Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the previous speaker, who did a very good job of articulating what the original purpose of the NDIS was and the importance of how we need to undertake the necessary reforms to ensure we get back to that purpose. As we all know in this place, and as we've all been seeing for many years, the sustainability of the scheme is of deep concern. It's not just the growing numbers we see in the budget but also, an important point—it was a point that the minister made in his Press Club speech outlining the reforms which have gone into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026—that there is a decline in the social licence of the scheme. The fact is that the sorts of challenges that we've seen in terms of the runaway growth and also the fraud and the misalignment between what the original purposes were and what we've ended up with are undermining public confidence in the scheme. I think it is important at the very start of this debate to note the positive impact that the scheme has had across so many lives. I know all of us are connected in with our electorates and receive a lot of correspondence from people out there who are beneficiaries of the scheme and their families and also the many providers that are operating in the scheme. I know that a lot of providers get a bad rap and get blamed for a lot of the things that we've seen. Of course, there are bad operators operating within the NDIS ecosystem, but there are so many that are doing the right thing and that are benefiting from this scheme in the right way. So many providers go above and beyond, and I think it's critical that we don't demonise them or the users of this scheme—the participants and their families—as we undertake the process of trying to undertake that commonsense reform.

Unfortunately, this is, I suppose, a bit of a moment of reckoning for the Labor Party on this topic. For many years, they would be in this chamber and outside telling us that there was no problem with the sustainability of the scheme. In fact, Bill Shorten famously said at a conference that 'anyone who told you that there is a sustainability problem with the NDIS is telling a lie'. That's what he said, but here we are. Of course, we're going to have multiple contributions to this debate, and I think everyone on both sides and on the crossbench will be articulating that there is a sustainability issue with the scheme. The problem is that, if you deny the fact that there is a sustainability issue with this scheme and you bury your head in the sand around the challenges with the scheme, you very quickly allow that lack of stewardship to drift unchecked and we reach the point where we are today.

The coalition is very keen to work with the government to ensure that we get these reforms right. But it is clear that poor stewardship has led us here and Labor has allowed the costs of this scheme to drift before resorting to very blunt cuts which are going to see about 21 per cent of participants removed from the scheme. That 160,000 participant number that has been put out there doesn't include those that are going to be added to the scheme over the next few years before we reach that point in 2028 when these reassessments begin. So there's actually a lot more than that who are going to experience—or have at some point experienced—the scheme, have been a participant on it and will be excised from it.

Undoubtedly, there is a huge amount of concern within the community from not just those who are participants but those who are connected with them—family members. They are worried about these reforms and are worried about what it's going to mean. There are a lot of unanswered questions, even in this legislation, about how we're going to go about that process. So if I can encourage the government, as a principle, as we go through this journey—and this journey is going to be a lot longer than just the passage of this bill through this House or in the other place. The journey of reform on the NDIS is going to take years. I'll touch on some of the particular reforms, but we're not going to have these functional capacity reassessments until 2028. This is multiterm reform, and it's important to remember that.

What I would encourage the government to do is ensure that we get the ultimate level of transparency that we possibly can. If we're thinking about multiple options, in terms of how we implement these reforms, let's let people know about it, and let's let people in the disability sector have their say on it. Certainly, they're filling my inbox at the moment with their thoughts on and concerns for the legislation, and I'm very pleased that we're going to have a committee process in the other place to get to the bottom of this; although, it will be a short timeframe. I echo the sentiments of the member for Lindsay: I encourage any stakeholder listening in to make sure that you get your submission in on time and have the opportunity to have your say.

The coalition is very keen to potentially amend this legislation in the other place to make sure that we're getting this completely right, because it is a large bit of legislation. There are many components to it, and it is obviously something that has been pushed onto the sector at very short notice. A lot of the measures that are being proposed had previously been championed by the coalition, but they were, I'll note, strongly opposed by Labor at different points. Functional capacity assessments are effectively a repackaged version of the coalition's independent assessments model, which Labor was opposed to. We've been strongly pushing for stronger registration as well, and I note the comments that people have made about the need for greater registration so we can tackle those quality and fraud issues.

I also note that, really, what we want—and I think I'm speaking on behalf of the government, as well as the opposition—is to ensure that we get to a tiered level of registration. If someone is just providing some bit of equipment, or if they are mowing someone's lawn, obviously we don't need to have that same level of regulation and detail. So we need to get that tiering correct to ensure that we are appropriately applying the rules and the regulations on those that are at the higher-end needs and at the most acute levels of care, but we also need to make sure that those who are more incidentally touching the NDIS aren't adversely affected.

One of the key reforms that is involved in this package and is being instigated, or will be allowed to take place through this legislation, is the introduction of a digital payment system. This is something that the coalition has long championed. It's something that will increase the ability for the government to keep an eye on the transactions and make sure that, where fraud is occurring, we're stepping on that and making sure that we are taking the appropriate action in real time. But it also increases the convenience for both the participants and the providers, and it's something that we had pushed in the final years of the last government to try to get to the point where we were ready to launch a digital payment system. Think of a sort of high-caps model for the NDIS.

Unfortunately, one of the things that we were incredibly frustrated with was, when this government was elected, all that work seemed to go straight in the bin, and now here we are four years later having to reinvent the wheel. So I would strongly encourage the government to take a look at the work that was done on the digital payments system in the final days of the Morrison government. You'll find that it was very much advanced; you'll find that it was almost at the point where it was ready to launch. I'd encourage the government to, rather than spending I think it's $300 million in the budget to try to implement that reform, perhaps we can recycle some of the work that the coalition did. It is, of course, one thing that the stakeholders tell me is absolutely critical to both tackling fraud and reducing costs across the scheme.

One of the points of reform that the government is seeking to do here is to end planned rollovers. It's an interesting concept because they're also tightening the criteria for unscheduled reassessments. It's certainly been my experience—and I'm sure I wouldn't be Robinson Crusoe here—with those who've contacted my office in relation to these reforms and the NDIS changes that we've seen over the course of recent months that people actually aren't putting their heads above the parapet to say that they want to have an unscheduled reassessment. What we've seen is a series of quiet cuts within the NDIS.

I'll give you an example. I had a lovely bloke come and meet with me. He lives not far from me, in the Redlands, and his wife very tragically is enduring early onset dementia. She'd be in her late 50s or early 60s, and she's unfortunately at the point now where she requires around-the-clock care. This is having a massive impact. Her husband's one of the most quietly spoken but just absolutely dedicated men you'll ever meet. He's a tremendous individual. And he's been advocating very hard on her behalf. They needed a little bit of extra support through their package to pay for some extra supports that they needed. When they asked for a reassessment, that triggered a full reassessment of their whole scope, and we ended up with a 43 per cent reduction in her package.

These are the sorts of quiet cuts that we've seen. I don't pretend that these aren't happening across the entire country, but these are the sorts of cuts that I'm seeing in the Redlands and I'm sure many other members are seeing. When we reach the point where the sustainability of the scheme is at crisis point, we see these quiet cuts being made. Unfortunately, they're not being made on the fringes. They're not being made to the back end to reduce red tape or reduce the number of expenses that we're seeing within the scheme. They're being made to those who are the most vulnerable and the least likely to complain.

That is ultimately the reason why we need to ensure that we get these reforms absolutely right. It's those people that the scheme was actually designed to support—most of all those at the highest end of the spectrum, those with the highest needs and those that many of us envisage that the NDIS would be supporting. That certainly hasn't been the experience that I've had in recent months as the government's tried to tackle the runaway costs.

I've touched on the digital payments system, but I also want to raise concerns around the transfer of pricing decision responsibilities to the minister. We've got an issue with pricing within the NDIS. It will take me much longer than the 3½ minutes that I have left for my remarks to touch on, and I might make a further contribution at a later point on that topic. One of the major things that we're hearing from providers is the need for a truly independent pricing process. We're rapidly approaching the end of the financial year. Many of these professions and services haven't had an increase in their pricing capacity for many, many years. Many haven't been able to increase their costs since pre COVID. Despite that, all their overheads are moving, of course, in one direction, and we've seen significant inflation over that period of time.

My fear is that, if we move the powers of pricing within the scheme under greater control of the minister—and this isn't an attack on the current minister; I think this will be the case for any minister who holds this portfolio over the life of the scheme—we're going to see greater political pressure trying to reduce and screw down those prices, and that is not necessary. That may be a good thing for the budget, but it may not necessarily be a good thing for those who are actually receiving that support or providing that support. We will be looking at that further as we consider the inquiry recommendations and the evidence that's seen through the Senate's consideration of this bill, and we will be potentially proposing some amendments in respect of that.

I also want to touch on fraud. Obviously, that's a major concern for many people out there. We've seen some horrific examples and we've seen some prosecutions too in relation to that. There is very little in this bill, I would say, that truly tackles fraud head on. It's lacking in detail. We've already had two packages of legislation that have been through here in the course of this government that have sought to tackle fraud. Unfortunately, despite all the resources, despite all the effort, despite all the legislation, we're actually seeing very little done in terms of prosecutions, and the detection of fraud is still at levels that I don't think would be considered to be appropriate, given the scale of the problem.

We're concerned that the government's proposals will also not achieve their budget cost savings. We know, from the last quarterly report, that the NDIS is growing at 11.3 per cent, up from 10.3 per cent, so it's actually heading in the wrong direction, despite all the efforts that they've made and the NDIA has made to try to bring those costs down. They had a growth target of eight per cent that they missed. They had a growth target of five to six per cent that they missed. They're now telling us that, through these changes, which are more back ended to the end of the decade, we're somehow going to get to two per cent or below two per cent. I'm very concerned that those budget savings were built into the budget long before these reforms were dreamt up.

Can I finish by encouraging all the stakeholders who've got an interest in this space to make sure that they get their submissions in. We will look at those very, very closely and propose amendments in the Senate.

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