Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The committee is considering amendment (1) on sheet 2649, moved by Senator Hughes.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unfortunately, we've now got almost half an hour less time to continue to review this legislation that is going to be guillotined. Between the efforts of both the Greens and the ALP, we now have significantly less time to debate and find out answers around this bill. There are still many, many issues that need to be reviewed and examined further and have clarity achieved. Unfortunately, I fear now, for some of those things, we're going to run out of time. So well done to those at that end of the chamber, who just made a hoo-ha out of not being able to read the Senate Order of Business and see when documents and reports are presented, every week in this place, of a Thursday afternoon. Anyway, never let the truth get in the way of a Greens suspension motion.

Minister, I draw your attention to sheet SK118, on the list of government amendments that have been circulated. In amending item (4), the proposed section (3) says:

A claim must:

(a) be made in the approved form (if any); and

(b) include any information, and be accompanied by any documents, required by the CEO.

What sort of documentation could be requested by the CEO? There's no guidance here as to what that documentation or information may be. Again, I'm trying to seek some clarity here. Are there any limitations on what the CEO can require? What are the sorts of documents that are imagined to be required by the CEO in order for someone to be able to submit an invoice to be paid?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just while the team's grabbing me some material on that—I do think, yes, we're in a situation now where there are three-quarters of an hour or so of discussion. It has been a lengthy discussion, but I do accept that there are many issues about the legislation that the disability community, and others in the community, want to traverse. There has been, the government would say, an exhaustive consultation process in the community. But these are complex issues, Senator Hughes, and some of these questions can be answered in the context of the bill. Much rests, of course, upon not just the co-design issues in terms of the needs assessment framework but also the way that the department and the agency implement the new scheme. Much of it rests, as we go on, upon an ongoing reform journey in this area.

I did want to take a moment just to reflect on some of the conduct of this discussion. I think somebody said earlier that words, in this context, do matter in terms of the way that we engage in this discussion. My role here is to answer questions that senators put to me, to represent the government in this legislation. I have been at pains to consider the impacts the discussion has, not just in here but on families and households around the country. I have pushed back consistently and constantly—perhaps the cause of some frustration—when I have seen claims made that create the impression that the government is motivated by bad motives here. It is not, though, immune from criticism; it shouldn't be.

There should be a robust exchange in here, a complex exchange, around the bill because, as I say, the bill itself creates a framework and much of it is an enabling framework. There is a lot of work to do, and the Senate will play a role in this as well—in the implementation of the bill and the reforms that are developed over time. It is not immune from criticism, though. It is, from time to time, a highly charged debate and it should be, because some of the issues that sit underneath this piece of legislation and the National Disability Insurance Scheme are utterly vital not only for, today, 600,000 Australians, their families and their communities who participate in the scheme, for people who are applicants for the scheme now and for their families, but also for future generations.

Vital issues are engaged. The government is motivated here by wanting to improve the scheme and improve the services that are offered under the scheme. We do say that that is consistent with establishing efficiencies and eliminating duplication in the scheme. These are contested issues, and they should be. We are motivated by protecting the scheme for future generations by putting the scheme on a sustainable footing and moderating the growth of the scheme. That is a good motivation, but these are contested issues, and they should be. It is, indeed, at the outset, a Labor scheme, but it has to be protected and sustainable for the generations ahead, when other governments in future generations—of course, I hope, many, many years away—will have to pick up and administer the scheme as well.

But I am conscious that words do matter, and we ought to consider the implication of what we say in here on households around the country. I do say, while words matter, not just in here, it is clear that, when I sought to characterise Senator Steele-John's contribution, the words that I used wounded. That is for sure. I'm a plain-speaking kind of character and it gets under people's skin from time to time. I appreciate that, but it is never the intention. It should never be the intention of anybody in this place for their words to wound in a way that unnecessarily creates offence or distress. I apologise for that, Senator Steele-John. I don't resile from my effort to counter what I think are claims that are made that are not correct, but, of course, all of us should be open to criticism, including me. Having said that, I am hoping that my colleagues here have given me an actual answer to Senator Hughes's question. I did want to make those remarks.

The act doesn't currently have a legislated claims and payments framework, which means it is unclear how people, including participants and providers, now make claims for NDIS amounts, and how and when the agency must pay the relevant amounts. The amendments insert new provisions into the act to establish a legislative claims and payment framework. The new provisions will provide a more streamlined process for participants and providers, with specific legislative requirements that will determine when a claim will or will not be paid.

The agency processes approximately 400,000 claims every day. Many of these claims do not contain sufficient information to identify whether the claim is appropriate to be paid under the scheme. This causes delays. It is part of the normal business of claims being made but it does cause delays and additional burdens on participants in responding to requests for information. This measure will enable the CEO of the agency to adhere to obligations under the PGPA Act, including by enabling claims to be processed quickly, while balancing fraud and data quality risks. The amendments also impose a timeframe of two years in which claims must be made, which aligns broadly with Medicare's approach on these questions.

The new section 45A outlines the mechanical requirements for a claim, including who can make a claim according to the funds management type of a participant's NDIS plan. For self-managed plans, it's a participant or their nominee. For plan-managed plans, a registered plan management provided or agency-managed plans, it's the registered provider who delivered the supports. It also outlines what information is required to support a claim and in what form it is to be provided. Information requirements for claiming are already available on the NDIS website. However, examples include invoices evidencing the supports delivered and receipts evidencing the supports received in the support of either a claim via the participant or provider portal or app or a participant or their nominee using the offline My Plan purchase form.

I've already dealt with the timeframe. There will be a 12-month grace period following commencement of the bill during which no time limit on claims will apply as a transition measure. That allows participants and providers a period of 12 months to gather necessary information and submit any outstanding claims for supports obtained or provided more than two years in the past. In addition, section 25C of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 makes it clear that substantial compliance with the form prescribed by an act is sufficient. So there's a substance issue in terms of complying with the forms. The government says that it is reasonable to require that minimum amount of information in forms that are submitted to the agency. Of course, the forms themselves will be developed over time during the codesign process that we've outlined more broadly, and that 12-month period should be amply sufficient to achieve those outcomes.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm trying to get to some specifics here in the explanatory memorandum around this amendment. I understand that you need an invoice and a date of service and all of those sorts of things. I understand that on the invoice you are going to have ABNs or whether they are GST-registered—all of that sort of information—but it does also say 'require information such as data service invoices, and information about the provider'. So I'm trying to get an understanding. Are participants and/or providers going to be expected to be submitting with their claims, working with children checks, police checks, qualifications, business registration details? What is the information that could be required, because it's referred to twice with no definition or parameters or limitations at all?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for that. I just wanted to be confident about this answer, because I'm sure that it is right, and it is. That will form part of the registration and compliance requirements that providers will need to provide principally to the commission. It is not anticipated that it will be the job of participants, as you questioned, to provide support in compliance material in relation to the status of the provider.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perhaps you might be able to help me here in ruling something out. I will come back to the registration part because I'm glad you mentioned that. It will help me. I'll tell you what, when this is over, I'm going to look forward to getting rid of this folder, because I will be able to find something.

One of the things that you might be able to clarify and confirm won't be required—there was an article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday with regard to dodgy NDIS providers ripping off workers and pocketing $9 an hour. That was a quote of the union, which was the—I can't even see which union it was. I assume it's the HSU.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's the Australian Services Union.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Ayres, who saw the article. The Australian Services Union. Thank you very much. The article in itself is a bit of a beat-up given the fact that providers charging something on top of the fees—how else are they going to make money? How are they going to exist as a business? They obviously have a service fee for booking the support worker. One of the concerns that I have is it's being pushed by a union and the language is that it's about wage theft for providers. Is the other information that would need to be provided to the CEO potentially inclusive of union membership of its workers?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you mean information provided—sorry, I'll have to use it because I don't have the imagination to think my way through an alternative word—by the provider?

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This would in some way enforce union membership on a provider as part of the information so that claims can be processed. This is not ruled out and so, like universities, we could have mandatory union membership if you wanted to be a registered provider in the NDIS.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The short answer is no. In terms of the kind of information, it would have to be founded in the claim. I think everybody would accept that the margins that are made by providers need to be appropriate. They need to support the provider, but they also need to support good jobs for the workers who are delivering those services. I think that is what the ASU New South Wales branch in this case are properly concerned about, and they think it should be the subject of public debate. It will no doubt be the focus of government attention in this area because it is an opportunity to make sure that public moneys are being expended in the most effective way possible for participants and also make sure that the government's other objectives in bringing people into the scheme are being achieved. But in terms of the operation of the scheme, of this act, the short answer is no.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's important that we have got that clarity on the record going forward. Obviously, if you want to be a member of a union, that's your prerogative; but to have that as a compulsory part of being able to put an invoice into the agency would be very concerning. I obviously have some reservations around the language that's used in that, the fact there is no definition. 'Any documents' is very broad, but that's obviously something that will continue to require more clarity and something that will be looked at and watched as this new reform is implemented.

You mentioned the registration requirements. I know we haven't seen the government's response to either of the reviews that have been done, but it was very clearly stated that compulsory registration was not supported within the sector and was going to cause problems. This is my personal opinion: I have no problem with registration as long as it's scalable so that sole providers aren't pushed out of the market. I don't think there's anything wrong with a register of providers who have their working with children checks or their police checks or their qualifications and that's it—not requiring exhaustive and extensive audits that are required of the larger formally block-funded providers. The scale of the businesses is completely different, and quite often the services that are provided are completely different.

I would like to reiterate that I do support what you just said with regard to providers, in terms of making sure that they aren't taking the scheme for a ride. I do worry that the language, even in this entire reform package, is still focused on participants. It's always about the participants. When issues of fraud and mismanagement are brought up, they're always brought up in the context of participants, whereas any participant will tell you that it's actually the provider side that needs to be examined much more closely and particularly the plan management side when we talk about intraplan inflation. It's quite often the case that people with significant impairments are utilising a plan manager who just spends more money than is in the plan as it's gone through. It's not the participant misusing the plan. It's the plan manager not doing their job effectively and thinking that they can just go back and get more money that is causing these problems for participants. So we would very much like to see a greater focus on providers when it comes to the sustainability of the scheme. I know we are going to run out of time soon. Can you talk a little bit about whether or not this legislative reform will push towards compulsory registration? What is the status of registration across the scheme?

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The short answer to that question—again being conscious of time—is that the act doesn't approach those issues in terms of compulsory registration. There are recommendations in the review which go to the kinds of issues that you're talking about, and the minister has established a taskforce—of providers and, I think, also participants, chaired by Ms Natalie Wade—that will do some further work on this set of issues. They do engage some of the challenges of scale. I think everyone would accept that it is a government scheme that must provide a quality set of services that underpin the objectives of the scheme, but wrestling with those issues will be informed by the work of the taskforce.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And obviously we need to keep in mind that there are businesses, like psychologists, whose entire business is not NDIS participants. They might just have two or three. So it may not be appropriate for that business to be a registered provider and go through the extensive costs and audit, but those businesses can be incredibly professional and be proper people to deliver services.

I do want to hand over to Senator Steele-John, so I'll try and finish up. One of the things we've heard is that there are going to be efficiencies from the agency. I struggle to see where they're coming from, particularly with these new navigators being brought in, adding another layer of bureaucracy before you even see a support worker. What further work is going to be undertaken to monitor the agency in its efficiency models? I ask that because, only this morning I received an email—I had a look at who else got it, and I think Senator Ruston and Senator Steele-John received the email; it was sent to a few people—that said that someone who has been having a discussion with the agency about a plan got an email from someone at the agency, saying: 'Thanks for the discussion. We've had the discussion. We've added some money to this plan. Blah, blah, blah.' And the plan that was attached was for the wrong person. It includes all the private and personal contact details as well as details of the person's disability, what their challenges are—everything. It has been forwarded to us; I don't think it should have been. Someone has been sent the wrong information, and I would have thought the agency would have, as a priority, made sure that such personal details as these required a higher level of attention to detail.

I do want to acknowledge you, Senator Ayres. In your comments that you made to Senator Steele-John, I think what you said was appropriate, and we certainly welcome the comments that you directed to Senator Steele-John, because I don't think he has undertaken a scare campaign.

I'll finish up and use the last couple of minutes to just say a few things. The coalition, with our amendments being supported, will look to pass this bill, and I can't say I do it with a feeling of overwhelming joy. I do it with considerable despair, because, unlike the position held by those currently in government when they were in opposition and stood in the way of all the reforms that were suggested by us when we were in government—when we were referred to as pearl-clutching kabuki players because we mentioned sustainability issues and were trying to address them yet were blocked at every step, even though this had always been a bipartisan scheme—there does need to be reform.

I'm not filled with confidence that this is the best first step or that this is an appropriate first step. I think there are elements of it that will be good. I am very keen. I've said to the minister and I have repeated ad nauseam for years that there are too many people on the scheme. There are kids that shouldn't be on the scheme—the kids that do not have permanent and lifelong conditions—and parents that are diagnosis shopping. Quite frankly, it's insulting to those of us with kids that genuinely need it. It's insulting for kids who have been to a number of paediatricians, who have a developmental delay, have an autism level 2 diagnosis and are given a package of, say, $25,000, to know that we now have kids with level 3 autism and intellectual disability currently—and it's being used by the agency; obviously we only get this anecdotally—where the agency staff are already telling them that, because of the new legislation, they are having have their plans cut. Kids with level 3 autism and kids with intellectual disability that are going to have serious and lifelong impairments are having their plans cut to exactly the same level as these other children with autism.

Kids with autism are being absolutely used and abused through the press saying that there are too many of them, and there are, because not all of them have what would have been considered autism in the old days. The new DSM-5 has done more damage than I can even begin to imagine with its levels of autism and the removal of so many other diagnoses of disorders.

For the families of children with severe and profound autism, you are the quiet voices here because you are just trying to make it through every day, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this scheme is letting you down, and I don't know if this is going to help. I'm not filled with confidence that this government is going to be able to deliver these reforms, but we will not stand in the way of them, and we hope that this is just the first tranche of what needs to be genuine reform, because this scheme is too important for the people that need it—for the people whose lives were changed when this scheme came into being, who live in fear every day that they will be forced back into block funded, group home accommodation and that their loved ones will not receive any care or quality of life. That's what used to happen, and our kids were treated like they were less than human, and it's starting to happen again.

It's starting to happen again because providers are rorting the system because the agency is unable to determine differences between broad diagnosis. Co-design, which we consistently hear about so often, isn't coming from the voices that really need to be heard, because those people don't have the chance to speak up. Their parents are just trying to get through every day. Their parents are trying to do the best for their child, and there are voices that do not experience impairments at the same level. There are voices that have physical disabilities and can speak up while those with cognitive disorders and those with intellectual disabilities cannot, and sometimes co-design does more damage than good, because those voices are forgotten. So I would implore the government, when they talk about co-design, to talk to the people who genuinely need this scheme, to the people that need it for the rest of their lives and to the people who are struggling day by day and don't often have the platforms to be able to say what needs to be said.

We will support this bill. Please get it right. Please do more. Please work constructively with us to do more to make sure that people aren't left behind and that this scheme is there for the people who really need it going forward, because it's too important.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Hughes. That was, I think, a very well-weighted contribution that goes to the essence of the issues that the parliament must consider in terms of the scheme. It was very good to see you receiving the support of your colleagues while you gave that contribution. That is what this place should do.

The passage of the legislation through the parliament is a very important step, and the minister recognises and the government recognises that there is much more important work to be done. That goes to making sure that this legislation is right, which is the work that we have tried to do here and that the minister, the department and the agency have done, but it also goes to implementing the legislation, it goes to future reform and it goes to the micro detail of every interaction that the staff of the agency have with participants and their families and that providers have with the participants and their families. This is work that, in my view, will never be done, properly, effectively; it is an endless reform process. The words 'continuous improvement' are often used in a pretty banal way around the place, but this is going to be an ever-evolving set of issues.

I'm grateful for that contribution. I don't want to belabour any of the points, because I know that Senator Steele-John will have questions and contributions too. In relation to that specific instance that you raised at the outset, Senator Hughes, I'm very happy to undertake to receive that confidentially or for the minister's office to receive that confidentially, to make sure that it is conveyed to the satisfaction of the participant or their family who have raised it but also that the proper lessons are learnt from that.

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

This is a moment of pain, fear and fury for so many disabled people and our families across the country. This NDIS bill, developed by this Labor government for the purpose of cutting $14.4 billion from our NDIS, represents the greatest betrayal of our community ever perpetrated by a government.

During the course of this debate, I have felt so many emotions. I have experienced within me, intensely, that same pain, fear and fury. This will be my last contribution to this debate. When I conclude, or shortly after, the bill will pass, and yet our disability rights movement will remain. The solidarity developed during the course of the fight against this bill will remain. Our connection to each other will remain. I cannot predict what the weeks and months ahead will mean for the 660,000 people who require these supports, who rely on the NDIS, but I can say with absolute certainty that we will face this together. It is from that certainty that today I draw the most tremendous pride in the disability community.

There are so many across this country who, through the course of this campaign, attempted to persuade this Labor government to keep its commitments, to keep its promises, to listen to the voices of disabled people. There are so many organisations and individuals who have demonstrated and have reached into the most extraordinary courage—people who battle every day just to survive—who have taken up the cause together, have organised, demonstrated, protested, called their MPs, sent emails and spent hours and hours explaining to Senate committees and individual MPs precisely the dangers of this bill and precisely the kinds of harms that it will do to us as a community. There are so many organisations whose job it is to represent disabled people, whose job is to bring the voices of our communities into parliament, that have gone again and again into spaces where they were promised co-design and transparency and have instead been subjected to coercion, gaslighting, deception and deceit. In the face of this treatment by a government they trusted, they have nevertheless held fast. I am so proud of every single one of our disability representative organisations, who, guided by their membership and their board, when placed under incredible pressure by this Labor government, which sought at every turn to persuade and coerce them into celebrating this bill and backing this bill, decided to place themselves with their community and their community's needs in solidarity. They decided not to back down.

So this bill passes today. This government hides there in the corner with the full knowledge that every single one of Australia's disability representative organisations either completely opposed this bill or had called for it not to pass today because of the rafts of new amounts of information that had been dropped by this government during the course of the debate. I want to thank and acknowledge the incredible work done by the advocates and the activists who worked so tirelessly to ensure that those organisations had the information they needed to take that position. I also want to acknowledge every single person who made a submission to the Senate inquiries into this bill and to the witnesses who gave evidence.

During the course of those inquiries, we as disabled people were asked to disclose the most private, the most intimate and the most personal details of our lives. We had witnesses giving evidence to an inquiry share with us—I'm not going to sanitise it for the chamber—what it means for them to no longer be able to control their bladder and the way in which the ability to purchase cheaper products from a regular, mainstream space enabled them to live. We had somebody share with us that their ability to use their NDIS funds to have their hair washed by a hairdresser, in a way that will be prohibited under this bill, enabled them to not only live well and happily but avoid the unnecessarily humiliating experience of having to be showered by somebody they didn't know. We had people share with us that, if they were subjected to the policies intended to be enacted through this bill, they would have to leave their family home. They would face the horror of returning to the group home dynamics that they thought they'd never have to live in again.

I must acknowledge in this moment that so many people right now are frightened. They are frightened because they understand this bill, because they've read this bill, because they know this system, because they know this scheme, because they know the state of the pre-NDIS system that we clawed our way out of. They know the features of those pre-NDIS schemes—government mandated lists, government mandated assessments, government mandated plans. That's what they lived with, so their fear is well grounded. It must be acknowledged, it must not be dismissed and it must not be framed as a scare campaign. We know, as a community, what we are about to be subjected to because we have lived it. We also know that the disability community now is stronger than we have ever been before. We know that disability pride lives in the heart of that movement. We know that mutual aid and community organisation are the tools that we will reach to now.

This time of trial and shadow and grief is a time that we shall journey through together. We shall hold ourselves up, we shall grieve for those that we know we will lose, we will rage against the dying and we will remind both parties, who are about to pass this bill, that we are not only fearless advocates, we are not only community members but we are voters and, as voters, we will mark your card for this. We will remember it on election day. In the name of all we lose, and all those whom we lose, we shall go into the ballot box and deliver back to this place a parliament that will listen, a legislature that will restore our rights We will deliver a parliament willing to work with the disability community rather than against it, to correct this betrayal and to truly build a society for all. (Time expired)

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think we're very close to the time for the debate expiring. In closing, while I strongly disagree with many of the assertions in Senator Steele-John's closing speech, I do thank him for making a contribution to this debate. I think that it's very important that some of the injunctions in the last three contributions, taken together, are what we must focus on as this legislation passes the parliament and as we go on with the work of implementing this vital piece of work.

I do say to Australians who are participants in the scheme and their families that what the passage of this legislation means is that participants, their families and future generations can have confidence that the government and this parliament are committed to making the scheme stronger, to making it sustainable and to improving the experience of Australians with a disability and their families and their communities, and that the government and, indeed, the parliament recognise how important this NDIS set of reforms have been for Australia as a country. It will be the work of this government and future generations to continue to focus on improvements and to continue to mobilise community support for the scheme. Every Australian, whether they participate in the scheme or are a family member of somebody who participates in the scheme or have no relationship with the scheme whatsoever, benefits from a strong, universal National Disability Insurance Scheme and from a government that continues to focus on improvements to the performance of the scheme, the sustainability of the scheme, the long-term viability of the scheme that is founded properly in its original purpose. These issues should be the subject of contest because they are vital for the interest of Australians, about whom we should care very deeply indeed.

There will be amendments to the scheme, and I don't, in the short amount of time left, want to deal with those amendments in detail. Some of them here are matters that the government has determined, in response to discussions with the states and territories, will improve the governance and co-governance of the scheme. It is a good thing that the states and territories, as a response to those changes, have deepened their public commitment to the scheme. There are amendments there that are a response to the parliamentary debate and the inquiry's processes and also to representations made directly to the government by senators and also by community organisations that represent disabled people. They go to ensuring that foundational supports are comprehensively defined and implemented in states and territories.

The government will deliver a formal response to the disability royal commission and the NDIS review. And some of those amendments do go—I've heard Senator Steele-John's final contribution in this debate—to some of the matters that Senator Steele-John raised. I respect the fact that he does not believe they go to them satisfactorily, but they do go, for example, to that precise issue of allowing for the kind of care, where it is appropriate, in terms of services like hair washing, and to a process that deals with that in an effective and dignified kind of way.

It is important to make sure that that work with the states and territories and the disability community around the broader reforms that are required to support the effective operation of the scheme continues, including to develop foundational supports agreed by National Cabinet to commence from 1 July 2025. It's important to ensure that there is careful sequencing of the other key recommendations from the NDIS review and the disability royal commission, and the bill establishes the framework to allow the time that it will take to carefully co-design and develop the detail in subordinate legislation.

We are not going backwards here on these questions. We are going forwards. We are not going backwards to the bad old days and the kinds of things that happened to disabled people in group homes or in any other context. There is nothing in this bill that does anything but aim forward at a scheme that offers decency and dignity and better services and at a more sustainable scheme that's in the interests of all Australians but particularly in the interests of disabled people and their families. While I recognise, and the minister recognises, that there should be contest over these questions, let's be very clear as a parliament that the message that we are sending today with the passage of this important piece of legislation, which does not cover the field of all the reforms that are required but enables progress, is pointing forward, making sure we turn our back on a very difficult past and protecting, building and strengthening this scheme for the future.

Progress reported.