Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When the Gillard Labor government established the NDIS in 2013, then prime minister Julia Gillard told the House:

Disability can affect any of us and therefore it affects all of us.

She told the House:

The risk of disability is universal, so our response must be universal.

As we make some of the most significant reforms to the NDIS since it was introduced, I carry these words with me because this was the basis of the introduction of our National Disability Insurance Scheme—a once-in-a-generation reform, a reform which has reshaped the lives and futures of all Australians living with disability, of their families and of their carers by introducing one of Australia's most important social programs.

Through this bill here today, we are securing this foundational support for future generations. While the NDIS remains one of our country's most important social programs, it's growing faster than any other similar program, reaching unsustainable levels. It's riddled with fraud, rorts and unclear eligibility requirements. Through fighting fraud and stopping rorts, slowing rapid cost increases, providing clearer eligibility requirements and delivering quality services and support to participants, we are returning the NDIS to its original intent—providing lifetime support for Australians with permanent and significant disability—and ensuring that the NDIS remains a functioning and viable support system. This is so the next generation of Aussie families, carers and people living with permanent and significant disability can count on its promise for decades to come. For that reason, I'm proud to rise in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

We know Australians expect the NDIS to keep supporting people with a disability and their families and to transform lives. But there is a need for change. There has been unsustainable growth that has gone unchecked for too long. Under the Liberals, NDIS growth was at 22 per cent, with no moderation in sight. We've brought growth down to 10 per cent, and in January this year National Cabinet agreed to work together to bring cost growth down to five to six per cent or lower. So here we are, bringing costs down to improve the quality of supports and the operation of the scheme for participants.

The first changes set out in this bill are changes to access and eligibility to the NDIS. The NDIS review found the approach we've been using for participants to access the scheme is inconsistent, inequitable and not always targeted to those with disability who require the most support. So, where definitions for who is actually an eligible participant are murky and unclear, we're clarifying them. We're defining and providing the assessment of thresholds for functional capacity. This bill will also clarify permanence in eligibility requirements where someone is or could be accessing supports from other service systems. These changes to eligibility will return the NDIS to its original purpose in supporting Australians with permanent and significant disability and support a more sustainable scheme moving forwards.

These changes aren't random. All these access changes were recommendations of the independent review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme, conducted in 2023. Considerable research has been conducted ahead of each and every one of those changes using an evidence based approach to determine what's best. At the moment, one in five plans are subject to an unscheduled reassessment every year, and the average result of these reassessments is a 20 per cent increase in plan value. It's these kinds of practices which drive inconsistency and unpredictability in funding decisions, which is why we're seeing such rapid growth in NDIS spending.

That's why this bill is also limiting unscheduled planned reassessments. Some requests for these reassessments are made by intermediaries like support coordinators and plan managers, sometimes without the knowledge of the participant. Our changes will make sure that only participants, their plan nominee or guardian will be able to request an unscheduled plan reassessment. These unscheduled reassessments will only be possible when there have been significant and ongoing changes to a participant's support needs which have arisen from changes in their functional capacity or if there's been an unanticipated, significant and ongoing change in the participant's living, education, work or informal support arrangements. This is about creating more predictability and equity in funding decisions and, of course, securing the NDIS so it remains viable for future generations.

Closer to home, a number of constituents in my electorate of Gorton receive life-changing support from the NDIS. For people with high needs, like a constituent of mine who suffers from motor neurone disease, the NDIS provides high-intensity supports like nursing and hospital equipment that is absolutely essential for her survival. For others, like my young constituent from Caroline Springs, the NDIS helps to fund supports like therapeutic swimming lessons and day care, which are indispensable to her quality of life. This is why making sure that the NDIS is sustainable for future generations is so incredibly important. I want to acknowledge that, for many families in my community and around Australia, it's an anxious time to experience changes around NDIS supports.

Our Thriving Kids initiative is intended to address the missing middle—children age 8 and under with developmental delay, disability and low to moderate support needs. These were not the participants with a profound disability who the NDIS was originally designed for. Nonetheless, they need adequate supports. One in five young children experience developmental delay or autism, mostly at mild to moderate levels. A school in my electorate told me that one in four of their students are NDIS participants, most of which are with developmental delay or autism at mild to moderate levels.

If you speak to families in my electorate or families facing similar challenges across the country, they'll tell you the current system isn't working for them. They're waiting years for specialist appointments. They say that the system is confusing and hard to navigate, and the supports they're receiving from the NDIS just aren't targeted enough. The harsh reality is that these children are falling through the cracks. Intervention is simply not happening early enough.

I'm proud to have been involved in the parliamentary inquiry report into the proposed Thriving Kids program as part of my role on the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Disability. We heard from experts, peak bodies, parents, families, providers, participants and those with lived experience, and I'd like to thank every single organisation and person who took the time and care to put in a submission to our report. This report has a specific recommendation about transitions, to help children transition into early education, from early education into primary education or from primary education into higher education, as appropriate. By increasing funding and resources to already existing organisations who can deliver through a hub-and-spoke system, these supports can be made more readily available and therefore can improve equitable access for these children and their families, thereby ensuring that cost and distance are not a barrier. This is a model that is better suited to children with mild to moderate developmental delay and intends to provide more appropriate supports than the lengthy and individualised NDIS model. It's about giving our kids the best possible start in life without forcing families to navigate the exhausting NDIS-or-nothing battle we see too often.

We have service providers in my electorate of Gorton as well as right across the country working hard to support NDIS participants and doing the right thing. But we also know there are service providers out there who are behaving fraudulently and that there are breaches of the code of conduct in the system. Where we see fraud, too often we also see violence, abuse and neglect. The bill makes practical changes to crack down on fraud and misconduct by dodgy NDIS providers. This bill will tackle fraud and compliance issues within the NDIS by providing the NDIA with the necessary powers to provide stronger safeguards for participants and improve integrity of the scheme. Provider registration is also an important element of our government's changes. This bill expands categories of mandatory registration to include the higher-risk activities. That means that personal care, daily living supports and supports provided in closed settings will be required to register as a provider. It's more oversight and more enforcement. For NDIS participants, it's about safety; for providers, it's about accountability.

Our changes are also ensuring that providers who do the wrong thing will face harsher penalties. We're introducing new offences, stronger civil and criminal penalties for misconduct and giving the NDIS commissioner more powers to punish providers, because NDIS participants and their loved ones deserve quality care. This is about justice—justice for participants who have been taken advantage of—and we are sending a clear message to fraudulent service providers: dodgy behaviour will not be tolerated. Breaches to the NDIS Code of Conduct may include providers failing to safeguard a participant from harm or breaching a participant's privacy, and punishments for providers whose breach often involves a significant failure or involves a systemic pattern of conduct will be increased. The code of conduct is central to ensuring that participants can access the quality of care they deserve, so we are strengthening it. This comes after reports of dodgy NDIS providers intimidating participants to change service providers and reports of providers trying to attract participants with offers of alcohol, tobacco or cash. The providers then allegedly drained the participants' plans while not providing the standard of care that was expected. This conduct should outrage us all. For vulnerable Australians to be taken advantage of in this way is absolutely disgusting.

Amendments provided in this bill will also provide the NDIA with new functions to allow it to investigate criminal activity and amend certain information-gathering powers. This is to make sure that information obtained by the NDIA CEO from participants and prospective participants can be used as part of those investigations, and it will require providers, nominees and participants to retain records relating to the provision of supports. Providers who don't comply with this will be met with a civil penalty.

All of these amendments have one thing in common: securing the NDIS for future generations. This bill is about tackling fraud and rorts, slowing rapid cost increases, providing clearer eligibility requirements and delivering quality services and support for participants, all so that we can return the NDIS to its original intent.

The NDIS is a lifeline for Australians with permanent and significant disability, and, if we want it to continue to be one for future generations, these changes are necessary. Let me be clear: these reforms being debated today are because of a Labor government that is addressing these issues and putting these changes forward. Under the previous coalition government, these sorts of behaviours went unchecked. When Labor came to government in 2022, we inherited a system that was not ready to meet the challenges of the future. We inherited a total mess. The NDIS lacked basic prevention controls for fraud and noncompliance. We acted fast, investing $550 million into tackling fraud and noncompliance and passing the 'getting the NDIS back on track' act.

While those opposite put reform in the too-hard basket, we're doing the real work to secure the future of the NDIS. We're making sure the scheme works for the participants it is designed for, not against them. Here we're continuing our work to crack down on fraud and noncompliance by dodgy providers. It'll mean better outcomes for people with disabilities and their families. When Labor introduced the National Disability Insurance Scheme, it wasn't about providers taking advantage of vulnerable people; the NDIS is about dignity, and that's what this bill is here to protect. This bill is, in essence, about dignity, which is why I'm so proud to commend it to the House.

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