Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have a deep respect for the member for Macarthur. I knew of him before I came to this place. I respect his service here and before he entered this place for his contribution to medicine and particularly his paediatric experience. But I do take a different view to him on a number of points raised in this debate. It was the Gillard government that set up the NDIS, but it seems that it's all acclaim and no care with Labor when it comes to fronting up to some very significant challenges that the NDIS has right now. My good friend and colleague the member for McPherson raised a number of those points, including that this federal Labor government have been in power for four years now, and so it is important that they take responsibility for parts of the NDIS running very significantly off track. I have to say that, whether it's fuel or the NDIS, this prime minister is allergic to responsibility. He is afraid of accountability.

Right now, there are a number of examples in the NDIS that deserve attention and need responsibility. It's a scheme that supports nearly 800,000 Australians, including 200,000 Victorians and many people in my electorate of Monash. Labor's failure to properly address the structural problems within the NDIS is leaving some of our most vulnerable Australians in limbo. Instead of fixing the system, we're seeing a heavy-handed attempt to rein in costs, and those attempts are hurting the people that this very scheme is designed to protect and support and help.

In my electorate of Monash, I'm hearing this every single week from local families, carers and people with a disability themselves. Families are contacting my office about delayed plans, reduced support, unpaid invoices and a system that is becoming harder and harder to navigate. These are not just administrative inconveniences. They're not just paper deficiencies. These are real-world consequences impacting real people. When the NDIS invoices go unpaid, providers are left with no choice but to act, and it's participants who are bearing the brunt.

I've heard of equipment providers threatening to remove essential mobility equipment because invoices have not been paid. I've seen cases where $100,000 unpaid invoices have forced a care provider to send a participant home—a participant who was stable, supported and safe. That same individual later ended up in hospital following a psychotic episode that put both themselves and their family at risk. Emergency services were called and a hospital bed in an already stretched system was taken up, and all of this could have been avoided. All of this happened because the system failed that person, that family, that provider and our community. I've spoken with a family who had to take out a loan to urgently purchase medical equipment—equipment that was later denied by the NDIS, leaving them $15,000 out of pocket.

These are not isolated stories. These are becoming far too common. I know I'm dealing with those stories in my electorate of Monash. I know my colleague the member for McPherson is dealing with them in his electorate, and I know that members across the chamber and across the parliament are dealing with them every day of the week. I've got constituents who are too afraid to even request a plan review, because they've seen others ask for help only to receive less support in return. I have families who are spending hours—indeed, sometimes days—navigating administrative processes and resubmitting documents that have already been provided not once, not twice, but three times or more. This is not what the NDIS was meant to be about, and it's no surprise the scheme's reputation is at an all-time low. Public confidence is shifting, driven by concerns about rorting, bureaucracy and spiralling costs.

Let's be clear, fraud must be addressed. The government's own Fraud Fusion Taskforce has said that up to 10 per cent of NDIS claims may be inappropriate, mischievous or outright criminal. That should concern every single one of us because every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar taken away from Australians who genuinely rely on this scheme. The answer cannot be to squeeze participants and providers who are doing the right thing. The answer must be to front up and fix this system. What we're seeing instead is red tape exploding, operating costs climbing and a system that's become more complex not less. Australians deserve better. People in my electorate deserve better, and people with a disability deserve far better.

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