the opposition spokesperson. It was pearl-clutching kabuki theatre players when anyone talked about sustainability when we were in government, but now, no, no, no, sustainability is an issue! But is this now setting up another little cottage industry of functional assessors who can go out and charge at top rate, which will then actually remove the equality of access because there will be families who can't access one, who can't afford to pay for a needs assessment or a functional assessment?

And then we'll run into the next problem: rural and regional access. People in remote communities won't be able to have one. Then the providers will have to charge all those big travel costs to go out there, won't they? And how many times do you think the travel costs will be charged? They might go out and do four assessments, but they'll charge those travel costs four times. We know that is what is happening. This is why the NDIS has sustainability issues. It is because so many of the providers are completely and utterly rorting the system and using participants to rort the system. This is where this legislation is not focused, and we have a long way to go on this committee stage.

Minister, please confirm or clarify: Are participants going to be required to pay for functional assessments? Will this be a new cottage industry set up of NDIS providers to deliver NDIS approved functional assessments?