Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Pensions, paid parental leave, superannuation, Medicare, the National Broadband Network, the National Disability Insurance Scheme—it is Labor that makes the major economic and social reforms in this country. I want to pay tribute to former prime minister Julia Gillard and former ministers Jenny Macklin and Bill Shorten for the work they've done and to the many advocates who pushed for that Productivity Commission report which recommended a national disability insurance scheme in this country.

The initial cost was supposed to be $13.6 billion, roughly $20 billion in today's terms. In the 2013 budget, about $14.3 billion was allocated for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We've now seen an almost 50 per cent increase in the number of people we anticipated initially, which was 300,000 to 400,000. We're looking at almost 50 per cent more than that. Indeed, in terms of the cost, it's nearly four times as much as we initially anticipated.

Reasonable and necessary supports for people with significant and permanent disabilities—these words are in our lexicon. They're in our nomenclature. We use them day in and day out as federal MPs. Hundreds of thousands of people in the scheme use them as well, as do the plan providers, the reviewers and the people working in the NDIA. We created this scheme, and we need to fix this scheme, ensuring that we have the capacity to convince the Australian people that this scheme is worthy of continuing. The NDIS is projected to grow to $70 billion per annum by 2030. We're reducing the projection to $55 billion. That's what we need to do. We need to take the necessary steps to ensure that the costs do not blow out even further.

So we're going to limit NDIS costs in the short term and put a stop to the fraud in the scheme, which is so rampant and so evident. As federal MPs, we see the fraudsters, the shonks and the crooks. The vast majority of providers deliver quality services, act with the best of intentions and do good work. But there are crooks in the scheme. It has been rorted by many people.

We're going to continue working with the states and territories, the disability community and the NDIS workers, who need to be involved in the next stage of reforms. But, of course, when the NDIS came in, the states and territories opted out, and the only game there was indeed the NDIS. I saw a number of organisations locally who went to the wall because that ongoing grant funding from the states dried up. In the past 13 years, the NDIS has become entrenched and, really, a national institution—a great reform. But various reviews have found that it is in major need of reform and a major overhaul. There are unfair outcomes. There are higher numbers in the scheme, as I said, than we anticipated originally. It has changed lives and changed our country for the good, but the costs continue to rise rapidly. Participants don't often get quality supports and often have to undertake reviews again and again. As the previous speaker said, in my experience as a federal MP, they often are successful on reviews, so what's the problem initially? It also became target for shonks and fraudsters.

There's a major problem with respect to plan reassessments. One in five of these reassessments is unscheduled. The average increase as a result of this unscheduled reassessment is 20 per cent higher than the old, so the changes are being foisted on people. People are being encouraged to apply in those circumstances. It's going to be limited, henceforth, to significant and ongoing changes to functional capacity. I think that's the right thing to do.

The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has been operating in Australia since 2022 across many portfolios at the federal level. The multi-agency task force comprises 24 agencies, and it's co-led by the NDIA and Services Australia, and a number of other people, including the AFP, are involved. It found that there are serious criminal activities inside the NDIS. There are flaws in its design and increased susceptibility to fraud and crime.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 contains effective measures which I think address that, including the registration of providers. It's quite inexplicable that one in 16 of the current deliverers of services aren't registered. If you're registered, it means quality of service and safety standards. It means reporting and auditing. It means employees having screening. These are all parts of registration. So it's critical that we lift the registration level. We're changing the definition of NDIS provider accordingly. Retailers and suppliers will be outside the definition. I think it's critical also that we provide deterrence and punishment. We're introducing a new civil penalty provision which will act in terms of deterrence but also provide financial penalties to those people who do the wrong thing.

As I said, spending in the NDIS has blown out. Those opposite, the Liberal and National parties, didn't do anything about this, really. We constantly saw media inquiries about it, and we constantly saw whinging and whining and carping and moaning from those opposite, but they didn't take the necessary steps that this Labor government is undertaking. NDIS growth was 22 per cent under the coalition, with no moderation in sight over nearly 10 years of government. We brought it down to 10 per cent. In January this year the National Cabinet agreed to work together to bring down cost growth to five to six per cent or even lower.

One of the things that's so obvious to everyone is the tripling of the funding in the last five years for social and community and civic participation. It's gone up from $4 billion to $12 billion. That is a massive challenge. I'm not going to insult people by giving the examples many of my constituents have told me about the rorts and the fraudsters involved in this, and the failures across this space where people have not got the social, civic and community involvement they deserve. We're all paying taxes for it, and the Australian public is as well.

We need to manage this scheme more tightly, and there needs to be more rigour in the whole scheme. Without these reforms, the NDIS is going to cost more than Medicare and the PBS combined. It will fast catch up to the age pension. That's why we need to take the steps we need to do to restore it to its original intent. We need to support people who've got permanent and significant disability. We need to secure the scheme for the future. What we're going to do rests on a number of pillars.

One is delivering quality services and support to participants. I think the $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund is good. I'm looking forward to seeing how that will rebuild community organisation capacity to host genuine participation activities. One of the organisations that went to the wall in my community was known as CATS, Community Access Transition Service. They did a mighty job in providing assistance to people leaving places like the Ipswich Special School and other schools and getting people involved in civic life. I've met numerous people over the years who've got jobs and participated in community life because of the work that CATS did. They went to the wall when the state government funding was withdrawn because, of course, states and territories opted out. There are important things that we need to undertake, and I think that's a very, very important part of the reforms.

We're making eligibility requirements clearer with standardised, evidence based assessments of someone's functional capacity. I think the need for independence is so critical in that assessment. We need to fight fraud and stop rorts so participants and their families have better quality services and experience less exploitation and harm. I've seen it. I'm sure everyone in this chamber at times has seen the undue influence and the levels of abuse. People have controlled individuals who are vulnerable because they're members of the scheme. They see this as an opportunity where there are packages of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. They see this as an opportunity to rip people off, and that's why we've seen these criminal activities involved.

We've already invested $550 million in tackling fraud and noncompliance and recently passed the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Integrity and Safeguarding) Bill of 2025, but there's more that needs to be done to protect participants and increase the quality of support services. That's why we're introducing legislation as a result of this particular budget. The changes we're making will reduce the growth and ensure that we can continue to support people. There are some changes that I think are really important. As I mentioned before, the tighter criteria for unscheduled reassessments and measures will reduce plan-cost growth. We never anticipated we'd see such growth in the costs of the plans.

We're resetting participant budgets for social and community participation. As I said, it's grown completely out of control. We're introducing standardised, evidence based assessments, and we're looking to improve the quality of plan managers and support coordinators. We've seen such variability in this space, I can tell you. Most people do the right thing, but, by golly, I've seen some really shonky ones in my time in this place. We're expanding categories of mandatory provider registration and enrolling providers in a digital payment scheme so we've got some accountability of where the taxpayers' money goes. Changes to eligibility can only happen with the agreement of the states and territories, and I'm urging the states and territories to do the right thing.

Importantly, $6 billion is being allocated by all governments to rebuild those local community supports for people with lower support needs. Not everyone living with a disability will be or should be eligible for the NDIS, but there should be other forms of support for them. In addition, a test of permanency is already required under the NDIS scheme, but we're tightening that definition to make sure it focuses on people with significant and permanent disability. This scheme was never, ever intended to replace health, rehabilitation and treatment services, but that's the mentality of so many people I've seen. That is important to get those health services, rehabilitation services et cetera going on.

I practiced as a litigation lawyer, and I practiced for a long time in personal injury law. We couldn't—and we shouldn't—settle cases in terms of work cover or indeed personal injuries involving motor vehicle accidents until someone's injuries settled and we knew their levels of permanent disability. That's because they would be underdone in terms of the damages paid—whether it was general damages or economic loss—unless we knew the permanency of their injuries. It's the same thing when it comes to the NDIS. We need to know people's permanent conditions and what they're going to live with permanently on a long-term basis before we know.

It's not a case of the federal government providing the NDIS for people who may have been injured or may have been suffering from an illness. All of us are one illness or injury away from any form of disability, but not everyone can and should be covered—and certainly not before it's significant and permanent. An assessment of a person's functional capacity is absolutely critical, and that will be done in consultation with the community with the support of a technical advisory group. This is absolutely vital. This will include disability reform organisations, the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee co-chairs and the Chair of Australia's Disability Strategy Advisory Council.

In terms of timeframes, we expect some of these changes to start later this year. When it comes to who will access the NDIS and who gets other support—many of these changes won't happen until 2028. We're giving the minister new powers, and I think this is absolutely vital to managing the scheme's growth on an ongoing basis. However, these powers will be used on the very clear advice of the National Disability Insurance Agency, and I think that's also important. The 2026-27 budget handed down on 12 May builds on our first term, providing significant investments in critical reforms. As part of this budget, we're working with the states and territories to establish the Thriving Kids foundational supports program to complement and take some pressure off the NDIS.

This is where the states and territories need to come in. It's a $4 billion scheme over five years. We want the states and territories back in the game. We want them back in the area of disability and disability support, in particular, with respect to children. That $2 billion we're providing is important for national information advice on child development and autism, because that is an issue. It cannot be the case that about one in six boys who are in year 2 are living with autism and are in the scheme. It cannot be the case; that is not sustainable. We need to provide additional supports for children with autism and their families—but often outside of the scheme. Not every child living with autism should be in the scheme.

Medicare Healthy Kids Check is a Medicare subsidised health assessment for GPs to assess the health and development of a child at three years of age, which is important, and refer them to appropriate supports, including this Thriving Kids support. A new national digital child health record makes it easier for families and health professionals to track a child's development and share information. There are important things that we need to do, and I call on the Crisafulli government in my home state of Queensland to do the right thing and engage properly and maturely with the Albanese government in the interest of people with disability living in Queensland.

The NDIS is a statement of our national values and a measure of our national character. It's up to us as parliamentarians—there are 150 in this chamber, as well as those in the Senate—to provide the necessary leadership in this space. That means coming together to pass this legislation. We need to protect the future of the NDIS. We need to strengthen the tough laws the government has passed and send a very clear message: the NDIS is critical, and you should not steal from people with disability, or we'll find you and we'll throw the book at you. It's absolutely crucial. We want to support people to do the right thing and support people living on the NDIS.

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