Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too am honoured to rise in this place to speak on this important subject of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and, in particular, the motion that the honourable member has moved in relation to the pricing.

Can I say at the outset that the pricing increases that were announced and came into effect from 1 July this year are significant and are most welcome to both the participants and the providers within the scheme. From 1 July, providers will see increases to remote and very remote plan funding and price limit loadings; changes to billing for travel, cancellations and non-face-to-face services; and a temporary loading for attendant care and community participation supports, including group based supports to assist organisations transitioning to the NDIS. These are important and, as I said, significant price increases in an area which, as many speakers have pointed out during the course of this discussion this morning, is important for the providers of NDIS services.

As the honourable member for Fisher remarked in his comments prior to this, I had the honour of chairing the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the last parliament. I wanted to take this opportunity at the beginning of this parliament to pick up on some of those things which the committee examined in the last parliament and I hope will continue to examine in this parliament.

It's important to note from the outset that this committee has been in existence from the beginning of the scheme. It provides an important parliamentary oversight on the NDIS, and it is one which has operated in a very friendly, very non-partisan way for the whole operation of the NDIS. I think that's important. Certainly under my chairmanship of the committee, the only recommendations brought forward were those that had the unanimous support of all the members of the committee regardless of their political partisan backgrounds or hue. It was important, I believe, that we came forward as a parliamentary committee representing all shades of the political spectrum in this place with recommendations in relation to improving the operation of the scheme.

The scheme is one which is still being rolled out. We're currently at approximately half the number of participants which is ultimately envisaged under the scheme. Some 460,000 to 470,000 Australians will be participants in the scheme when it's finally rolled out, and that involves a huge ramping up of the scheme over the next 12 to 18 months. The reality is that, for many of the participants and their families, this is an excellent scheme that works very well for them. But it's also the sad reality that for a minority—one doesn't know how many, but it is a minority—this scheme is not working in the way in which it was intended, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

This is an agency which is being built at the very time that the scheme is being rolled out. That in itself spells out some of the enormous challenges that the NDIA—the agency—faces in rolling out the scheme. I think there is goodwill from all parts of the political spectrum. There's certainly goodwill from all parts of the disability sector towards this scheme, but there's also a growing realisation that more needs to be done to overcome some of the basic problems.

In the last parliament, the committee inquired into eight areas and issued eight reports, including on: the provision of disability services for people with psychosocial disabilities relating to a mental health condition; the approach to early childhood intervention; transitional arrangements for the NDIS; the provision of hearing services under the scheme; market readiness for the provision of services under the scheme; the provision of assistive technology under the NDIS; the ICT systems; and general issues around implementation and performance, which was the last report, tabled in the House on 29 March 2019. I won't go through all the various recommendations that have been made in the reports, but I will say a couple of things. One is that I was delighted and I'm sure the committee and, indeed, all colleagues in this place were delighted that the government has picked up many of those recommendations, particularly those around early childhood. However, there are a series of other recommendations that still need to be fulfilled. I hope the committee will continue to look at this and ensure that we have the best possible scheme for disabled people in Australia.

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