Nicolette Boele (Bradfield, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this bill to reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme. The NDIS is not just another government program. It is critical social infrastructure. It keeps vulnerable Australians safe, enables community participation and strengthens our social fabric. It is also one of the issues that I hear most about from my constituents—families, carers and participants in my electorate rely on the NDIS every single day. Unfortunately, many of them are struggling to navigate it. Yet, despite these challenges, Australians overwhelmingly value the NDIS. It reflects something fundamental, I think, about who we are—that Australia does not leave people behind.

Some reform is absolutely justified. The scheme is not operating as it was originally intended. It's designed to support people with significant and permanent disabilities. Over time, it has expanded beyond that remit. If we do nothing, we do risk undermining the financial sustainability and the social licence of the scheme, and that would be a bad outcome for current participants and for future generations who will depend on it. So the government is right to act to place the NDIS on a more sustainable footing and to refocus it on those with the greatest and most enduring needs. But acknowledging the need for reform does not mean we accept every aspect of how these reforms are being designed or implemented. It does not mean the government should sacrifice what makes the NDIS so valuable in the first place in the name of the cost savings.

The question for this parliament is how to reform the NDIS fairly, transparently and without causing harm. Along with my colleagues on the crossbench, I share significant concerns about some of the specific reforms proposed in the bill. We're proposing a number of amendments to this bill, derived through consultation with NDIS participants, experts and disability organisations. The member for Kooyong, Dr Monique Ryan, has demonstrated particular leadership on this issue, and I commend her for her work. I urge the government to work constructively to implement these changes.

One of the central concerns with this bill is that it risks shifting costs rather than addressing them. Reducing the number of people on the NDIS does not reduce the level of disability in Australia. It does not remove people's needs. It simply transfers those needs elsewhere—onto families, onto the health system and onto the state and territory governments. We're told that about 160,000 people may be removed from the scheme, but those individuals don't simply disappear because of changes to NDIS eligibility rules. They still require support. Now, it may well be appropriate for some people to receive that support through other less costly and more efficient systems. But these systems, these foundational supports, must actually exist, and there are real doubts about whether that is currently the case.

Over the past decade, many state based disability services were scaled back or dismantled after being replaced by the NDIS. Now we are asking those same systems to absorb thousands of people once again. Stakeholders including peak body People with Disability Australia have raised serious concerns that states and territories are not equipped to do this. There has been an announcement of joint funding from state and federal governments to help rebuild this capacity, but there's still very little detail about how it will operate, whether it's sufficient or how responsibilities will be formally shared. We cannot simply handball people from one system to another and hope for the best. These are not administrative units. These are Australians with complex needs deserving dignity and with lives which will be directly affected by the decisions that we make in this place. The government needs to ensure that the foundational supports and the services outside of the NDIS are fully designed, fully funded and operational before people are transitioned out of the scheme. In other words, it must ensure that no-one falls through the cracks.

Another concern is the level of transparency around the reforms. For such significant changes to a scheme of this scale, there has to be adequate engagement with the disability community and sufficient detail provided to stakeholders. Disability representative organisations have reported difficulty securing briefings, and there are reports of confusion and strain within the department itself.

At the same time, the pace of change is ambitious. Reforming a system as complex as the NDIS is not simply a matter of legislation. It requires careful design, coordination across jurisdictions and substantial administrative capacity. The government is attempting to do this, but it must not go too fast and risk sacrificing on these important considerations. The chaotic announcement and the continual delays in relation to the Thriving Kids program show just how difficult it is to hear and consider the range of experiences and perspectives that could help better shape a future system. For these reasons, I'm proposing an amendment to improve and ensure consultation on proposed legislative reforms to uphold the foundational mantra 'nothing about us without us'.

The bill leaves critical matters, including eligibility criteria, functional capacity assessments, assessment methodology and funding rules, to the future National Disability Insurance Scheme rules. Those rules will determine who can access the scheme and what supports they receive, yet the bill imposes no minimum consultation requirements before they are made—while simultaneously granting the minister significant new authority to control scheme costs, restructure participant planning and define support eligibility. This gap exists despite the independent NDIS Review calling for deep public consultation on the proposed reforms. My amendment fills that gap by requiring that the minister publish exposure drafts, consult with people in the disability community and representative organisations over a minimum of 28 days and publish both a summary of the feedback received and a disability impact statement before making rules of this kind. I sincerely hope the government will respond constructively and implement this amendment.

Beyond questions of funding and eligibility, we must also address the everyday experience of participants in the scheme, and this is where I hear the most frustration from my constituents. The NDIS has developed into a bureaucracy that's too rigid, that's too complex and that too often lacks common sense. People encounter administrative errors, such as incorrect plans, missing supports and simple clerical mistakes. These should be solved simply, but the system does not provide a straightforward way to fix them. Instead people are pushed into lengthy, costly and very stressful review processes. In too many cases, participants are forced to take matters to the Administrative Review Tribunal simply to correct what should have been basic administrative issues.

This includes one particularly egregious case, where a constituent's plan was issued without a requisite planning meeting and therefore no reference to goal setting or the latest medical evidence. Despite tens of emails, attempted phone calls, the lodging of complaints and advocacy by my office, it was somehow not possible to restart that process and have a planning meeting. Instead, after the internal review rubberstamped that initial plan, my constituent is now before the tribunal simply to get her statutory right and have a planning meeting. Sadly, cases like these are not isolated. Of the more than 100 NDIS related cases that my office has been asked to assist with, 20 have been in relation to errors or requests that should have been dealt with by commonsense review and 11 have ended up in front of the tribunal.

This is an expensive process. In the 2024-25 year, over $60 million was spent by the federal government, by taxpayers, on external law firms to fight participants at the tribunal, and yet the tribunal finds in favour of participants in around 73 per cent of cases. That tells us something important: people with disabilities are overwhelmingly trying to do the right thing and it's the system that's not working for them. The government is now proposing to restrict people's ability to have their plans reassessed, but it's unclear what the government will be doing to increase people's ability to fix clerical errors without being pushed into reassessment.

There are also concerns about the increasing use of automated decision-making within the NDIS. Technology can play an important role in improving efficiencies, but automated systems can entrench errors and create decisions that are difficult to challenge or undo. And, without proper oversight, they can harm the very people that they're meant to serve. We've seen this before. Need I remind everybody—robodebt showed us what happens when automation is deployed without adequate human safeguards. More recent experiences with automated aged-care assessments are similarly disturbing. If automation is to be a part of the NDIS, it must be accompanied by strong human oversight, clinical judgement, discretion and accessible review processes.

I ask the government to provide more information on what safeguards will exist to ensure automated decision-making and standardised assessments accurately reflect individual circumstances, including environmental factors, and on what human oversight will exist. Many NDIS participants have incredibly complex needs. The system currently uses some 18 different assessment methodologies, and no information has been provided as to how these will be streamlined and automated. We need a human eye for every critical decision.

If these reforms are to succeed, several things must happen. First, there must be a genuine partnership with the states and territories, backed by adequate funding and clear accountability. Second, there must be transparency. Stakeholders, including people with disabilities, must be meaningfully involved in the design and the implementation of these reforms. Third, we must address the administrative failings of the scheme itself by introducing more flexibility, faster resolution of errors and stronger feedback loops, including recommendations from tribunal cases to facilitate institutional learnings and prevent the same mistakes from reoccurring. Fourth, any move towards automated decision-making must include robust human oversight and clear avenues for review. Finally, above all, we must ensure that no-one is left behind without support during this transition.

The NDIS is supposed to support people. This is its primary goal; it's an admirable one. The government must not lose sight of that in its efforts to reform this system. Reform is absolutely necessary, but I will struggle to support this bill in its current form. Therefore, I urge the government to implement the amendments proposed by the crossbench.

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