Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

No wonder there's a homelessness crisis. My question is to my sparring colleague who was the Minister for the NDIS. I'll put background to the question. The government keep changing their justification to cut the NDIS. First of all, they came up with this concern about consistency and fairness. The Morrison government sprung on Australians a plan for independent assessments when it announced its response to the Tune review in August 2020. When people were shocked, the government claimed that the independent reviewer, David Tune AO, PSM, had called for independent assessments to be introduced in order to fix issues with consistency and fairness. Labor agree that there are issues with consistency and fairness, but when Labor FOI'd the report we found that the government had inserted in the report the entire chapter and recommendation for independent assessments—perhaps it was not so independent a review with not so independent assessments. These assessments will be done by companies who not only are in cahoots with the government but also used to be the government, in the case of one of the companies. One company is linked to former NDIA CEO Robert De Luca and another company is led by a former Liberal MP, thus confirming the old cliche that this government has never seen a government opportunity that it hasn't sought to monetise.

'Consistency and fairness' still reverberates from the new minister, like a parrot of her predecessor, my friend Stuart Robert. The new minister has said, 'Your postcode absolutely determines your package.' You could be mistaken for thinking that the independent assessment is intended to increase NDIS funding for those who are missing out—communities whose first language is one other than English, First Nations communities and people in remote areas. But what this government really wants to do is reduce the packages for people who are able to navigate the NDIS bureaucracy well enough to get a decent level of support. In other words, the answer of this government to some people not accessing it is to have independent assessments which make it harder for everyone to access it—because misery loves a friend. This postcode discrimination issue isn't solved by making it harder for the people currently enjoying this world-class scheme to get the necessary supports.

When the government was caught out on consistency and fairness it went back to an old favourite of the antiwelfaremeisters and said this was about participant fraud. Minister Robert claimed that the NDIS needed to change because people with disability were scamming the system to get themselves yachts, jetties and other services, which he felt wouldn't pass the pub test. This came from an MP who famously claimed $38,000 for his home internet bill—there is nothing that NDIS participants couldn't learn from him! The NDIA have since confirmed that, out of a thousand fraud tip-offs made against 430,000-plus participants, none have revealed fraud from the participants. In too many cases the government assumes that, if you need government support to access a wheelchair, you must somehow be a malingerer. The fact that, as early as March this year, the former minister felt he needed to employ the welfare-cheat dog whistling to garner public support just shows how desperate they are to cut the NDIS.

The government's third explanation for independent assessments is that it's unsustainable. Somehow the government thinks that aspiring to an ordinary life is too expensive. In terms of sustainability, my question is in several parts. How much is currently being spent by the NDIA on consultants? How many matters are currently in the backlog of cases appealing to the AAT? How long have these cases been waiting for a decision? How much of the NDIS's spending is on private sector lawyers to get through the AAT case load and why isn't it being handled in house? How many positions are currently vacant in the NDIA's AAT branch? Is the minister aware of how much NDIS funding is currently being lost to fraud by shonky service providers? What is being done to combat systemic provider fraud? When will the government come clean on the NDIS costs and release their financial sustainability report and the modelling beneath it?

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