Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Whitlam. I don't think there's anyone in this chamber who knows more about the NDIS and disability services than the member for Whitlam. She has worked with it and in it for the entirety of the scheme's life, including, before coming here last year, as the chief executive of one of the country's largest disability institutions. So I value her advice very deeply.

The NDIS is unarguably one of Australia's great modern reforms. It's gone from being the dream of generations of activists through the seventies, eighties and nineties to becoming a truly cherished institution. It's changed the lives, as all of us know, of literally hundreds of thousands of people with disability and their families as well. But the truth is it currently costs too much, it's growing too fast and it's become a soft target for too many fraudsters and shonks as well as, frankly, for serious organised crime. We simply can't go on like this. We can't afford for the NDIS to continue to fail. The steps we've taken over the last few years to get it back on track simply aren't delivering the results that we need to see in the scheme. Since just last December and the mid-year budget review in MYEFO, costs have already blown out by more than $13 billion. These blowouts simply can't continue.

That's why, later this week, I'll introduce legislation to get a grip on that scheme inflation—and on plan inflation as well—and to set the clearest possible path to a secure, sustainable future for the NDIS. That path rests on four pillars: fighting fraud and stopping rorts, which everyone wants to do; slowing rapid cost increases of the type we've seen in the latest cost blowouts since December; clearer eligibility requirements to get the scheme back to its original intent; and, most importantly, delivering quality supports and services to people living with disability.

I stress: even with these changes, the NDIS will continue to grow every single year. But by the end of the decade we project it will cost $55 billion rather than the current projection of $70 billion. It will still be the largest social program we have in this country, outside the aged pension, and still the centrepiece of the most comprehensive framework of supports for people with disability you will find anywhere on the planet.

The bill I'll present later this week is simply good financial management and good financial control. The deeper reform I telegraphed in my speech to the press club will be conducted in close consultation with the disability community and with the states and territories as well. (Time expired)

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