Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Senator, I listened to what you said and your mischaracterisations of the government's approach, your narrow appreciation of what is actually possible in terms of reform here—a position that you want to convey to families and participants that your party, the party of cuts to services, can only imagine one way through making a scheme of such public importance sustainable, and that is to cut it. I understand that the narrow field of vision from which you view these things means you see that there is only one approach, but the government's approach here is to moderate growth. That means that every year of the scheme's operation, while this government is the government, the amount of expenditure on the National Disability Insurance Scheme will increase every single year over the forwards and beyond the forwards. The objective is to try to moderate that growth to a level where it is around eight per cent.

The impact of the spending provisions in this bill have been estimated to reduce scheme expenditure over the forward estimates. In relation to intraplan inflation, this component is responsible for about half of the moderation in growth. The legislative reforms will support participants to spend in accordance with their plans, which is not a very difficult concept for people in the street to understand or for participants and their families. We will develop an approach that means that there is a common understanding for participants in the scheme of what is available for them to spend, rather than exhausting their funding for reasonable and necessary supports and then needing to be topped up with additional funding for supports. This is achieved through amendments to section 33 and 46 of the act, which will provide the agency with the power to set a total planned funding amount and then require a participant or nominee to spend within that funding amount. I think that that is an approach that fair-minded Australians would say is consistent with the good management of the scheme. A legislative instrument will set out the method by which the total funding amount is calculated. That will be available for you to scrutinise and, no doubt, ask questions about in future estimates.