Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I start making my contribution around independent assessment, I just want to inform the Senate that Laurel Hubbard, a transgender Olympian from New Zealand, is quoted as saying, 'I just want to be myself. I just want to be me.' I think it's important here in the Senate that we practise tolerance and understand that people who are transgender are just being themselves. It is not an opportunity to come in and push a right-wing agenda without having the decency to reflect on the journey that transgender people make and the courage that they display to be able to become themselves.

Today I rise to talk about independent assessments under the NDIS. On 9 July, there was a communique from the disability reform ministers' meeting in which the now minister, Senator Reynolds, indicated through that communique and also through her own statement that the ministers' meeting had agreed not to proceed with independent assessments. As I understand, it was on the back of the NDIS Independent Advisory Council's advice. I'm really very grateful for the decision of the ministers because it was an issue that was really causing great angst within the disability community. On that day, when the announcement by the federal minister, Senator Reynolds, came out, the disability community breathed a collective sigh of relief because they were united in their opposition to independent assessments.

The introduction of the NDIS in March 2013 was the most significant social policy reform of this century. From the very beginning, the scheme has had at its heart the needs and aspirations of people with disability. However, when the federal government decided to go down the path of independent assessments, this represented a dramatic shift away from the core principles of the scheme. The government's proposal was to make every participant of the NDIS undergo an assessment conducted by a stranger for up to three hours.

The government gave numerous shifting reasons for this dramatic change in policy. The then Minister for the NDIS, Mr Stuart Robert, cited the need for improved flexibility and equality when he announced the trial of independent assessments in August last year. In May this year, the current minister, Senator Reynolds, then claimed that independent assessments needed to be introduced because the NDIS plans relied too heavily on empathy from public servants.

In the lead-up to the recent meeting of the disability ministers, Senator Reynolds shifted to a new reason—that the changes were needed to make the scheme economically sustainable. I do have to give some credit, though, where credit is due, because when Senator Reynolds took on the portfolio of the NDIS, she did undertake to do something that the previous minister, Mr Robert, failed to do—that was, to do some consultation with the disability sector. She halted the trials of the independent assessment while she was doing that consultation. But through that period, the NDIS Independent Advisory Council came to the decision and made the recommendation to the disability ministers that the independent assessments do not proceed and they will not, as I understand it. But we have to make sure that there is proper co-design in any changes or reform going forward— (Time expired)