Rowan Holzberger (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. In doing so, I commend the work of not only the Minister for the NDIS, Senator McAllister, but also the caucus and the Labor Party, which has worked for many years not only before the inception of the NDIS but also in the inception of the plan to try and get it back on track. What we have seen in the history of the NDIS is that the Labor Party introduced it but the Liberal Party maladministered it.

I make a big point in this place of reminding people that I've worked for a living in farming and in construction, but I say that as a preface because, from about 2018, I was working for Senator Murray Watt. As the NDIS scheme grew, all of the problems that were evident there at the time grew with the scheme. Unfortunately, they had an opportunity there from 2018 to deal with the problems. They could have actually solved the problems that we are now left to deal with. That's why this bill is so important. That's why the work the Labor Party has done to try and get the NDIS back on track is so important.

There are so many people in the electorate of Forde that rely on the NDIS. There's probably somewhere around 8,000 people on the NDIS. That's double what it is in other electorates. That's 60 per cent more than what's in the electorate of Parkes. I know the NDIS really inside out and I know the communities that rely on it. I know the people that rely on it. I know the absolute torture that people go through to access the NDIS and the fight to get the services that their kids and their family members so desperately need. I know that, basically, what we have now is really akin to systems abuse—what we put people through to access those services. And so—

Debate interrupted.

See this speech in context