Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I want to commend the member for Clark for bringing Clare's voice to Canberra. I echo his sentiment, and I let Clare know that we are listening and we have heard that, so thank you. We have an important role to speak, as members of parliament, but the most powerful role we can play, particularly in this conversation, is in bringing the voices of participants and those involved. So thank you, Member for Clark, and please let Clare know that people have listened.

This is an important conversation that we are having. We need to get this right. Last month, the Minister for Health and Ageing dropped a bombshell on every single person who relies on the NDIS during a speech at the Press Club. He announced that every person with a disability who receives support through the NDIS would face being reassessed to get vital and often life-saving supports. Since that announcement and that bombshell, my office and, I know, every office across our community has been inundated with calls and emails from distressed locals and their support workers, uncertain of what the future holds.

In my electorate of Casey, there are 5,459 individuals who rely on the NDIS, and that's just the individual participants. Beyond that number are their families, their communities, their loved ones, their support networks. These changes will impact tens of thousands in my community and millions of Australians all across the country, which is why it's so important that we get it right. As I stand here today and speak on this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, I want those Australians to know that I hear their concerns loud and clear.

For Australians navigating significant and permanent disability, the NDIS is much more than a safety net. It is the bridge between isolation and community. It brings independence, the ability to work and the supports to thrive and live a life of dignity rather than limitation. For families and loved ones, it gives them a support network and it gives them hope and certainty for the future. For so many families, the NDIS is a lifeline. It provides people with disabilities and their families with hope, structure, support and guidance. In some cases, the support of the NDIS is what holds families together. At the moment, too many of these families feel like that hope is slipping away. They've seen their supports reduced and their funding cut. What is just a line item in the budget in Canberra is the difference between hope and despair for the families impacted. We need to remember that behind every number and every budget saving the government talks about, we are talking about people.

We are talking about people like Jackson in my electorate of Casey. For Jackson, the NDIS has changed his life and changed his family's life. It's provided him with the supports that allow him to work and get back into our community, and that give his parents the support they need and the break that they need. I had the opportunity to meet with Jackson's parents and hear firsthand from them about Jackson's story. When I first met with them—I've engaged with them quite a lot—they brought a photo of Jackson to make sure that I knew there was a person behind the conversation, because Jackson wasn't able to attend. Then they invited me to, and I had the honour of attending, Jackson's work to see him working with his carer, and to meet Jackson and talk to him about the football that he plays at the Montrose football club in the all abilities team and really see firsthand the life that Jackson is building and how important it is to him and his family, and that is because of the NDIS.

We need to make sure that people like Jackson can get the support that they need, and part of that, clearly, is making sure that the NDIS is sustainable. It's clear that the status quo isn't working. Fraud and rorting have infiltrated the scheme, and it's broken. The NDIS was intended to be a participant-friendly system, yet I continue to hear from families within our community that they are struggling to navigate the system and are living in fear of funding cuts and what that means to their loved ones.

I want to share the story of a family in the upper Yarra who reached out to my office this week. This is a single-parent family already experiencing severe financial and social hardship. They are currently living without permanent secure housing. This family relies on the NDIS support for their son and recently applied for a review, given the son's escalating aggressive behaviours and difficulty attending a mainstream school. Not only were they unsuccessful in getting further support; the NDIS reduced the supports the family already had, severely reducing the son's plan at the time they needed it most. This included the removal of support coordination and reductions in behaviour support, including spreading funding that was initially intended for a 12-month period over a three-year period, as well as almost halving the therapy supports available. Despite clear risks, these critical supports have been cut at a time of worsening behaviours and financial distress for the family.

There are a lot of people right now who are exceptionally worried about whether they themselves or their child, family member or loved one will still be eligible for support through the NDIS. The answer isn't clear, and where do they go? Our state health systems are already at capacity, and people are being turned away from daily services. We have a situation where NDIS participants are too scared to ask for a plan to be reviewed for fear that it will be cut, like the family that I just spoke about—and this from a prime minister who said that no-one would be left behind. At the moment, those on the NDIS are feeling left behind and forgotten by this prime minister. Let's chalk that up as another example of the Prime Minister saying one thing before an election and delivering another after it.

There is no doubt that the NDIS has rapidly grown since its establishment. Originally intended to support around 410,000 Australians, the NDIS now supports 760,000 participants, and the number continues to grow. Originally estimated to cost $13.6 billion, the NDIS now costs around $50 billion, and this is expected to reach $70 billion by the end of the decade. Clearly, this isn't sustainable and changes are needed; however, how the changes happen also matter. The fact is that one of the reasons this is the first piece of legislation the government introduced after the budget is that they need to rush this through the parliament so they can start to bank the savings that they've already spent in other areas of their budget.

This is now the Albanese government's third attempt to slow the growth of the scheme. They set a target of eight per cent in 2023. In January this year, that was reduced to five to six per cent. In April this year it was revised down again to two per cent. Right now, growth in the NDIS is sitting at 10.3 per cent, meaning this government is failing on every metric. They've banked savings previously that they've failed to hit, and they've banked more savings into the future. That's what makes those on the system so nervous right now.

Without a clear implementation strategy, policy guidelines and consultation with the disability community to get these significant changes right, the government's growth targets will be nothing more than an aspirational target to fix their bottom line and there will be significant damage done to those on the system as they rush to get this number banked. As I said, the government has already banked the number. They've spent the savings from the NDIS in this budget. While the NDIS has to be sustainable and spending needs to be reduced, this cannot be because the government and this Treasurer cannot manage the budget. This Prime Minister cannot punish those on the NDIS and their families because of his failures and his Treasurer's failures.

Labor's bill makes a number of changes to the scheme. The bill will restrict a person's ability to ask for an unscheduled reassessment of their plan. It will establish a framework to assess a person's eligibility for full support through the NDIS. Until now, eligibility has been based primarily on a person's diagnosis. This bill will change that to be based on a person's reduced functional capacity as a result of the diagnosis. This bill establishes the legislative mechanism to change the way a person is assessed but provides no detail of what that new assessment will look like. This hasn't been developed yet. This in and of itself has caused a level of fear and anxiety amongst the community.

As the shadow treasurer would know, this government is big on making announcements but providing no detail. Whether it is the NDIS, capital gains or negative gearing—so many things about this government are big headlines with no detail and more damage done. But when it's impacting people on the NDIS—

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