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

Senator Steele-John, I think we are at almost 18 months since this motion first came up, when we first asked for an explanation when it came to foundational supports. So we start our first day here in 2025 yet again—it's normally NDIS Monday, but we never miss an opportunity, so we'll do it on a Tuesday and we'll be here next Monday—looking for an explanation as to what the financial arrangement between the states and the federal government looks like when it comes to reform of the NDIS.

Some people may have missed today's announcement on the NDIS with regard to eligibility criteria. When people were coming up for eligibility assessments, they were being given 28 days to put together documentation to prove that they still had a disability. Today, that has changed to 90 days, because someone in the NDIA has realised that it is nigh on impossible to get to your specialist and to those that they consider worthy to provide documentation that you still have a disability—a disability you may have been born with or that first gave you entry into the scheme because it was a permanent and lifelong disability. I love when people have to re-prove they have Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, or that they are a quadriplegic—these things occur. But it has now been accepted that 90 days is perhaps a slightly more workable timeframe to prepare those documents.

Why is this important? Because it falls into every single part of the NDIS. We have worker shortages across the board. We have shortages when it comes to allied health professionals. In New South Wales we have just had almost all psychiatrists in the public health system walk away from the job. So we have a mental health crisis and a shortage of allied health providers and professionals, yet the NDIA is making it harder and harder for participants to continue with their plans, to continue improving their lives and to continue making their lives and their families' lives better.

Senator Steele-John, you may also enjoy this: my son is currently up for review, and I am currently running around to paediatricians, occupational therapists, behavioural therapists and exercise physiologists to put together all of the reports. This isn't just about the meeting that we have with those specialists; we then have to pay them for their time to write the reports.

My son has level 3 autism. Senator Steele-John, you talked about the National Autism Strategy, which is something my committee actually recommended—you were a participating member when we did a Senate select committee into the whole of life of autism and recommended a national autism strategy. But we didn't recommend a national autism is awesome strategy, a strategy to ignore people with severe and profound autism, or a strategy to ignore that it has a complete disabling effect on their lives.

Unfortunately, we have seen a little bit of whitewashing with regard to how autism can be a superpower—how it's a different way of thinking and should be celebrated at all times. For people with severe and profound autism, it is actually very challenging for them. There are communication challenges, there is rigidity of thought and there is difficulty with all daily living skills. Things you and I take for granted are well beyond the capacity of these people. But these people are being let down, they are being excluded and they are not being part of the conversation.

As I prepare for my son's review, I am feeling very anxious. I am very stressed about it. I am very uncertain as to what the future holds—and I am the deputy chair of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. So you can only imagine how the families of participants feel who don't have the same committee meetings, the mobile number of the CEO or the ability to just walk over to the ministerial wing and knock on the new minister's door. My heart absolutely breaks for those families that are going through this period of uncertainty, because this Labor government has refused to provide any transparency.

There is no transparency to what the reforms of the NDIS should look like in full. We don't know what the foundational supports are, we don't know who is going to pay for them and we don't know how they are going to be rolled out. Now, we have a list of banned therapies. If you had told me equine therapy was a cure for autism, I would have told you that was rubbish, but riding for the disabled, and the associated programs that go with that, is incredibly helpful to people with intellectual disabilities and autism. Yet it is now on the banned list of therapies from the NDIS.