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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Disabled people and our families are struggling so much right now. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting so hard, making life more difficult and adding so much pressure. Every day brings another impossible choice between food and making the payments demanded to keep a roof over our heads, between medical bills and medicine, all while living or trying to live on a disability support pension or a carer's payment that was nowhere near enough before this crisis.

And now we are having to add another item to that list of impossible choices—the disability supports, the essential services that we or our children need to get about in the world, to communicate, to connect with friends and to get a job. We have to add that to the list and try to figure out how to pay for it, how to make it stretch a bit further, because this Labor government has cut so much from our NDIS.

This Labor government is kicking so many disabled people—so many disabled kids, particularly—off the NDIS. Why are they doing it? Why is Labor doing it? Because the government got in a room with premiers and chief ministers and made a secret deal to cut our NDIS and to kick people off. The Greens, on behalf of the community, are continuing to demand that the government be honest with the community and release the documents related to that decision. For over a year, we have been trying to get those answers, demanding that honesty. Today, again the government refuses to be honest. It refuses to own up to what it agreed and continues the secrecy—a pattern of secrecy, a pattern of forcing decisions that should be made in the public space into secret spaces that is, to this day, a feature of disability legislation and policy made in this place.

We have a document revealed to the Senate, finally made public, detailing the hundreds of confidentiality agreements that are demanded by this Labor government of disabled people and our advocates and organisations before we are able to consult on policy or legislation. The disability community have a principle: 'Nothing about us without us.' Well, when it comes to this Labor government and any policy about us, the principle Labor applies is: 'Everything about you, and you can only even get a word in if you sign this confidentiality agreement.' This binds our advocates and our organisations to their own impossible choice between getting a look in at all at what the government might be planning, in the hope that potentially somebody might see sense, and actually being able to consult with the community and get the views of their members.

This is totally inappropriate and a complete indictment and shame upon this Labor government. The secrecy, the confidentiality, the non-disclosure agreements—this is the very opposite of what you promised at the last election. Labor said that they would deliver transparency, honesty and integrity and no cuts to our NDIS, and you've backflipped on all of them. You've joined with the Liberals to cut our NDIS over $14.4 billion in the last budget alone, and you continue to demand silence from disability advocates. Shame.