Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to make a contribution on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Quality and Safeguards Commission and Other Measures) Bill 2017. I have spoken on many occasions in this place about the National Disability Insurance Scheme and disabilities generally. I hope that when I do that I am reflecting the views of my community, which, regrettably, is over-represented with families that live with disability. My family lives with a disability. My grandson who lives with me, Nathaniel, is on the autism spectrum. So I have a lot of time and a lot of regard for families that live with disabilities. They do not want lectures. They do not want our sympathy. They just want to know that we are there to be supportive of them when they need it.

I ask you to cast your minds back to the inquiry of 2011 when the Productivity Commission was asked to report on disability care and support. They concluded this way: 'The current disability support arrangements are inadequate, underfunded, fragmented and inefficient, and give people with a disability little choice.' We in 2013 rose to that challenge. With due respect of those opposite, they supported Labor's position of the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. They supported the passage of the act through this parliament.

In regard of this, I indicate that Labor will support the passage of this particular bill through the House of Representatives. In saying that, this support is not without some qualification, which I will come to. But, in speaking about the bill, an important step towards implementing the NDIS is that the NDIS Quality and Safeguarding Framework be established. This was the recommendation that came from the COAG Disability Reform Council. This bill seeks to do that. The framework is based on delivering and strengthening the capacity of individuals, workplaces and providers, preventing harm, ensuring quality and enabling improvements in the oversight of this sector. I emphasise that we support this as a development. We support having strong and enforceable standards in this sector, and we certainly support the quality and safeguard measures provided in this bill.

Schedule 1 of the bill establishes the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and the commissioner to undertake the implementation task of setting up a strong quality safeguard framework under the NDIS. The commissioner will be responsible for registering NDIS providers; overseeing provider quality, including information; and linkages and capacity building support for people with disability. At its core, this will see the introduction of information-gathering arrangements, creating an interface to other service providers, particularly in the health and education sectors and, sometimes, in the justice sector as well. The bill will also give the commission responsibility for compliance, complaints handling and risk management, including responding to and taking enforcement action against incidents of abuse and the neglect of participants. This will be complemented by the introduction of a practice standard and a code of conduct and by the introduction of a national policy of screening of workers, and there will be a focus on the provision of leadership to reduce and eliminate, as far as possible, restrictive practices. Section 2 of the bill introduces other minor administrative amendments resulting from the implementation review of the act, which was completed in late 2015.

It is my hope that the administrative framework instruments will ensure that the act operates in a way that is effective for the full implementation of the NDIS, redressing—or at least minimising—the many problems that we have seen so far under the Turnbull government's rollout of this scheme. I do not think I need to remind people about the problems that we found with the NDIS IT system at its introduction and the considerable delays that we have experienced. This was not the aim or intention of the bill when it was first brought before the House, but it certainly has had an impact on the usability of the service to date.

The bill also aims to maintain, protect and enhance public trust and confidence in the NDIS and support the robust, vibrant, independent and innovative NDIS market. The proposed amendments have been long awaited and certainly result from a series of reports and inquiries which have documented, on many counts, the weaknesses of the system, particularly in relation to safeguard arrangements. These inquiries include the Senate inquiry into violence, abuse and neglect against people with disability, two recent Victorian inquiries in a similar vein, as well as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. All these inquiries have found failures to uncover and report abuse, inadequate screening of workers and ineffective regulatory arrangements. The need for the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is further enhanced by the countless and disturbing number of cases of neglect and violence towards people with disabilities.

Something I did not appreciate until recently and something that put many things into perspective for me was the report by the Australian Cross Disability Alliance that revealed that a shocking 90 per cent of women with an intellectual disability had been subjected to sexual abuse, with six per cent of those women being under the age of 18. I am absolutely appalled by that statistic. I am appalled by those who have been convicted of these crimes. In many instances, they are people who have been employed to work in conjunction with and serving people with a disability. That is an indictment of our community as a whole. The truth is that people with a disability are three times more likely to experience abuse than any other. That is not the sort of environment I want to see my grandson growing up in. That is the reality, but it is something we all have the responsibility to try to do something to redress.

The Australian Cross Disability Alliance say that they are working tirelessly to spread awareness of institutionalised violence. They say—and I can agree with this—that it very much is Australia's hidden shame. They say that it is an urgent, unaddressed national crisis of epidemic proportions. While I welcome the passage of this bill through the House, people need to be clear that we need all stakeholders to work together, and that is the states, the employers in disability support and the unions representing the employees—as I say, all stakeholders.

One of my concerns is that too much discretionary power is being vested in the minister. Regrettably, in my opinion, this could lead to a number of inconsistencies, where separate agreements are being made, separate arrangements are being entered into and there is a lack of conformity between states and territories in the application of our national scheme. What is even more problematic, from my perspective, is that the quality and safeguard mechanisms enshrined in the bill apply only to NDIS participants and providers under that act. This leaves a significant gap for those people who are not participants in the NDIS but are victims of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Disability advocates have highlighted that this is an inadequate protection for people with a disability as a whole. Dr Jess Cadwallader, advocacy projects manager for violence prevention at People with Disability Australia, says this:

The NDIS probably at full capacity will include about 10 per cent of people with disability, so we have some concerns about people who fall outside of services that are funded by the NDIS where the safety and quality in their service provision is going to come from.

I think that is a very real concern for all of us. I do not know whether my grandson, for instance, will fall under the NDIS, but I do not want him, as a child with a disability, to fall into that category of being one in three children to be abused during their lifetime. As I said earlier, that is a dreadful statistic and one we should be all be offended about. The bill does not establish a national role in respect of workforce screening. There has to be that consistency across the board. The case is more than made for that by the many prosecutions we have seen to date for crimes that have been committed against people with disabilities.

I would like to conclude by talking about those who do not fall under the provisions of this bill. As I said earlier, only about 10 per cent of people with a disability will be covered by the NDIS. That leaves a heck of a lot of people with a disability outside the system.

Those people outside the system, the NDIS, still fall under the same statistic that says that 90 per cent of women with intellectual impairment will be subject to violence or abuse. To end that, I stand with my colleagues on this side of the House in calling for a royal commission into the abuse of people with a disability. I think it is the only way to establish a proper investigation and put the spotlight on this, an industry which is absolutely vital to people who live with disability.

There are people I get to see in my electorate regularly. Many of them are parents whose children with disabilities are in their 50s and 60s. Their parents often talk to me about what will happen when they pass on. It is not that they are looking for a way to accommodate their children; they are trying to make financial arrangements to do that. They are looking at how to protect their children's vulnerability in this ever-changing world. I think that the notion of having a royal commission is a positive thing in terms of, as I say, shedding light on disabilities generally, on how people are affected and looked after and on the measures we take to include them in our broader society, but, more than that, on how we go about protecting people with a disability. I think that falls to all of us. I suspect that my electorate is not much different from many others. If you look closely at those people we have the honour of representing in our communities, you will find that many do it very tough. Many are dealt a very hard hand in life, and they love their children as much as any of us do and want the best for their kids. One of the things that they keep talking about is that they want assurances that their kids can grow up to be safe and free from abuse into the future.

I support the passage of the bill through this House, but I believe there is an argument that this bill should be subject to a more detailed review. I think that, as it proceeds through the other place, it should be subject to a Senate inquiry and given more attention, particularly as to the various stakeholder groups who will be impacted by this regulation, so that we can hear from all stakeholders: from those working in the disability sector, from the providers and from employees and the unions representing them.

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