Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senators, there are times in our roles when we may question the value of processes such as that which we are engaging in this evening. Sometimes, these debates can seem as though members of parliament are just burning up time, trying to achieve other strategic goals. What we just witnessed in this chamber is an example of exactly why parliamentary scrutiny is so important. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of the two pillars of our national social security system. It represents the very best of our community's values. It is the response demanded by the community of their governments to embody in social programs a commitment to fairness and equality. Responding to that demand was the impetus for creating the scheme in the first place.

We have just learned that this government, with the legislation it is attempting to pass through this parliament tonight, is proposing to subject the 660,000 participants who rely on the NDIS for basic supports to be able to get out of bed, have a shower, go to work, see their friends and be part of their communities—every single one of those participants—to a mandatory government-run needs assessment process, and they may well have to pay for it. Tonight we have had it confirmed that the government, as it seeks to pass this bill, cannot assure the 660,000 participants who rely on the NDIS that they will not be slugged with the bill for the mandatory assessment process that is proposed in this bill.

In case any member of the government is trying right now to weave around the mandatory nature of these assessments, let me refer you to section 32L(1) of your own piece of legislation:

The CEO must arrange for an assessment of a participant's need for supports to be undertaken as soon as practicable after the CEO commences the preparation of a plan for a participant.

There is no wiggle room here. Never in the course of the inquiry into this bill, nor in the course of the previous inquiry into this bill, has any member of the government come clean with the community that it is asking the Senate to pass a piece of legislation which will require a mandatory assessment that they may well have to pay for. It absolutely beggars belief.

Let us remember that right now there are folks on the scheme who've had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for specialist reports not because they were needed but because the agency you run required them to undertake those reports to continue to receive those supports. So before you jump up and say, 'Oh, well, tens of thousands of dollars are terrible, but this'll be cheaper,' let me tell you right now that, in my seven years in this job, I have lost count of the number of disabled people with permanent, basic, well-understood disabilities asking for commonsense supports who have been asked to undertake additional assessments not because the information was needed but because the bureaucracy, at the government's behest, was trying to find as many ways as possible to kick them off.

If you don't believe me, go and read the transcripts of countless Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearings and results that have demonstrated again and again that the government and the agency together have colluded in a process of requiring participants to give additional information as part of a process of bureaucratic abuse. That is what we experience now, and what we have learnt from the government this evening is that, under their bill, you'll be subjected to all of that, and you'll still have to pay for it. It is an absolute disgrace for you to come in here and attempt to pass this bill without being willing to commit this evening to covering the cost of the assessments that you require.

Disabled people don't want this. We're actually quite satisfied with the idea—and let's take this as a radical idea—that we would tell you what disability we have, that we would share with you the mountain of medical reports that we have acquired over the course of our lifetimes, that you'd have a look at it and that if you needed any additional information you'd foot the bill for it, because it's you who wants the information. Why should a disabled person with a permanent, well-demonstrated and well-documented impairment have to once again prove it to the government? It is ridiculous.

This whole process of pretending to the disability community that this bill is in our own interests, that it is good for us, is a myth designed by RedBridge polling and all your good mates as part of the speechwriting pools that you've created together. This myth was pulled apart during the course of these inquiries—inquiries that you opposed on the basis that your bill was signed, sealed and sorted. 'No changes or additions needed,' say the government, and then in the next minute there are 18 amendments, most of which do not relate at all to the evidence that was taken during the inquiries. The schedules I've read tonight make me laugh to the pit of my stomach. God, you've been busy, how you've been busy, finding new ways to give yourselves more powers.

During the course of this debate I have tried to engage and have committed myself to engaging in a process of analytical scrutiny of what is before us—and I will return to that. But, for goodness sake, to have come all this way, to have come all of these years into this process, to have required disabled people to expend so much energy and expertise for your government as part of the process of so-called reform that you have proposed to us over the last couple of years, to get here tonight, and you can't even confirm that the assessment you will require of us under law, this mandatory process, is one which we will not have to pay for in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis! So, Minister, I finish with this: can you confirm that section 32L(1) requires that the undertaking of a needs assessment is in fact a mandatory process?