Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government continues to reiterate our view that we cannot agree with the assertions that are made in this motion. We do, however, acknowledge the interest in the chamber in reforming the NDIS to get it back on track and ensure its sustainability for future generations. I also acknowledge the recent commitment by the Leader of the Opposition to working together with the government to this end.

On 8 February 2024, the government tabled the final report of the Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme, which was publicly released in December 2023. In producing this report, the independent NDIS review panel travelled to every state and territory, including regional and remote communities. The panel 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 review delivered 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions to respond to its terms of reference. In delivering its recommendations, the review provided exhaustive analysis and proposals to improve the operation, effectiveness and sustainability of the NDIS. The independent NDIS review panel has said that 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 2026. Discussions have continued with senators across this chamber, as well as members in the other place, to address questions about the government's NDIS reform agenda that it is pursuing together with the disability community. We look forward to working with senators in this place to get the NDIS back on track and ensure its sustainability for future generations of Australians.

In relation to the order being discussed, 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 territories. The Minister representing the Treasurer has already tabled key documents for the benefit of the Senate in addition to the aforementioned review.

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

The Senate once again gathers to demand basic transparency from the Albanese Labor government. All we are here for is to ask the Anthony Albanese Labor government for some basic transparency and accountability when it comes to our NDIS—in short, exactly what Labor promised at the election. Let's be very clear: this Senate has for months now demanded that the government release documentations which reveal to the Australian community what the implications of their decisions in relation to the NDIS actually are. All that disabled people want to know is what these policy changes will actually mean for them.

Let's be very clear: in Senate estimates last week, it was revealed that the CEO of the NDIS and the Secretary of the Department of Social Services have seen the documents that the Senate is demanding, which speak to the impact of these policy changes on people—the impact of the decisions the government has already made, because the government has already decided the targets that it has for the NDIS and that it will reduce the amount of funding provided to disabled people by tens of billions of dollars. That decision is baked into the budget that was announced last year. And all the Senate wants to know is: What does that mean for disabled people? How many disabled people does the government project will be kicked off the scheme? That is the question we've been demanding an answer to for months now. And from estimates we learned the CEO of the agency knows it and the secretary of the department knows it. The only people left in the dark are disabled people.

Disabled people are the ones left in the dark by this Labor government. Disabled people who put their faith and trust in this Labor government are being betrayed heinously by the decision of this Labor government to withhold from them key documentation and to withhold from journalists documents titled 'projections'. I bet you now that there are some autistic people in this country that would love to know what those projections mean and that there are some people with psychosocial disabilities that want to know what those projections mean for them, because it is those communities who this government has continually intimated are the ones that are costing too much money and whose diagnosis rate is higher than to be expected by people that don't even know how much an autism diagnosis costs and the ridiculousness of the suggestion that anyone would seek one willy-nilly when it can cost over $2,000 and you have to wait sometimes up to two years. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Let me end on this: in all my years in this Senate, I have never quite seen anything like the attempt of the government in the last session to avoid providing key documentation about the NDIS to the Senate committee process. If the Liberal Party had tried the tricks and stunts they pulled in the last session, Labor would have howled the house down. Let me be clear: there were some questions asked by Liberal senators during that session that made me feel embarrassed to be part of it—ridiculous, nonsense stories about people having their rats cremated on the scheme that made me feel, quite frankly, ick about sharing the space with them. But, on the issue of transparency and accountability, there must be consistency. If you released figures about the scheme last year, you must release them this year. And I tell you this: we will continue to pursue these documents regardless of how uncomfortable it makes those in Labor feel, and we will retrieve them eventually in the name of every single one of the 610,000 NDIS participants who have the right to know what this government has already decided about our NDIS.

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

Every time I stand up here and speak to a motion like this, I think Labor couldn't sink any further towards the bottom—and yet they manage to do so. As Senator Steele-John has so passionately and correctly articulated, not only are they refusing to provide transparency within this chamber regarding the basic documents which go to the financial sustainability of the scheme but at additional estimates we saw the absolute disgrace—with an agency that had a very large additional estimates variation—of the CEO of the NDIA, at Minister Shorten's direction no less, refusing to provide the additional estimates data for the agency. They refused. And why did they refuse? Because the figures happened to be replicated in a quarterly report which had been produced and was sitting on Minister Shorten's desk and the desk of every state and territory disability minister. But, because the agency CEO couldn't manage to go down to Minister Shorten's office and grab the information, or the information she had on her laptop, she said the information wasn't available. That was clearly a lie. It was available. So they didn't provide the data on the scheme. But guess what? The very next morning, they published the quarterly report.

This lack of transparency is not just a disgrace for how Labor treats senators and, through senators, all Australians who fund the NDIS; as Senator Steele-John has said, there are over 650,000 people now on the scheme, and those with serious and permanent disability whose lives it has changed are now incredibly worried about what they are going to do with the scheme. What was this data that they were hiding at additional estimates? The number of participants as at 31 December was 646,449, which is half a per cent higher than the June 2023 projections. They were hiding the fact that the scheme continues to increase, in both participant numbers and the average cost per package, which are the two drivers of the scheme.

On behalf of the minister today, Senator McAllister says, 'We've done another review, and everything is going to be fine.' That is simply not true. Understanding the problem was never the issue with this scheme. Before this two-year review, there were at least 30 reviews. The problems are well known. But there are no easy solutions to reforming the scheme so that it survives for those with serious and permanent disabilities in our nation. Admiring the problem from every which way has never been the issue—yet that's what they've done.

Clearly this is a union agenda now, and also, sadly, an agenda from the big providers. Have a look at what the review is recommending to change the legislation. They want to remove choice and control from NDIS participants. That is one of the fundamental tenets of this scheme, that people with serious and permanent disability, for the first time, have choice and control over their own lives—how they live their lives, what service providers they get. But this government now wants to destroy that fundamental tenet of this scheme. Not only do they want to do that; they also want to go back, essentially, to block funding for large providers and destroy independent contractors in the sector by making them be registered, which will of course not drive down the costs. Anybody who knows anything about economics knows that it will drive the costs of the scheme up further.

I will finish on this. The other thing we found in the third quarter report, after an hour of the most painful questioning of the NDIS actuary, is that this government has $60 billion worth of savings already booked in the budget over the next nine years. That's $60 billion worth of savings that they have ripped out of the budget. And guess what? They're spending $720 million and saying that that will realise those savings. That cannot happen, and it will not. It is the biggest fraud. Shame on you for everything you're doing to those on the scheme.

Andrew McLachlan (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Reynolds, I ask that you withdraw the use of the word 'lie'.

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

I withdraw.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Jordan Steele-John and Senator Reynolds. The point I would particularly like to make is about the flimsy basis upon which this public interest immunity claim is being made—the issue of supposed prejudice between Commonwealth and state government relations. How is it going to prejudice Commonwealth and state government relations? Who at a state government level is objecting or has objected to the release of this information? What is the basis of this claim? There is no substance to this claim. It's a political excuse. It's a political assertion of public interest immunity, and it's simply unacceptable that the Senate—and, through the Senate, the people of Australia, especially the people who Senator Steele-John spoke so passionately for: those Australians who are on the scheme or are seeking to go on the scheme—is denied this information. It's simply not good enough.

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

A couple of weeks ago in estimates we had an opening statement delivered by Minister Farrell which, I have to say, was probably the most disgusting opening statement I've ever heard in any inquiry, let alone at Senate estimates. The blatant politicisation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme that's being conducted by those opposite is nothing short of appalling. I acknowledged to Senator Farrell that clearly he had not written that statement—that it had been written for him by Minister Shorten.

The NDIS has been a scheme that has had bipartisan support. We, in government, always reached out across the aisle and said: 'Help us help participants and their families on the NDIS. Let's work together to make sure this scheme is the best it can be.' Yet those opposite are now using those most vulnerable in our society to manipulate union membership and absolutely destroy the 'choice and control' principles of the NDIS. How do we know this? We know because they're now trying to push through inquiries into registered and unregistered providers. For those that don't understand and don't access the NDIS, 'unregistered providers' doesn't mean that they're not qualified. It doesn't mean that they don't have skills, experiences and qualifications. For a lot of them, it means that they're sole operators. They work for themselves. They work running their own small business, and they are not part of the old block funded routine that we know served disabled people so poorly. But what are we seeing here? We're seeing a push back to people having to use the big old block funded providers. I can assure you, as someone who uses both registered and unregistered providers, I will lead the rallies in every state, in every marginal seat and everywhere I can go, because I use an unregistered provider who charges me about a third of the rate of a big block funded provider. The unregistered provider has been with my family for well over a decade and knows my son and our family better than anyone. This is my story, but this is the story of so many people who have children with a disability.

What was also interesting is so much of this is couched in, 'We want to cut down on fraud.' We didn't get much out of the CEO of the National Disability Insurance Agency at estimates, but one of the things that we did get was that self-managed participants of the NDIS have the lowest level of fraud. That's because it is a direct relationship between the participant and their family and that provider. They know when that provider was with their family, because they manage the plan themselves. We know that once it goes into the bureaucracy of these big providers it's a case of, 'Oops, we accidentally billed you for a day that you didn't provide a service.' We know that the fraud is occurring within the big-scale operators, the ones who are managing plans on behalf of participants, not where participants are managing it for themselves.

We know this is just about a push for the Health Services Union and pushing all NDIS service providers in what we already know is a super-thin market. One of the biggest things that we know about the NDIS is that participants struggle to find enough service providers because the market is already thin. What are those opposite doing? They want to make it even thinner. They want to spread it out so that, if you're not a part of the HSU, you can no longer work with people with a disability. Shame on you! It is absolutely appalling.

To Senator Scarr's point about the claim that it's going to damage the relationships with the states, I'll give you a little bit of a tip, because some of us do talk to people across the country at all sorts of levels of government. Disability, education and health state ministers don't know what they've been signed up to. They've got their own budgets to manage, but they don't know what additional supports they're going to have to put into classrooms or into community health—into all of these areas—because it is done under secrecy and a cloak of darkness. We know that these kids and families, particularly in the early childhood strain, are going to be left even more vulnerable than from the challenges they currently face under the scheme as it is.

It is absolutely disgraceful that we are here again. Senator Steele-John, NDIS Monday will be back, and we'll be back and back, because this is not going to be allowed to stand. This is a government that promised transparency. We know that it's a slogan only as good as the $275 off your power bill. We're never going to see transparency. We're never going to see any honesty or integrity from those opposite, just as we're never going to see $275 off our power bills.

Question agreed to.