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

Does anyone remember the government saying, during the election campaign, that it was going to be a government all about transparency? They were very clear that they were going to be all about transparency. But what we've seen, when it comes to the NDIS, is Senator Steele-John and Senator Reynolds requesting these documents and speaking to the refusal of this government to provide these documents for almost 18 months. To Senator Steele-John's point, they denied that they existed, and now they've had to admit they exist, but they are still hiding them in another show of the lack of transparency and the opaqueness of this government.

Before the election, Mr Shorten, as the then shadow NDIS minister, claimed that the NDIS was perfectly sustainable and that there were no issues whatsoever with the NDIS. In fact, according to him, the Liberal government and Senator Reynolds, as the minister, were somehow behaving like pearl-clutching kabuki players when we were reaching out across the aisle, asking for bipartisan support and being honest and transparent about the state of the NDIS and its sustainability. What have we seen since this government has come to power? They have now recognised that the NDIS is unsustainable, that there are too many participants on the NDIS and that there has been a complete lack of management when it comes to the behaviour of some of the providers—not the participants but the providers. So the NDIS continues to descend into chaos.

There are those in the Australian community that look at the NDIS as this behemoth of spending. They think that there are too many people on it, they think that it's a rort and they think that it's being manipulated. Unfortunately, through that argument, some of the goodwill is being lost in the broader community. But, for the families of participants and for the participants themselves, who rely on the NDIS to provide supports, we know that this is one of the most important driving issues in their lives. In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, when we know more and more people who have a disability sit at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, they are being punished even further by this government with its complete uncertainty and, quite frankly, meanness when it comes to treatment of those on the NDIS.

In just a few months, participants who will no longer qualify for the NDIS are supposed to be sent over to this wonderful new world of foundational supports, and, as Senator Steele-John mentioned, we don't even know what foundational supports are. This government can't even tell us what a foundational support is. There are a lot of assumptions within the community as to what they're supposed to be, but no-one actually knows what they are. So where are these families going to go when? It's particularly impacting children. Where is a family going to go to get support when their child is no longer qualifying for the NDIS?

Among the things that were supposed to be in place when the scheme was rolled out were ILC grants. They were supposed to there to develop tier 2 supports so that community groups would be able to support disabled people in their community to more actively participate. My children are all teenagers now, but I remember going to music groups, playgroups and all these other different activities with my children when they were younger, and what these grants were supposed to do was to support these groups to further develop so that they could include children with a disability more easily. Instead, we've seen the ILC grants turning into some sort of political football and not going to the groups that require them or to the groups that have also provided advocacy within the space. In fact, in Tasmania we have seen Autism Tasmania have to close because they were refused ILC grants. I know ILC grants have not been given to Autism Awareness Australia, the leading group for parents.

What we've also seen is this complete uncertainty and kids falling through the gaps. In Victoria, there is a 20-month-old who is blind and for whom the Victorian state government was refusing to provide prosthetics beyond his first pair of them. This little boy will need prosthetics until he stops growing. This family is just one of a growing number of examples who are consistently falling through the gaps. Perhaps the Victorian by-elections will be a wake-up call, at least for their health system.