House debates

Wednesday, 7 October 2020

Bills

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Strengthening Banning Orders) Bill 2020; Second Reading

5:43 pm

Photo of Melissa PriceMelissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Strengthening Banning Orders) Bill 2020 strengthens the existing powers of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, the NDIS commissioner, to ban a worker or provider from delivering services in the NDIS market. This bill aims to protect people with disability and to prevent people with disability from experiencing harm from service provision and the people who work closely with them. As an independent national regulator with integrated functions, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, the NDIS commission, plays a key role in building confidence in the NDIS through its regulatory and compliance functions. It is, therefore, important that the NDIS commission has robust investigation and regulatory powers, and can take strong action where serious matters arise that affect the safety of NDIS participants.

As at 30 June 2020, 17,253 NDIS providers were registered with the NDIS commission. Of those registered, 45 per cent were individuals or sole traders. Although the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013, the NDIS Act, already empowers the NDIS commissioner to make banning orders, it has become apparent that the provisions under which these banning orders can be issued are too narrow. In short, this bill will strengthen the banning provisions of the NDIS Act and allow the NDIS commissioner to ban a worker or provider they believe is unfit to deliver NDIS services, even if they are no longer delivering NDIS services. It will also enable a banning order to be issued pre-emptively to prevent a worker or provider who is not yet working in the NDIS sector from doing so in the future based on information from another sector.

This bill will also make it clear the NDIS commissioner must use the existing NDIS provider register to include details of any current banning orders. This information will generally be publicly available, and people with disability and their representatives may search the NDIS provider register to ensure that providers or workers they are using are not subject to a banning order. The strengthened banning order provisions support the aim of ensuring unsuitable people who should not be delivering services under the NDIS cannot do so. This is an important part of developing trust in the NDIS market. Our paramount consideration is the right of people with disability to live lives free from abuse, violence, neglect and exploitation. We need to close these gaps in the banning order provisions, and the bill before us will do this.

I would also like to thank the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills for their consideration. As requested by the committee, an addendum to the explanatory memorandum has been tabled to provide further clarification on the exercise of the banning order power. Once again, I thank all members for their contributions. I commend the bill to the House.

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