Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While the government cannot agree with the assertion in the motion, we acknowledge the genuine interest from across this chamber in reforms to get the NDIS back on track. By making the scheme work better for people with disability and ensuring every NDIS dollar gets to the people who need it, we will ensure it is sustainable for future generations of Australians. I understand that discussions are progressing with the office of Senator Steele-John to address his questions about the NDIS reform agenda, which the government is advancing in partnership with the disability community. The government has previously outlined that we have claimed public interest immunity over the requested documents, as disclosure would prejudice relations between the Commonwealth and the states and the territories. The Minister representing the Treasurer has already tabled key documents for the benefit of the Senate.

The independent NDIS review also released its final report in December 2023. The review's terms of reference included the specific objective to ensure the sustainability of the NDIS for future generations. The independent NDIS review panel has said its reforms can improve the scheme and meet National Cabinet's annual growth target of no more than eight per cent growth by 1 July. The review delivered 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions to respond to its terms of reference. In delivering its recommendations, the review provided exhaustive analysis of the key cost drivers in the NDIS and proposals to improve the operation, effectiveness and sustainability of the NDIS. These recommendations were formulated after the review panel travelled to every state and territory, including regional and remote communities, and heard directly from more than 10,000 Australians; worked with disability organisations to reach out and listen to more than 1,000 people with disability and their families; recorded more than 2,000 personal stories; and received almost 4,000 submissions.

The government is now considering the review and how its recommendations can help secure the future of the NDIS, ensuring it can continue to provide life-changing support to future generations of Australians with a disability. We look forward to working with senators in this place to ensure a sustainable future for the NDIS and the ongoing delivery of services for Australians with disabilities.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

I thank the minister for their contribution. I hope that the conversations between our offices can bear fruit and result in the satisfactory compliance of the government with the orders of the Senate. Once again, we find ourselves collectively here today demanding an explanation from the government as to why they continue to refuse to release basic documents requested by this Senate, for the simple reason that these documents have a huge bearing on the lives of the over 610,000 Australians who rely on the NDIS for support.

Let's be really clear: the NDIS independent review, released by the government before the end of the year, is not, in and of itself, a document that is relevant to the request of the Senate, because it is a document created, published and given to the public months after the decision taken by the National Cabinet to agree to a so-called eight per cent sustainability measure in relation to the NDIS.

Disabled people and the disabled community across Australia are razor focused on attaining the information that was given to the National Cabinet as they made those deliberations because that very decision came in the middle of the conduct of the so-called independent review of the NDIS, right in the middle of a moment in time when the disability community were asked in good faith to participate in a so-called one-of-a-kind opportunity to reset the future of the NDIS. When we were assured that co-design and consultation would lead the way, the heads of every state and territory came together with the Commonwealth government and, it appears, decided where the destination of that co-design and consultation would end up—that being an eight per cent target for the growth of the scheme. This significantly undermined the community's trust in the independence of the review and the genuine openness with which the government, and the states and territories, would consider the recommendations of the review. We are not fools, disabled people. If you tell us to come into a co-design process and then, halfway through that process, decide one of the key end points of that co-design process, we know exactly what is going on.

The government have continually claimed that the decisions made in this National Cabinet meeting did not undermine the principles of co-design with which they set out and communicated the independent review. To that, I say: If that's the case, show us the documents. Show us what you agreed. Comply with the orders of this Senate and end the insecurity, the uncertainty and the genuine fear that exists within the heart of the disability community. It's a genuine and founded fear that, after tossing out the Liberal government, after electing a new parliament and a new government that committed to genuine co-design and consultation with disabled people, in fact what we ended up getting was a government that was simply better at messaging the way in which it worked towards achieving outcomes it had already set for itself.

This is what is at the heart here. How authentic was this government's commitment to co-design? How authentic was this government's commitment to consultation? If you want us to believe that you are genuine about it then you have to demonstrate exactly what decisions that you made—(Time expired)

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to speak on the Greens motion and, again, support and endorse everything that Senator Steele-John has just said. One of the things we have in common is that we believe truth matters in this place. It still matters, and it should always and must always matter. As Senator Birmingham said: lies, damn lies and the Lodge. It's not just in the Lodge that we're seeing that occur. We've seen it now for almost two years by the Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten. He, and the Labor Party, came to a fork in the road on the NDIS, on the scheme that they legislated, which, while doing wonderful things for hundreds of thousands of Australians, was flawed from its inception. When I was minister I called it out and I said publicly that this was a scheme that was on a rapidly accelerating pathway to failure without fundamental reform. He and the Labor Party could have taken the high road and actually said, 'Yes, we will join you in fixing this scheme and putting it on a sustainable pathway for participants and their families, who have now come to rely on this life-changing scheme in so many ways.' But, instead of doing that, what did Bill Shorten do?

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Reynolds, address members by their appropriate title.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My apologies—Minister Shorten. What did he do? He played politics, which he does extraordinarily well. 'Ah, there's no problem with the scheme. There's nothing to fix and nothing to see here. When we come into government, there will be no cuts, because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this scheme.' I think, deep in their hearts, many in the sector knew that he was promising something that he could not deliver. In government, instead of taking the hard decisions that need to be taken now—we've already extended the hand of bipartisanship multiple times to Minister Shorten—they just hope they can keep up the pretence that this scheme is sustainable. As Senator Steele-John has said: how are they doing that? They're hiding the figures. They're hiding the sustainability framework, which apparently is magically going to solve this. The problem is that they've also said that the sustainability framework doesn't exist. They have reduced the forward projections down to eight per cent, but they have not said how they're going to do this.

I now see why they hid the AFSR for so long. It's because they're saying that this is changes to assumptions, and that can only be in two areas; there are two levers of cost. Either they are going to significantly reduce the number of NDIS participants or they're going to cut plans. There is no other way to do that. Somehow, mystically, magically, the states and territories have agreed that they will fund the difference, one presumes, and apparently they're also going to fund all of the additional autism supports that are needed, particularly early intervention. Of course they're not. Apparently they're also going to now provide the support for the other over two million people with disability who have psychosocial disorders or any other disability. Apparently they're going to find the funding, the extra billions and billions of dollars, not only to fill this gap but also to provide those community services in less than three years time.

You only have to have a look at the AFSR to see very clearly what it is hiding. We've got the projected scheme expenses, which even the Labor Party and the actuary say, in this, will go up to 2026-27. They've actually got the projections of people and package costs. But, all of a sudden, there's a big gap till 2032-33. They've just made these wild assumptions about these big cuts that are going to happen to the NDIS, but they've hidden the data. We don't have any of the actuarial data that actually underpins how they're going to make these cuts. As Senator Steele-John said, people with disability and their families, people in this chamber and the rest of Australians are not stupid. But the Labor Party is now going into an election year perpetuating the myth, the cruellest of all myths for people with disability, that this is not going to be cut. I say: shame on you. People deserve much better than that. (Time expired).

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Farrell has come in yet again—welcome back, by the way, Senator Steele-John. We're back for 2024. Welcome back, colleagues. Yet here we are again. We thought we were going to have NDIS Monday. We didn't sit yesterday, so we've got NDIS Tuesday. Transmission Tuesday, I'm sure, will be back again this year. But here we are again because Senator Farrell has, I think, for the third or fourth time now refused to provide an effective and full response to a request by this Senate to show us how the sustainability framework is going to work.

To Senator Reynolds's point, Senator Birmingham this morning made the point in the chamber about how important it is to tell the truth. Not only is it important to tell the truth but we went to the election with now Prime Minister Albanese saying ad nauseam that his would be a government of transparency. His word was his bond. We all know now how true that is. The bond is about as strong as tissue paper when it comes to the strength of it, because so many promises have been broken by this government, despite claiming there would be no changes to superannuation, despite claiming they would take $275 off Australians' power bills and despite claiming they would stand by the stage 3 tax cuts that they voted for.

I'm the mother of an NDIS participant, and I received a text message asking for assistance from the father of an NDIS participant. I can assure you that those on the NDIS and their families do not trust you and do not believe you, because we have heard nothing about how this eight per cent figure has been reached. Senator Reynolds's points are completely correct, as are Senator Steele-John's points. The only way you do that is by cutting the number of participants or cutting plans.

One of the things that I'm very proud of since I've been in parliament was being a member of the Senate Select Committee on Autism, along with Senator Steele-John. It was the first time ever a committee inquiry had been held into how autism affected people with the condition, as well as their families, through the whole of an affected person's life. Our first recommendation was the development of a national autism strategy, which was an accepted recommendation. When we were in government, we committed funding for that to be developed, forcing the then Labor opposition to stump up the same amount of funding to develop the National Autism Strategy.

We're now getting very close to two years of this government, and yet we're still waiting for the strategy. I think this is important because we know autism is one of the most highly diagnosed conditions on the NDIS. We know that effective, early intervention will change the trajectory of an autistic child's life. But we also know that, since the change of the DSM, too many of the children being given autism level 2 and 3 diagnoses don't have permanent and lifelong disabilities. The NDIS should not be the only lifeboat in the ocean. State governments should be supplying lots of community supports for things like OT, psychology and speech therapy to give kids with a little bit of developmental delay a bit of a bump, a bit of help, a bit of assistance. But those kids should certainly not be on the NDIS for their whole life.

We know that there will be cuts to participants, and we know that there will probably be cuts to the participants that get to stay on their plan, because there is no other way to do it. We know that, when Peter Garrett was a member of the Labor Party, he told us: 'Don't worry. We'll say one thing before the election, and we'll change it when we get in.' That's what's happening now. Clearly, the Labor Party has not changed its stripes.

The other thing that's really disturbing for a lot of NDIS participants and their families is that there is no interest in getting the NDIS to work better, including to encourage parents who are capable of self-managing their plans, which would reduce costs and open up the choice of therapists. We know that all Minister Shorten is interested in is boosting the number of HSU members. This is actually about driving membership to the HSU, not about supporting participants. During a conversation this morning I was saying that it would be nice if they even put a veneer on it not being just about a union membership drive, but we know that's what they want to do by making it harder to self-manage and harder to access providers who aren't part of the big providers and who aren't union members. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.