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

I feel like I need to correct the record. Last week, on 'NDIS Monday', I made reference to the fact we have been calling out this absolutely ridiculous denial from the government to produce these documents. We've been here, between six and eight months, doing this every Monday. I note, Senator Steele-John, that you put this motion up on 14 September 2023, so in less than a month we will mark our one-year anniversary of 'NDIS Monday'. The government should be very, very comfortable in the knowledge that we will continue well past the one-year anniversary, should we be required to, to try to get access to this framework.

Honestly, they really cannot make up their mind. We see the quarterly reviews come out from the NDIS that now say, 'Look at this. Isn't this great? We've managed to slow growth'—that's slowing growth without the introduction of this dog's breakfast of legislation that's currently before this chamber. What's extraordinary is that on one hand we've got Minister Shorten out there saying, 'Any delay to passing this bill is going cost $1 million a day,' and on the other hand he's also out there saying, 'Aren't we good at managing to slow this growth?'

We know how they've managed to slow the growth. We only get this through anecdotal evidence, but we know, from some numbers, that what's actually happening is that wait times are blowing out for people who are looking for change-of-circumstances reviews and for new plans to be put in place. So basically what's happening, to slow the growth, is that fewer people are being serviced. They are servicing people well outside of the scheme's guarantee of service. So it's absolutely false for them to claim that they're achieving some victories, movement and success with regard to the reforms of the NDIS, because all they're doing is manipulating data.

I note that we have now not only heard from the states and territories, who are asking for this legislation not to be passed until there can be agreement between the states and the Commonwealth, but also seen comments put out, over the weekend and at the end of last week, from Allied Health Professions Australia and Physical Disability Australia—but we've also heard from the Autism Partnership—about the risks that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 poses. Senator Steele-John referred to the two weeks given to the disability community for response and co-design—ha-ha-ha. But the two weeks that they've had to respond with regard to the proposed reasonable and necessary supports will be accepted by the agency moving forward. I don't know why this government is so opposed to looking at a definition of 'permanent and lifelong', because that was who the scheme was set up for. If we looked at 'permanent and lifelong' we'd see some significant changes through the scheme anyway, and it'd be an opportunity to then force the states back to the table.

Whilst we have this legislation in front of us, we have a thing called 'category A supports'. The category A supports require unanimous support and unanimous agreement by the states and territories, with the Commonwealth, as to what they will provide. We don't have that at the moment. We do not have unanimous support. In fact, we don't have any support from the states and territories when it comes to the list of category A supports. That's still a bit of an unknown. But the states and territories are already saying they're in no position to agree to these.

If/when this bill passes this chamber, what we do know is that it won't be worth the paper it is written on without the unanimous support of the states. What is that support from the states predicated on? It's the sustainability framework that we have been asking for for now almost a year so we can understand where the figure of 'capped eight per cent growth of the scheme' actually comes from. We don't know. Is this an arbitrary figure that was just pulled out of the air? Was there some actuarial evidence behind it? What was the modelling that was done? What were the assumptions that underpinned that modelling? We know that the assumptions given to the actuary, when it came to the costs of the eight-week delay because we had an inquiry—heaven forbid we had some hearings into this legislation, which was allegedly ready to pass eight weeks ago but now requires 30 amendments from the government itself, so it was no way ready to be passed. But we don't know how much is actually going to be saved, what the growth is going to slow to and how that's going to be achieved.