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

And obviously we need to keep in mind that there are businesses, like psychologists, whose entire business is not NDIS participants. They might just have two or three. So it may not be appropriate for that business to be a registered provider and go through the extensive costs and audit, but those businesses can be incredibly professional and be proper people to deliver services.

I do want to hand over to Senator Steele-John, so I'll try and finish up. One of the things we've heard is that there are going to be efficiencies from the agency. I struggle to see where they're coming from, particularly with these new navigators being brought in, adding another layer of bureaucracy before you even see a support worker. What further work is going to be undertaken to monitor the agency in its efficiency models? I ask that because, only this morning I received an email—I had a look at who else got it, and I think Senator Ruston and Senator Steele-John received the email; it was sent to a few people—that said that someone who has been having a discussion with the agency about a plan got an email from someone at the agency, saying: 'Thanks for the discussion. We've had the discussion. We've added some money to this plan. Blah, blah, blah.' And the plan that was attached was for the wrong person. It includes all the private and personal contact details as well as details of the person's disability, what their challenges are—everything. It has been forwarded to us; I don't think it should have been. Someone has been sent the wrong information, and I would have thought the agency would have, as a priority, made sure that such personal details as these required a higher level of attention to detail.

I do want to acknowledge you, Senator Ayres. In your comments that you made to Senator Steele-John, I think what you said was appropriate, and we certainly welcome the comments that you directed to Senator Steele-John, because I don't think he has undertaken a scare campaign.

I'll finish up and use the last couple of minutes to just say a few things. The coalition, with our amendments being supported, will look to pass this bill, and I can't say I do it with a feeling of overwhelming joy. I do it with considerable despair, because, unlike the position held by those currently in government when they were in opposition and stood in the way of all the reforms that were suggested by us when we were in government—when we were referred to as pearl-clutching kabuki players because we mentioned sustainability issues and were trying to address them yet were blocked at every step, even though this had always been a bipartisan scheme—there does need to be reform.

I'm not filled with confidence that this is the best first step or that this is an appropriate first step. I think there are elements of it that will be good. I am very keen. I've said to the minister and I have repeated ad nauseam for years that there are too many people on the scheme. There are kids that shouldn't be on the scheme—the kids that do not have permanent and lifelong conditions—and parents that are diagnosis shopping. Quite frankly, it's insulting to those of us with kids that genuinely need it. It's insulting for kids who have been to a number of paediatricians, who have a developmental delay, have an autism level 2 diagnosis and are given a package of, say, $25,000, to know that we now have kids with level 3 autism and intellectual disability currently—and it's being used by the agency; obviously we only get this anecdotally—where the agency staff are already telling them that, because of the new legislation, they are having have their plans cut. Kids with level 3 autism and kids with intellectual disability that are going to have serious and lifelong impairments are having their plans cut to exactly the same level as these other children with autism.

Kids with autism are being absolutely used and abused through the press saying that there are too many of them, and there are, because not all of them have what would have been considered autism in the old days. The new DSM-5 has done more damage than I can even begin to imagine with its levels of autism and the removal of so many other diagnoses of disorders.

For the families of children with severe and profound autism, you are the quiet voices here because you are just trying to make it through every day, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this scheme is letting you down, and I don't know if this is going to help. I'm not filled with confidence that this government is going to be able to deliver these reforms, but we will not stand in the way of them, and we hope that this is just the first tranche of what needs to be genuine reform, because this scheme is too important for the people that need it—for the people whose lives were changed when this scheme came into being, who live in fear every day that they will be forced back into block funded, group home accommodation and that their loved ones will not receive any care or quality of life. That's what used to happen, and our kids were treated like they were less than human, and it's starting to happen again.

It's starting to happen again because providers are rorting the system because the agency is unable to determine differences between broad diagnosis. Co-design, which we consistently hear about so often, isn't coming from the voices that really need to be heard, because those people don't have the chance to speak up. Their parents are just trying to get through every day. Their parents are trying to do the best for their child, and there are voices that do not experience impairments at the same level. There are voices that have physical disabilities and can speak up while those with cognitive disorders and those with intellectual disabilities cannot, and sometimes co-design does more damage than good, because those voices are forgotten. So I would implore the government, when they talk about co-design, to talk to the people who genuinely need this scheme, to the people that need it for the rest of their lives and to the people who are struggling day by day and don't often have the platforms to be able to say what needs to be said.

We will support this bill. Please get it right. Please do more. Please work constructively with us to do more to make sure that people aren't left behind and that this scheme is there for the people who really need it going forward, because it's too important.