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

I think it's worth asking you, Minister, to clarify a couple of things in relation to your contribution there. Tonight, in answer to my question—and it was a very simple question; I can read it back to you. My question to you was this: will the agency cover the costs of the needs assessment? You said in response to that question, 'That is a matter for government.' I then gave you multiple additional opportunities to confirm whether the agency will cover the cost of the needs assessment. You refused to do so, and in refusing to do so you have repeatedly cited the view of the government, it seems—though please feel free to clarify this—that it would be inappropriate for the government to clarify tonight whether the agency will cover the costs, for two reasons. Firstly, you have not yet determined the scope of work required in a needs assessment; and, secondly, you wish to engage in a process of co-design with the disability community as to the nature of the assessment.

On the first point, you ask us to accept as reasonable that the Senate would pass a piece of legislation requiring the undertaking of a mandatory process without understanding the ramifications of that mandatory process either for the workforce required to undertake that process or indeed for the individual upon whom that assessment will be carried out. Now, we can go into very significant detail as to the potential dangers that that process may expose the individual to. For examples of what that trauma could look like, it is fair enough to look at previous government proposals around this process. They can be serious. However, before you get anywhere near the trauma the individual may be exposed to, there is the basic question of cost. Who will pay for the assessment? You say, 'Can't tell you that because we haven't defined the scope of work.' Then why are you asking us to pass this bill?

You may well wish to determine down the line what the scope of work is, but wherever you land on those questions the assessment itself will still be mandatory, as it is required in the legislation—as the role of a needs assessor is laid out in legislation. The whole idea that, just because you haven't figured it out yet because you need to define that scope of work—which you do—we should therefore move on from this question and just pass the legislation without having that basic level of information is, I would put to the government, stretching the limit of credulity. You're asking us to just trust you that there will be enough people and that you'll define the scope of work in an appropriate way that will actually enable this assessment work to be carried out. I cannot see, and I would put to my fellow senators that we have been given no reason to believe, that we should trust the government in that regard.

Secondly, to your point of co-design: I am the most passionate advocate of co-design you could find in this building. I would be happy to debate, to scrutinise, to engage with any piece of legislation in relation to co-design the government may wish to bring. In all of the years that I have worked on that topic and explored what it would look like to bring co-design into being in a legislative context, I've never once come across an example where individuals, when brought together, opposed a question about a policy that they may wish to engage on and have actively volunteered that they really believe that a critical outcome of that co-design process is that they pay for yet another assessment of their need, function, ability or capacity. To bring that here tonight as a credible suggestion is just ridiculous. Let us remember the structural unemployment and the chronic poverty that we are subjected to as a community. To suggest that any disabled person or any representative organisation would come before a government, as part of a co-design process, and say, 'We really believe that we should pay for this; it's really important that we do,' is nonsense. And I think the government knows it's nonsense.

I think the government has been very happy to let the perception develop within the disability community that the needs assessment process will be paid for by the government. It has been very happy to let the disability community and disability representative organisations conclude that, because the NDIS review recommended that the cost of a needs assessment be covered by the government, that was the position of the government. What we have heard this evening is that that is not something the government's willing to commit to. It will need to wait for the usual budgetary processes. Fine. But why then ask us to pass this bill this evening in the absence of such a budgetary commitment?

We've not long gone through a budgetary process where there was an opportunity to at least earmark some funding, some public revenue, for a bit of a sandbox for the co-design process to take place within. You didn't do that. You're asking us to sign 660,000 people up to a process, up to a bill, that will require them to undergo a mandatory needs assessment process. You haven't been able to tell us this evening who will conduct that assessment, when and where, or how it will be paid for. You haven't been able to rule out that the participant themselves will have to pay for it. You haven't been able to confirm whether any work to understand whether any of the professions that might be required to engage in the work of delivering those needs assessments has been commenced or undertaken. So then I have to ask: why should the Senate accept the contention, in the absence of any of these basic pieces of information, that we should pass this bill?

Now, the government will probably respond to that by saying, 'Well, there is an urgent need to pass this enabling piece of legislation.' But, in relation to this bill and needs assessment, there's no enabling occurring. It is a stated, mandatory, legislated fact. You can consult and you can co-design—whatever you decide that means—what the assessment may or may not look like, but there is nothing that I have been able to identify or that the committee has been able to identify that enables a participant, at the end of the 18-month transition that the minister has outlined—or whenever we end up in that five-year process arriving at the destination of the required needs assessment—to opt out of a needs assessment and yet still receive funding. So that is my question to the minister: is there a section in this bill that enables a participant to opt out of undergoing a needs assessment and yet still receive an NDIS budget amount?