Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme on the provision of services under the NDIS Early Childhood Early Intervention Approach, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I do—and I think Senator Macdonald mentioned Secretary McAnally—want to place on the record up-front the enormous good work that occurs in the secretariats of these very complex committee endeavours. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is probably one of the most significant pieces of public policy in generations or at least in recent memory. It is an extraordinarily complex area. I want to place on the record the extraordinarily good work that the secretariat does in resourcing the committee. Having been on the committee for a number of years and having worked with a number of chairs of the committee in the last five years—the Hon. Mal Brough, the Hon. Bruce Billson and now the Hon. Kevin Andrews have chaired that committee—I know it has been doing exceptionally good work in a very collegiate manner. Given the complexity of the endeavour, the committee has taken an approach to look at silos of work and to invite interested parties and organisations to make submissions in respect of relevant terms of reference in order to come up with good recommendations for the agency. This is another example of quite extraordinarily diligent work.

I recommend anyone in the early childhood sector look at the 14 recommendations. We did take abundant evidence. It's very, very clear that, if you have a child with disability in the early childhood sector, there are many, many different ways of approaching successful outcomes, and not all of those ways are generally accepted by all of the relevant professionals. We spoke to many groups who thought that these early intervention techniques were extremely critical to the ongoing success of children with disability. A view that was coherently understood and shared by, I think, the whole committee was: no-one knows the prescription for someone else's child's success in the early childhood area. There was a degree of concern about the way that the agency was using relevant, accepted tools to measure capacity, to measure the options in front of the parents and/or the organisations representing the children. So, we thought—very clearly—we should get the evidence in and test it with some relevant questioning. We would see if there were any supplementary submissions. Then the good work is always done by the very diligent secretariat, as they draw down all of that evidence into evidence based recommendations. It is a very robust committee, as most committees in this place are. The members of the committee then would go through all of the report as it's produced and agree on the outcomes.

I have to say, as the deputy chair, that we do not have a lot of contest. We don't have a lot of divergence of views. When the evidence is in and common sense presents itself, it's accepted across the board. I think it's another great example of a very good joint committee working collegiately and very well in disparate sectors of the disability area to produce evidence based recommendations for the agency. We hope—and are fairly confident—that we've produced a quality report which will ensure that there' ongoing improvement in this sector and ongoing success. We hope that children, parents and representatives in this sector will be able to pursue their dreams and goals and that we will have successful outcomes in this extremely important area. With every area of education or health, if you get it right in the early years, it's an early precursor and predictor of success in the ongoing years. So I recommend this report to the Senate and seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.