Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start my response to the debate on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 by stating my support for the intention of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Like most people in this place, I speak to constituents every day in my electorate whose lives have been immeasurably and positively impacted by the support they receive as a result of the NDIS. I often say that, when the right support is delivered at the right time by the right provider, it does more than change lives; it sustains them. That impact extends not only to the person receiving the support but also to their families. To that extent, I'd like to acknowledge a good mate of mine, Connor Bryant from Toormina.

I first met Connor five or six years ago, when he came to one of my mobile offices in Sawtell. Connor is a participant in the NDIS and, at the time, he was experiencing difficulties with funding and access to the scheme. We worked together over a period of time to resolve those issues that were preventing Connor from having access to quality of life. To Connor's credit, he didn't just leave it at that. He didn't want others on the scheme to flounder and not have the care or services that they needed. So, since that time, Connor has been a strong advocate for participants on the Mid North Coast. He meets regularly with support coordinators and support workers to identify and advocate on the individual and unique challenges they face daily. He is now also the chairman of the Coffs Harbour city council Disability Inclusion and Access Advisory Committee, where he has made a huge impact for the disabled community. Connor, good work, mate, and thank you.

The potential for this scheme to do good cannot be overstated. But, unfortunately, in its current condition, the potential for the scheme to be overrun by negative forces is equally as great. It's no secret that the NDIS, as it stands, is not sustainable, a fact that this government finally has openly admitted, despite their, at times, bizarre protestations of the facts before taking the reins. One former Labor minister for the NDIS is famously quoted as saying: 'You can't move around the corridors of parliament in Canberra without tripping over a coalition minister whispering the scheme is unsustainable. I'm here to tell you today that is a lie. The scheme is only threatened in its survival by the incompetent management of the current government. The money is there. The problem is it's not being spent on the right priorities.'

It's interesting to see that those pigeons have now come home to roost as we see the worst budget blowouts in the scheme in its history under Labor. In 2023, the government announced a target growth rate for the NDIS of eight per cent and was unable to achieve it. In January 2026, the Prime Minister announced a new target growth rate for the NDIS of five to six per cent, which the government again failed to meet. In April 2026, the health minister announced yet another new annual target growth rate for the NDIS of two per cent over the next four years, despite the government's ongoing inability to meet any of their previously announced target growth rates. Originally estimated to cost $13.6 billion, the cost of this year's is closer to $50 billion, and it's projected to blow out to $70 billion by the end of the decade if we continue along the same track.

Everyone in this place acknowledges that we cannot let this occur. We cannot stand by and see this vital initiative hurtle even closer to the budgetary cliff. We, as government representatives, must redirect the train back onto the tracks to arrive at the destination it was originally intended to reach, with as few unintended casualties as physically possible—and with no unwelcome passengers.

With that in mind, I'll run through the areas of this bill that we agree with. We agree that the NDIS must be made sustainable immediately to safeguard it for generations to come. We agree that the system is currently rife with fraudulent claims and bad actors. We agree that a new eligibility framework is required to ensure that the right level of funding is provided to those who need it. We agree that the current process for unscheduled assessments needs to be refined to avoid rampant misuse by bad actors posing as providers. We agree that funding should be provided only for the impairment for which an individual is accessing the NDIS. We agree that a tighter plan renewal process will assist with the redistribution of unspent funds to those in need. We agree that records must be kept by both the provider and the participant for the services that are being claimed. This change is vital to assist in fraud identification. The 90-day claim period will also assist with this. And we agree that imposing mandatory registration requirements for providers delivering supports to participants who are most at risk of abuse or exploitation is a critical step in stamping out bad actors within the system and protecting vulnerable recipients and their families.

But we do hold concerns with many elements of this bill. Firstly, and most predominantly, we don't believe that this bill goes far enough to acknowledge and stamp out fraud and remove bad actors. It is concerning that both the government and the National Disability Insurance Agency have been unable to quantify the scale of fraud currently suspected in the system or, at least, unwilling to publicly disclose this information—though it's interesting that the NDIA Fraud Fusion Taskforce estimates that up to 10 per cent of all NDIS claims are inappropriate, mischievous or outright criminal. When you look at 10 per cent of $70 billion, that's a $7 billion hole of taxpayer money.

It's a depressing fact that, for every positive success story my office receives, we get two that are negative. These range from evidence of rampant overcharging for disability aid installations to stories of unregistered carers charging extraordinary fees to the system for social services—when they are, in fact, not providing any services at all. Then there are the reports of carers taking clients on extended cruise holidays. If I ever hear one more of those stories, it will be too soon.

In regional areas, there's another side of the story, the side that employers looking for staff are telling me every week—that the NDIS is currently the largest snatcher of care industry employees that the regions have ever seen. Nursing, childcare and aged-care employers are all scrambling to find staff as previously loyal employees leave the industry in droves. And why wouldn't they? They can earn twice as much while working half as much, and that's not right. It needs to be addressed immediately with fee caps on individual services. But this bill bizarrely avoids touching this at all. Riley Schafer-Wilson, a director and co-founder of a regional NDIS provider, eloquently put it this way in his submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee: 'This bill attempts to improve sustainability primarily through participant-level restriction while leaving major internal NDIA dysfunction insufficiently resolved. Working across provider operations, regional delivery, carer systems, psychosocial complexity, workforce realities and review pathways, I'm concerned the downstream implementation impacts of this bill are being underestimated. The current system already creates significant administrative burden, workforce strain, review escalation, participation confusion and provider instability.' His concerns are extremely valid.

Only recently we have seen these exact issues play out in the aged-care sector, after the disastrous implementation of untested and ill communicated changes last November. My office has been flooded with urgent requests for help due to these system failures. There are waitlists of over a year for assessments, algorithms that are inflexible and without recourse for amendment and clients in need literally dying before being able to access the necessary levels of care that they are entitled to. In reading portions of the bill, I could predict its future, based on these exact events playing out in real time across our current home-care packages.

In looking for solutions, I found Riley's submission contained many of them for communities like mine in the electorate of Cowper, and I hope that the government will listen to them. They are: (1) do not proceed with the tightened permanence or 'all appropriate treatment' requirements unless bodily autonomy, informed consent and the right to refuse unsafe or inappropriate treatment are clearly protected in the legislation; (2) require assessments to consider evidence from treating professionals, providers, support coordinators, carers and people with direct knowledge of the participants' functioning; (3) do not remove participant choice over support coordination or plan management without strong safeguards for continuity, independence, regional access and conflict management; (4) do not include planned suspension, revocation, automated debt creation, expanded compliance burdens or reduced claim windows without strong review rights, disability adjusted communication requirements and human oversight; (5) publicly report on the outcomes and savings already created by the October 2024 support definition changes and later fraud reforms before introducing further participant level restrictions—this should also include clearer reporting on NDIA delay, complaints, internal review burden, ART legal costs, payment delays, overturned or conceded decisions and downstream administration harm; (6) assess workforce impact, provider viability, thin markets, allied health shortages and participant access barriers in regional communities before implementation; (7) independently assess downstream impacts on hospitals, housing, mental health systems, unpaid carers, workforce participation and regional economies; (8) do not remove children from the NDIS unless alternative systems are already funded, operational, and accessible in practice; (9) require evidence based justification and consultation for price changes and assistive technology or home modification restrictions; and (10) consult directly with disabled people, carers, providers, workers, regional communities and frontline disability services before implementing reform of this scale.

While I wholeheartedly agree with the intentions held within this bill, I do not believe that the bill in its current form is the right way forward, and I hope that these concerns will be effectively addressed. As I said in my introduction, when the right support is delivered at the right time by the right provider, it does more than change lives; it sustains them. These recipients deserve a bill that protects that, and the Australian taxpayer deserves a bill that protects their investment.

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