Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

On the NDIS, I will talk about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, but what I think is very important about the bill and the amendment is the human stories behind them. I recently received a letter from parents in my electorate which I would like to share with the chamber and put onto Hansard. Here are the words of Andrea and Jason, and their son Lachlan:

We are writing to express our deep concern about the removal/reduction of community access supports for our disabled son.

Our son Lachlan Rowney, is a 24 year old young man with a severe intellectual disability (mental capacity of a 4 year old in a 24 year olds body) along with ASD level 3, severe anxiety (medicated) and Epilepsy—grand mal (medicated).

Under the proposed changes, our son who is a participant for 'whom the Scheme was originally intended' (profound disability) will lose the current flexibility of his NDIS Plan. Due to fatigue heat and anxiety triggering his seizures, he attends group day programs 3 times a week. He stays in the centre if there is an excursion because group outings cause major distressed which can lead to meltdowns (where he can lash out or throw himself on the ground) and seizures (which require immediate medical attention from ambulance/hospital).

Lachlan accesses the community 2 days a week doing things he likes for example the gym or swimming using 1:1 support for programs designed by therapists to maintain his health. Due to Lachlan's severe disability he is unable to dress himself, toilet himself, catch public transport, cook meals or access community programs on his own so needs the 1:1 support to do these activities, us as normal people take for granted. The freedom to choose his weekly schedule is under threat. His family work 5-6 days a week and cannot replace paid support. Through community access, our son is able to participate in everyday life, build confidence, reduce stress, maintain social connections, and engage in activities that support his emotional and physical wellbeing. Without it, his world becomes smaller, more isolated, and far less meaningful.

People with disabilities deserve the same opportunities as everyone else to be included in their communities. Removing this support sends the message that their participation and inclusion are not important. Families already carry enormous emotional, physical, and financial responsibilities, and cuts to these services place even more pressure on carers and loved ones.

Community access is not a luxury—it is an essential part of his wellbeing, independence, mental health, and quality of life. Taking this support away isolates vulnerable people from society and removes opportunities that many of us take for granted every day. The look on our sons face when he goes swimming is priceless, due to the strength of a lot of the medication that he must take, it impacts his weight, by attending the gym and swimming it is helping him maintain a relatively healthy weight

I ask you to advocate strongly against any cuts or restrictions to community access funding and to support policies that protect the rights, inclusion, and wellbeing of people with disabilities.

My son deserves the chance to live a full and connected life, not one limited by isolation.

Andrea and Jason

That is the human impact of this debate. It's not a line item in a budget paper. It's not a bureaucratic category. This is not some abstract discussion about scheme design. This is Lachlan's life. It is his parents life. This is a 24-year-old man with a profound disability—one that the scheme was designed for—severe anxiety, epilepsy and the mental ability of a four-year-old. This family is doing everything they can to give their son dignity, structure, health, connection and joy.

How can this government look at Lachlan and his family and tell them community access is a luxury? How can the government look at Andrea and Jason, who already carry the physical, emotional and financial burden of care, and tell them that the answer is less flexibility and a smaller life for their son. The NDIS was created for Australians like Lachlan and their Australian families. It was created for people with permanent and significant disabilities. It was created so that families would not be left alone. It was created so that people with disabilities could live with dignity, safety and inclusion, and this is why the government must get this right.

Yes, the NDIS must be sustainable. Yes, the rorting must stop. Yes, bad providers, inflated invoices, fake services and criminal exploitation must be driven out of the scheme. It's taken YouTube influencers—two guys with an iPhone—to expose this, when we have tens of thousands of bureaucrats working in and around the scheme who are not doing their jobs properly. Every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar not going to someone like Lachlan and his parents. Every dodgy provider who drains this system makes it harder for genuine participants and honest families. But the answer to provider rorting cannot be to make life harder for profoundly disabled people. The answer to fraud can't be to strip flexibility from families doing everything right and suffering from the largest, biggest disabilities. The answer to waste cannot be to isolate people like Lachlan from their community.

This community access is not a luxury. For Lachlan, swimming is not just swimming; it's health, it's routine, it's confidence, it's joy. It keeps his physical weight up. It's part of maintaining his physical wellbeing. One-on-one support isn't an optional extra; it allows him to do basic things safely that most Australians take for granted. Without that support, Lachlan's world becomes smaller. His parents know that. They see it every day. They live it, and they're asking parliament to understand it. The government says it wants to return the NDIS to its original intent, and we couldn't do more but agree. But Lachlan is the original intent. People with profound disability are the original intent. Families who cannot replace paid support because they're already working, caring, carrying the weight every day, are the original intent of this scheme.

So if this government is serious about reform, and we will support them in serious reform, let's start where the problem actually is. Let's go after the rorters. Let's go after providers billing for services they never deliver. Let's go after the criminals exploiting vulnerable participants or sometimes even phantom participants. Let's strengthen the enforcement, improve detection, register providers properly and make sure public money goes where it's meant to go. But let's not take away the support that keeps Lachlan and Australians like Lachlan healthy, safe and connected. Do not call inclusion a saving. Do not call isolation a reform. Do not pretend that removing flexibility from the most profoundly disabled Australians is the same as stopping the rorts or attacking people the scheme was never meant for.

The NDIS has grown into one of the largest areas of Commonwealth spending, growing eight to 12 per cent a year. The government has now booked major savings from this reform, but Australians are entitled to ask where those savings will come from: stopping fraud and provider exploitation or targeting participants who the scheme was never meant for. We hear statistics of one in five or one in six five- and six-year-old boys being on the scheme. Is this who this was targeted for? For learning disabilities? There's no sunset period for some of these children to be on it. But then we have someone who has the mental capacity of a four-year-old. He can't work. His family are working and are now panicked with anxiety that it's going to be taken away. The government needs to be looking in the right areas. The government must stop the fraud and provider exploitation without making families like the Rowneys fight harder for basic supports.

Yes, there's bipartisan support for these NDIS reforms. We strongly support those bipartisan reforms. But let's focus where the rorting is. It's amazing to me that two guys knocking on doors in Western Sydney, armed with nothing more than an iPhone camera, can expose more rorts than I have seen in four years of this government. Australians rightly ask what is going on. Australians with profoundly disabled family members, families who are working, families who are doing exactly what this scheme is intended for, deserve the answers to these questions.

This scheme was not intended to be rorted. It was not intended for one in five or one in six five- and six-year-old boys to be on this scheme. That's not what this scheme was intended for. They were put onto it with no sunset date. We should be looking at sunsetting kids. I was talking to a plumber on the weekend who was proudly talking about his ADHD. He reckons it makes him one of the best businessmen in the Sutherland Shire. Imagine if he, at six years old, was put on a scheme and told: 'You'll be on this for life. You won't amount to anything.' He's one of the most successful guys I have met running one of those businesses. It's fantastic. We need to be telling Australians they can do more, taking crutches away from people who don't need them and directing this scheme to people it was intended for.

The other thing that gives me pause is the implementation time. I congratulated the government when they announced the intent to reform the scheme the day after Minister Butler gave his speech at the Press Club. But I was disappointed to learn in the days after that that the implementation dates were set for 18 months. Well, 18 months happens to be just after a likely federal election. I also saw the timing of the announcement—a mere weeks away from the federal budget. In that budget, suddenly, in the forward estimates, the spending is revised down, and that has led people in my electorate to ask me questions: Was this done just to improve the budget papers? Why are we taking 18 months to actually start implementing reforms that get the budget back into shape? There are a lot of questions.

It's families like Lachlan's who have questions, with profound disabilities, who this scheme was intended for. It's people who are seeing two guys wandering around with an iPhone, meeting providers, seemingly uncovering fraud after fraud after fraud, rightly asking: what have the thousands of bureaucrats administering this scheme been doing? You almost don't need the bureaucrats. You could be armed with an AI program and get some AI agents to go through and look at these unusual expenses. The cleaners who are going there and pretending to clean, booking for hours and staying 30 minutes—the fraud seems so endemic it must stop. Instead, I'm getting this, and this is one of many emails; I thank Lachlan's family for allowing me to use their case and their names. There were a number of other emails we received, similar in tone but where the families did not want to have their names or their personal circumstances put on the record. Those people, similarly, deserve to be heard. They deserve a chance.

Eligibility has primarily until now been based on a person's diagnosis. The bill will change that to be based on a person's reduced functional capacity as a result of the diagnosis. There are a lot of people just like Lachlan who are exceptionally worried about themselves, their child or their family members, so we need to get these answers clear, and what we hear is that the Albanese government hasn't developed it yet. What worries me even more is that we hear they won't develop it for 18 months. On the other side of the election, who will be in those portfolios? Can we guarantee we'll have the same NDIS ministers? Will we have the same people in the health portfolios? What worries me about this is: Are we kicking the can down the road for political convenience? Did we announce these reforms mere weeks before a budget to lower the budget estimates? Who will be implementing these reforms? And why do we have to wait for the answers to these questions

On the unscheduled plan reassessments, this bill will restrict a person's ability to ask for unscheduled reassessments of their plans. The Albanese government has said around 12,000 unscheduled plan reassessments are taking place each month, most resulting in additional funding variations of 20 per cent. Right now, a participant or their support team, including the plan managers, can ask for a plan reassessment if they believe the person's needs have changed. Unfortunately, we're seeing this power misused by some bad actors who are just out to skim additional funds from participants, often for services never provided. The changes in this bill will restrict who can ask for plan reassessments to a person's plan nominee or their guardian—this is sensible—and these will only be considered where there has been a significant or ongoing change in a participant's functional capacity. This will ensure that a participant or their trusted nominees or guardians remain in control of their needs. That part of the reform Lachlan and his family will welcome. But we must not forget who the plan was intended for.

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