Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion put forward by my electoral neighbour the member for Hughes. I know that, whilst he does have his faults, he has a deep and abiding interest and a personal involvement in disability, and I congratulate him on the work that he's done with disability organisations. I recently had the privilege of co-hosting an NDIS forum with the shadow minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten; the shadow minister for carers, Emma McBride; and another neighbour of mine, the member for Werriwa, the inestimably good Anne Stanley. I would like to, first of all, thank my colleagues for coming to south-west Sydney and listening to the concerns of NDIS participants in my electorate of Macarthur. I'd also like to thank those participants and carers for attending the forum and giving us the privilege of listening to their personal stories. Hearing from participants themselves is invaluable and really is the only way in which we can identify how to make the NDIS better.

As many in this place know, I've been involved in the care of children with disabilities for over 40 years. The NDIS, as already noted, is a revolutionary scheme and is to the credit of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. We now have one of the most comprehensive systems for helping people with disability in the world. Credit goes to Julia Gillard and to many others.

In June of last year, the Australian government's Disability Reform Council agreed to fund a range of disability related health supports in participants' plans. This was a long overdue reform and recommendation. My view about the NDIS is that it fails in many points because planners have not been trained in how to care for people with disabilities and, in particular, some of their medical needs. This includes things like incontinence aids such as nappies for children who are now teenagers or adults, and incontinence equipment; equipment required for gastrostomy feeding of people who can't feed themselves or swallow properly; other nutritional aids for people on special diets; and a whole range of medical things that are required for the care and, indeed, for the lives of many people with disabilities that I've been caring for. I commend the council's decision to fund these supports through the NDIS, but it is long, long overdue.

Many of the participants I've spoken to in my electorate have found it very difficult to navigate gaining access to these supports through the health system in the past, and it became even worse with the advent of the NDIS. This is welcome reform, but long overdue. I do fear that the red tape and bureaucracy of the NDIS will hinder participants benefitting completely from some of these medical supports. Time and time again, constituents approach me about the ridiculous wait times to access decisions, reviews and plan implementation for things like wheelchairs or vehicles that are able to take wheelchairs and move participants from place to place. There are huge waits for this. We've heard of children with muscular dystrophy waiting years to get access to motorised wheelchairs. These are children who will die of their disease. It's just unfair to make them wait. Participants need to be the centre of all decisions in the NDIS, especially the funding of health supports that are required to provide them with a decent life.

The NDIS was made for supporting people living with disabilities, but unfortunately the government has underspent by a large amount, and this is great shame, denying some of these much-needed aids to people with some of the most horrific disabilities that children can suffer from. The NDIS, in some ways, is taking away from the most vulnerable just to give the government a surplus. There are also concerns about how the NDIS is coping with organisations that are defrauding it. We know that there's poor oversight of this, and again this needs to be improved.

The NDIS is a life-changing scheme and was designed to lift people up and provide essential support to those most in need. In many circumstances, it's failing its main objective.

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