Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This document is from the Western Australian Minister for Disability Services, Mrs Morton. It is a resolution of the Senate from 2 February 2016. I thank Minister Morton for her response to a motion that I put up. I think there were a number on that day, but one of them was a motion that I put forward. In WA we have the particular situation of having two trials. The Western Australian government was very late signing on to the NDIS—very, very late—and only came on board beyond the eleventh hour, quite frankly. Despite that, we have an NDIS trial at the moment up in the hills area. I was fortunate enough to go along to the opening of that trial held out in Midland. I was very proud to see Labor's NDIS finally starting up in Western Australia. The trial is going well in the Perth Hills region, but Western Australia is also doing its own trial of its own version of disability support. That is called My Way.

The history of disability support in Western Australia is very dark indeed. Particularly in the day when people with disability were institutionalised, we had many scandals amongst many organisations that are probably worthy of a royal commission. There were people with disability treated appallingly in institutions in Western Australia. It lagged behind. There were very conservative organisations running those group homes who thought that they knew best for people with disability. I am pleased to say that we are a long way from that now in Western Australia, and we do recognise that people with disability have the same rights and entitlements as people who do not have disability. We have clearly broken out of that shameful mould of the past that we were stuck in.

In Western Australia we have disability carers who are on poverty wages. The Barnett government have been quite remiss in looking at how they might improve funding so that workers with disability can earn a wage that they can live on so that they can buy food and make ends meet. It is quite shameful that that continues in WA while we have got this political split with the WA government doing its own trial. I have been contacted—as I am sure other senators in this place have been—by groups who represent people with disability in Western Australia to say that they do not want two trials. They do not want a unique Western Australian system, because they know what happened in the past and they certainly want a national NDIS to be very clear about what their entitlements are.

More alarmingly was the report that our shadow minister, Jenny Macklin, put out just last week. It has been reported in the media that the Turnbull government has some secret plan to take complete control of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Certainly Labor senators would be alarmed, and people with disability would be let down, if we saw curtailing of entitlements and curtailing of this National Disability Insurance Scheme which people with disability fought so very, very hard to get established. It is something that Labor is very proud of. Into the future it will sit in our national psyche in the same way that Medicare does. It is something we should all be proud of and it is something we should absolutely be striving to keep.

Nevertheless, The Australian Financial Review reported last week that the federal government is trying to pressure the states and territories into sweeping changes that would allow the Liberal government to change the funding and who is eligible for NDIS. This has been an area worked out in consultation with people with disability. They have been at the forefront of designing the NDIS. Yet here we have this secret plan by the Turnbull government to try to undo that in some way. They want to stack the board with their own people who will be puppet men and women who will just do the bidding of the Turnbull government.

Let me tell you, it will be a very brave Turnbull government that takes on people with disability in this country, because we know the Turnbull government is fairly weak. Let us hope that people with disability will really complain, as they have been complaining—they have been very vocal—about this change to their NDIS. It is their NDIS: a scheme that they helped design and they have helped implement. Let's make sure that it remains intact. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.