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

I seek leave to make a five-minute statement.

Leave granted.

What the Labor Party, together with the Liberals have just done, is gag debate on the NDIS bill. They have prevented this Senate from considering in detail the amendments which are brought to this place by the Greens to ensure that critical safeguards and protections for disabled people and our families are retained and that the unique supports that we need to live our lives are still available to us. I want to state clearly to the community exactly what the Labor and Liberal parties just combined to do to prevent us from discussing.

This Labor bill removes a core principle from the National Disability Insurance Scheme—the principle of 'reasonable and necessary'—and instead creates government prescribed lists of what people can and cannot receive through the NDIS. This bill grants to the minister and to the CEO of the NDIA the power to make up new rules, conditions and circumstances surrounding what can and can't be funded, without any oversight from the parliament. Labor is seeking in this legislation to make a new rules based series of classes of disabled people. In 2024, the Labor government brings to this Senate a bill that would divide disabled people into classes. It would empower the federal minister for disabilities to divide us into classes. It is disgusting!

Within this bill is granted to the NDIS and to the government the power to reassess an individual's plans in the coming years. Part of that assessment process will be undertaking a needs assessment which will be mandatory but which the government is able to make you pay for. This is an application fee for the NDIS, and it is a serious breach of trust with not only disabled people and our families but the entire Australian community who believe now, as they have believed for the last 10 years, that the National Disability Insurance Scheme should be a universal system of support, without an application fee for entry.

This bill contains a series of additional powers granted to the CEO that will enable them to require a participant to undergo very specific and often expensive assessments and procedures if they demand more information from that participant in order to grant them access or for any other reason. If the participant can't pay, or if the wait time for the assessment, in addition to all of the other government mandated assessments, is too long, the CEO can kick you off the scheme.

That is what is in this bill. That is what our Greens amendments remove—these amendments that the government is now gagging debate on, not only preventing discussion but also saving themselves from the requirement to detail to the chamber precisely why they oppose these amendments. That is what they are doing here today: they are gagging this debate, and I am stunned, to be quite honest.

There are two amendments brought forward by the Greens which we will now not be able to discuss which should have received the entire chamber's support. One extends basic whistleblower protections to all of those who work within the disability service sector, so that they can report fraud, abuse or neglect. The other addresses the fundamental reality that Labor's bill enhances the ability of the NDIA to reclaim what they consider to be debts. Under the processes in this bill, debts are issued immediately following the identification of an invalid payment. This process does not afford procedural fairness, and there are insufficient protections where a debt has been raised against a participant when they are not responsible for the creation of that debt. Our amendments, which we will no longer be able to discuss in detail, would ensure that a participant would not be responsible for a debt if it were created by a third party—meaning that, if a dodgy service provider were to defraud a participant or the scheme, we would be able to guarantee that the disabled person themselves would not have to pay. I beseech the opposition and crossbench: at least support these basic protections to the basic substance of procedural fairness. (Time expired)