Alison Byrnes (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It does indeed! I rise today in support of the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Labor created the NDIS. This was nation-building reform. It was essential for the community, and it had strong community support. We are incredibly proud of the NDIS and its intentions, and we are determined to secure its future and cement the community support that people with disability deserve. I have a long history of advocating hard for the rights of people with disability in our community for over three decades and ensuring that they have a voice at the very highest levels. I've seen what happens when that support is not adequate or is not properly targeted, and I know how important it is for this to be right.

The NDIS is an essential part of Australia's support system for people with permanent and significant disability, and it is another global example set by Labor governments. It exists to help participants live with dignity, with choice and with independence, and that commitment remains unchanged. However, we need to strengthen the scheme so it keeps working well into the future. If we do nothing, NDIS spending is expected to blow out by $13 billion over the next four years. What this will mean in the long term is that the NDIS will lose community support and confidence, and it just won't be there for future generations. This is not an outcome that we will accept. The NDIS is far too important and has far too profound an impact on the lives of those who need it.

This bill aims to return the NDIS to its original intent: supporting people with permanent and significant disability and securing it for future generations. In the Illawarra, we are so very fortunate to have a strong disability sector with many passionate advocates who I engage with regularly, particularly through the Illawarra Disability Alliance, through occupational therapists and physiotherapists, as well as a range of individual providers. I have listened when providers have raised concerns with me, and I have ensured that these local, experienced voices are heard by the relevant policymakers. I have facilitated a number of roundtable discussions between those experienced advocates, the Minister for the NDIS and the NDIA, and I thank all of the parties for their engagement in good faith during these discussions. I want to make sure that local, experienced and dedicated advocates can convey advice on our region's experiences as we work through these important reforms, and I will continue to do so. Like me, the Illawarra Disability Alliance member providers are passionate advocates for people with disability. They have hundreds of years of experience caring for people in our community between them and a strong reputation for providing quality care.

As the Minister for Disability and the NDIS said, the NDIS is a statement of our national values and a source of pride for so many in our community, including me. It is the most comprehensive support package for people with disability in the world. The vulnerabilities that we have seen in the system through shonky providers and the many stories I hear of people who can't get the support they need undermine the scheme as a whole. They call for urgent and comprehensive action. It is simply horrifying to think that bad actors and organised crime have targeted vulnerable people accessing the NDIS. Scammers are seeing opportunity in those who can least afford to lose out. Participants are doing absolutely everything right and being taken advantage of. It has to stop because not only is it leading to poor outcomes for the innocent individuals that are being targeted; it is also demonstrating a low level of care and it is undermining the community's support. When six in 10 people say that this crucial program is broken, something must be done.

The reforms in this bill are focused on four key areas: stopping fraud and rorts, slowing unsustainable cost growth, making eligibility decisions clearer and fairer, and improving the quality and safety of services for participants. The independent review into the NDIS, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability and the original Productivity Commission report were all informed by extensive consultation with the disability community and sector. Our reforms are building on the recommendations of these reports to create a stronger and more secure NDIS.

The 2023 NDIS review recommended 'a fairer and more consistent participant pathway', including the introduction of 'a more consistent and robust approach to determining eligibility for access to the NDIS based on transparent methods for assessing functional capacity'. That's what this bill aims to achieve. The review found that the eligibility process was inconsistent and unfair. Under the changes, we will establish a technical advisory group, agreed with the states and territories, to define 'functional capacity' and advise on the thresholds for how we assess a person's ability to do everyday tasks. It will clarify permanence and eligibility requirements where someone is or could be accessing supports from other service systems. People with the greatest need will keep getting the critical supports they need to live well and with dignity.

We will work with people with disability, families and experts to make NDIS decisions clearer and more consistent. This includes using evidence based approaches that look at a person's functional needs and not just a diagnosis, and providing clearer guidance about what supports are considered reasonable and necessary. What we expect is that, over time, people with a high capacity to undertake everyday tasks, people with treatable conditions or people who might be getting support from other systems will be supported to find other more suitable services. Essential supports for daily living, personal care and safety remain the priority.

It is important to understand that none of this will happen until January 2028, when we have had time to consult and to gather advice from the technical advisory group and the states and territories. This will give us the time to ensure that those who might no longer be eligible for the NDIS are properly supported. I do want to stress that, under this plan, funding for the NDIS will grow every year. It will still be the largest social program in Australia outside of the age pension and the centre of the most comprehensive suite of supports for people with disability in the world.

The fact is that rules around 'reasonable and necessary' supports have been unclear and have led to a steady expansion of what the NDIS pays for. The volume of NDIS funded supports doesn't align with other parts of the care economy and risks undermining public confidence in the scheme, as well as blowing out costs. The changes in this bill more clearly require supports to be directly related to eligible impairments and amends the definition of reasonable and necessary supports.

We want to help people with disability to genuinely participate in the community, but the community participation supports are simply not delivering in the way they should. The quality supports that were there before the NDIS was introduced have withered away, leaving the NDIS to fill the gaps. These programs are not delivering connection, and they don't show respect and dignity to participants and are creating safety risks to already vulnerable individuals. It is expensive, it is not working and it is eroding the public's confidence. The cost of this stream has tripled in the last five years to $12 billion, about the same in net terms as the PBS.

The first recommendation of the NDIS review was to 'invest in foundational supports to bring fairness, balance and sustainability to the ecosystem supporting people with disability'. So we will invest in community based options so people can access the right supports, including outside the NDIS where appropriate. We've made a $6 billion commitment through National Cabinet to get the right foundational supports outside the scheme, and we're delivering a $200 million Inclusive Communities Fund to help community organisations deliver meaningful participation opportunities. It will be open to mainstream and disability organisations with details to be settled in consultation with the disability community. These changes are on top of our $4 billion joint investment in Thriving Kids, which will begin rolling out in October. We'll keep working closely with state and territory governments to develop a threshold and process for determining who should fall under the Thriving Kids program to ensure impacted children get the support that they need.

Crucially, this bill will crack down on the absolutely unconscionable fraud that is rife throughout the scheme. It is absolutely appalling and horrifying to know that organised crime and people looking to rort the system have targeted a scheme like the NDIS. It's worse than appalling, and it must be stopped. There are legitimate reasons for some providers not to require registration. I understand there are some industries like physiotherapy and occupational therapy, for example, that are already very heavily regulated by their own bodies. But these circumstances are limited to those with established and respected bodies of oversight. If you're providing services to vulnerable people, particularly behind closed doors, you must be regulated to reduce risk to those participants.

Under this bill, all providers of high risk NDIS supports like personal care and daily living support will need to be registered. Participants deserve to have confidence that the organisations they have chosen can actually deliver the support that they need. It will also help the government to keep participants safe from harm and exploitation. We should not be seeing abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence from providers who are being paid to deliver dignity and care to vulnerable people. Greater oversight means the NDIS commission can act swiftly to remove providers doing the wrong thing and will lift the overall quality of the market. There will also be new evidence thresholds for all claims, and we will directly commission providers to deliver a new support coordination and connection service. This will mean participants won't have to pay for this out of their budgets. It will provide the government with oversight and control of service quality and deliver a more efficient service.

This bill will give the NDIA the necessary powers to provide stronger safeguards for participants and improve the integrity of the scheme overall. First of their kind protections will be established when regulatory action is taken, and the changes will ensure evidence provided by participants can be used as part of investigations. People with disability deserve to be protected against bad actors in the strongest terms.

One of the last parts of the changes of this bill that I want to touch on is the shift from the NDIA as decision-makers on pricing to the Minister for Disability and the NDIS. The outcry and upset that I have heard from my local providers on the unaccountable way the NDIA made the last round of pricing decisions was simply unacceptable. It wasn't transparent. Providers were not meaningfully consulted, and the NDIA has not been open enough about explaining these decisions. I strongly believe that the government should ultimately be responsible for decisions like this. That's what we are elected for, and the public will hold us accountable for these decisions, regardless of whether they were made by the minister, as they should.

Finally, I understand that when change is proposed it can be incredibly scary for NDIS participants and their families. We need to ensure that they are consulted, that they are understood and that they are brought on this journey with us. These are people who have had a tough enough time, and I don't want to see these changes bringing more hurt, confusion and anxiety into their lives unnecessarily. What I have seen over the past decade, though, has often been inhumane—people with profound disability having to fight the NDIA too hard to get a good outcome. We must make this easier for the people who depend on it. We must ensure that the NDIA acts with empathy and treats participants with respect, and that processes are clear, defined and efficient.

The agency must work with our good-quality providers to make the system the very best it can be. My office has represented hundreds of people fighting to get good outcomes. It has been frustrating and time-consuming, and it is quite often distressing—and not just for participants but for my staff and I as well. By the time participants come to my office, they have fought, sometimes, for months, and they are at their wit's end and they are distressed. My staff and I care deeply about our community, and having to fight so hard because processes are not clear, defined or efficient is just not right. It's my staff and I who are on the phone or face-to-face with these participants in distress while we work to get them support through a system that should be much more manageable and efficient for everyone.

As a government, we must make this better. We must make sure guidelines and processes are clear, defined and efficient. But this must be combined with empathy and respect. I give my absolute commitment that I will work to have our local voices heard and to ensure concerns from people in our community are conveyed at the highest level. I will fight hard to ensure we get this right, and I truly believe the only way we can, and will, do this is by working with quality providers and with our community, with the expertise and experience in and around this system.

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