Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one of the most important social programs in Australia's history. Across this country, it has changed lives in ways that go well beyond funding packages and support plans. It has given people with disability genuine agency and delivers on the promise that it was built on, that Australians with a permanent and significant disability would have access to the supports they need when they need them on terms that respect their own choices. We must ensure that we keep that promise.

In my electorate of Wentworth, I hear about these impacts directly. Many participants and their family members share with me how the NDIS programs have helped them participate in and contribute to the community in ways they previously didn't think possible. Just the other day in my electorate office, I met a family who have a non-verbal autistic son around the age of 13. I talked to them about the NDIS and the challenges that they found with the NDIS. We were working through some of the problems and I said, 'What did you do before the NDIS?' They said that they could barely cope. For all its faults, the NDIS has had a transformational impact on the lives of their child and on their own lives. This is why it is so important, but we cannot ignore the trajectory of the scheme and the problems with it.

The NDIS is now supporting almost 760,000 Australians, and annual expenditure is growing at a rate that, if left unaddressed, would threaten the long-term sustainability of the scheme itself. This is not just a problem for the budget. This is a problem for every person, every family member and every friend of someone who has a significant disability and is currently receiving support from the NDIS or may in the future. If we don't get this right, I don't believe those supports will be there in the future.

The program was originally modelled to cost $13.6 billion a year, or $20 billion in today's dollars, supporting just over half a million people. The Productivity Commission modelling from 2011 estimated that annual cost growth would sit between three and six per cent. Instead, between 2020 and 2024, costs grew on average 24 per cent per year. The program is now projected to cost around $58 billion a year by 2028, with an estimated 900,000 participants expected to be on the scheme by 2030 if no other changes are made.

I want to be honest about this because I think the disability community deserves honesty more than it deserves platitudes. We have an enormous challenge here with this program. I think one of the most profound aspects of this challenge is that, when this program was introduced, it became—and other people have used this expression—the only lifeboat in the ocean because many other services that others relied on were withdrawn. So the only option to get real support was from the NDIS. That is the world that we're in now, and that world is not sustainable nor suitable, so we need significant reform. That is why I approach this bill in good faith. However, alongside that good faith, I hold significant concerns about how some of the measures have been designed and how they will be implemented. My greatest fear of what the government is putting forward is that they're just not going to be able to provide the services on the timeline that they have outlined in these bills and people who really rely on these services are going to be left waiting.

This bill contains five schedules covering access and planning measures, fraud and integrity, governance, new framework planning operationalisation, and transitional provisions. I'm genuinely pleased to see that some of the reforms draw on the 2023 NDIS review and Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, among other reviews. These were hard-won findings from processes that listened deeply to the disability community, and it matters that they have informed this legislation. However, I do note that not all recommendations from these reviews have been incorporated, and I will return to some of those gaps.

I'm especially supportive of the integrity measures in schedule 2. Fraud is real. Major operations have uncovered scam schemes worth millions of dollars—money that is not going to support the people who rely on it most—and it undermines the entire NDIS scheme as it is. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has reported a sharp uptick in fraud referrals in recent years. This fraud diverts resources away from the people who deserve the support, undermining the integrity of the scheme at its core. I frequently hear from NDIS participants, providers and disability sector workers who have seen the fraud firsthand and are deeply concerned about its impact. New civil enforcement powers, tighter provider registration requirements and greater payment visibility through digital payment systems are welcome. I would encourage the government to also adopt the self-direction registration category recommended by the 2024 NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce, which would maintain pathways to greater participant choice within the expanded registration framework.

On pricing and governance in schedule 3, I understand the rationale for giving the minister binding pricing determination powers. If used judiciously, these can help address market distortions and ensure value for money. But I want to be clear: my expectation is that these powers will be used with genuine consultation, not as just a blunt instrument.

Let me now talk to where I believe the bill falls short, or risks falling short, in implementation. My largest concern underpins the rest—that the supports meant to exist outside the NDIS are not ready. As the Grattan Institute's Sam Bennett noted this week:

The success of a slimmed-down scheme will depend on the availability of high-quality alternative services for those who no longer qualify for the NDIS.

The federal government has set aside approximately $5 billion for foundational supports. While we know that $2 billion of this will go towards Thriving Kids, no information has been provided yet about which other services will be commissioned.

Thriving Kids is due to be stood up in its first stage at the end of this year, but we have not yet seen it in practice. Families across my electorate and disability community organisations around the country are understandably anxious about what could happen to children who may find themselves removed from the NDIS scheme before any alternative pathways are properly operational. I have heard similar concerns from others in the community that they do not have the certainty about the supports provided to participants with psychosocial disabilities, who expect to be deemed ineligible under these changes.

States and territories have responded tentatively to proposals about supports available external to the scheme, and that tentativeness creates real risk and enormous anxiety. If we narrow access before the alternative systems are ready, we will not be saving the scheme; we will simply be abandoning people. The sequencing of reform must be rigorous. Change must not run ahead of infrastructure designed to catch those it transitions out. This includes ensuring that families are informed about what new pathways will look like.

In a community survey I recently ran on the proposed changes, respondents shared these concerns, with one saying:

The QLD government hasn't yet agreed to Thriving Kids, Foundational Supports programs don't yet exist and public health services, especially mental health services, are already struggling to meet demand.

Another shared:

More information on the Thriving Kids initiative needs to be shared, and sooner. Any changes to publicly funded community health services need to be announced (and I hope that there are some!)

There's this anxiety, and people just don't know what will be there.

My second significant concern is about the automated decision-making in schedule 3. I understand it is important to be efficient in these services. Honestly, that's feedback I get consistently—that working within the NDIS and dealing with the NDIS is a bureaucratic maze, and it should be more efficient. But we do not yet know if automated systems alone can adequately address the complexity and individuality of disability. The bill authorises automated decision-making with safeguards, but those safeguards need to be legislated clearly, not left to administrative practice. There need to be clear frameworks and guidelines about how such decision-making will be completed such that the government and decisions can be held accountable. Many constituents have shared with me their real concerns about this element of the legislation—that it could be a repeat of robodebt, that machine decision-making could ultimately lead to negative outcomes for NDIS participants. I am supportive of the member for Curtin's amendment, which raises these concerns.

Third, my community have shared their anxieties with me about various new eligibility and assessment requirements, including the requirement that participants undergo all relevant treatments technically available before accessing the scheme. While I understand that exceptions are made within reasonable terms—such as someone who has hearing loss not being required to have a cochlear implant if they don't wish to—I hold concerns that not all the treatments are accessible to individuals, whether they be prohibitive by price or location or whether they are appropriate at all.

Fourth, I raise the planned reductions to social and community participation and capacity-building supports. I understand the expenditure within these programs has risen significantly and that standardising average cuts is one of the easiest ways to reduce costs. However, applying an average reduction to this category of support across the board may not be the best solution. We know that some participants, especially those with intellectual disabilities, heavily rely on capacity-building supports to ensure they can leave the house and participate in society. Approaching these reductions in more individualised ways should be considered. We must be cautious to ensure that these cuts do not undermine the key objective of the scheme—for people with a disability to participate in normal life.

Finally, as many of my crossbench colleagues have shared, there's the consultation timeline. Ten days for the disability community to respond to 109 pages of complex legislation affecting 760,000 Australians is not genuine engagement. I understand the government faces real pressures, but rushed process erodes trust at exactly the moment when trust is what this reform requires.

The NDIS is hugely important. I support the NDIS and the community it in turn empowers. I will continue to fight for its future, its sustainability and its ability to achieve the core objectives for Australians and their families. It is clear that a major redesign of the NDIS is warranted. The growth trajectory is real, the urgency of reform is real and the experiences of people engaging with the scheme and the challenges they face with the scheme are real. I strongly believe that. The design challenges the government is seeking to address—in abuse of the NDIS, in fraud, in eligibility, in planning, in market stewardship, in foundational supports, I do believe, on balance, are mostly the right ones. But this bill requires a huge degree of trust from the disability community—trust that the functional capacity tool will be fair, trust that automated systems will not produce outcomes that would never have survived individualised scrutiny, trust that the states will step up with foundational supports, trust that the instruments and rules—many of which have not been released—will be developed with the community, not imposed upon it. That is a huge degree of trust for the government to ask for.

This reform must also not be the end. There were lots of concerns shared with me in my community surveys which will not be addressed in this stage of reforms. There must be more steps to ensure the integrity, that fraud is countered effectively and that the level of supports provided to participants is proportionate. I support the principles of these reforms. I believe that they are necessary to secure the NDIS for the future. But I do think that the government is being heroic in its assumptions about what it can get done by when. It is absolutely critical for the government now to deliver on what it has promised to the community. I will look most carefully at the rollout of its implementation. I'll be listening to my community and ensuring that the legislation has achieved what it set out to do, because there are 760,000 Australians and family members who rely on this scheme, and they deserve nothing less from this parliament.

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