Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, a very important bill for the future of our country and a very important bill amending a landmark piece of legislation that, yes, came out of the Gillard government. But I think it's fair to say that it has lost its way over the last 13 years. I want to acknowledge the speech that I heard just then from the member for Mallee and the speech that was given by the member for Herbert on his very personal position on this and his personal reflections. It's one thing to get up and read from your party's talking points. It's another thing to actually have a firsthand experience of what the NDIS means to one's own family.

Like the member for Herbert, I have a child who is on the NDIS—my youngest daughter, Sarah, who's now 23. We were told that she wouldn't survive my wife's pregnancy and, if she survived the pregnancy, she wouldn't survive the birth. Twenty-three years later, she's still with us. She just picked up her assistance dog yesterday, so she's a happy camper. But for the NDIS, I know Sarah's life would be very, very different. When Sarah was growing up, when she was a young kid, I was invited to go onto the board and become the President of the Sunshine Coast Children's Therapy Centre, which she used to attend as a young child. The member for Herbert, in his speech, picked up on the importance of early access and early intervention, and he's absolutely right. The earlier we can get on and help people, the better.

Sarah's physical disabilities were obviously picked up way before she was born, but they didn't actually pick up that Sarah had autism until she was 16, because—as you know as a famous paediatrician, Mr Deputy Speaker—girls are able to mask their autism so much better than boys. They do a lot a lot of things that are better than boys, but one of them is being able to mask those things. We do to be able to get in and pick up autism more quickly, particularly with young girls. Whilst, in my own case—in Sarah's case—we were able to get all of the physical supports around Sarah with her physical disabilities, we weren't really able to throw much support around her from an autism perspective until she was about 16. That creates problems in itself.

Having been in the parliament for 10 years, I can tell you that, certainly, since this government has been in power, the NDIS is the No. 1 issue of complaints that I receive from constituents. I receive them from mums and dads, I receive them from participants themselves, I receive them from the service providers, and I receive them from people who are alerting me to fraud. There are lots of problems with the NDIS, and it seems to me, not just having been the federal member but also having been a dad and someone who has worked in this sector as a volunteer, that a lot of the money that is paid out under the NDIS goes to people who are less deserving and not a lot of money goes to the people who really need it most. That is a cause of great concern to me.

We have some fundamental, systemic problems with the system that provide funding to people who don't need a lot of support. I was listening to the member for Herbert talking about a friend of his who has to demonstrate that he hasn't grown a leg back every 12 months. I mean, come on. This is not rocket science. How much does that cost the system? When the NDIS was first dreamt up, when it was first envisaged, we as a nation and we as a parliament thought, at maturity, there would be 400,000 people on the scheme. There are now 760,000 people on the scheme.

We spend as much money today on the NDIS as we do on the defence of this nation—$50 billion a year. That's on 760,000 people. We spend more money on the NDIS than we do on 27 million people for Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme combined. If anybody can tell me how that is a system that is working well, I'm all ears.

I'm loath to give a political speech on this issue because this is an issue that really transcends politics. I've been listening to some of the contributions made by those opposite, and, if you listen to them, all of the problems with the NDIS started in 2013, and all of the problems were on the path to being resolved in 2022.

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