Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I've been very blessed to be a father to two beautiful daughters: Astin, who's seven, and Emery, who's five. Coming into the new parliament, we were talking about different positions and jobs people wanted, and I asked to help out with the NDIS. I did that because my five-year-old, Emery, has level 3 autism and she needs the supports from the NDIS to be able to thrive. That early intervention has helped her so much.

As I've travelled around the country, I have now seen what the NDIS has done and where we could be going but also the really bad, negative language that can be associated with the NDIS. People say, 'We need to make sure it's sustainable,' thinking of a dollar figure. But we need to make it sustainable for the people that need the therapies and the support. We need to make sure that we're targeting the people that are doing the wrong thing and not punishing those that need that extra little hand-up to just kick arse at life. When I see my daughter, who went from saying no words to now being able to say, 'Love you, Dad,' I know how important the NDIS is to my family but also to other families around the country.

I want to work closely with the minister to make sure that we are not cutting in the wrong areas or cutting people's funding. We want to make sure that we're bringing them up, getting them the support that they and their families need, by pointing at those that have done the wrong thing and making sure they can't continue to do it.

The NDIS is so important. It's life-saving; it's life-changing. We need to make sure that we, in this place, have much better language when we talk about the future of the NDIS.

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