Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker, but the cap is bundled with $169.7 million to increase allied health provider fees to NDIS rates—the first significant fee increase in more than 20 years. If that isn't relevant and if veterans aren't relevant to a discussion in this place, then I don't know what is, with all due respect. Our veterans out there are hurting. Our veterans are part and parcel of the NDIS changes in the budget. If that's not being relevant to the bill before us, then quite frankly I don't know what is. Our veterans deserve more; our veterans deserve better. I know I say that with passion. I find it extraordinary that I'm corrected from the chair when the minister at the table, who is responsible for veterans, wasn't arcing up.

Veterans with acute or critical needs can apparently apply for funding above the cap, but the process for doing so has not yet been designed, and it leaves significant uncertainty for veterans. Those veterans who happen to be bundled up with the NDIS and with disability services are being left high and dry by this government, and that is perfectly relevant to the legislation before this House. If the coalition and the shadow minister for veterans affairs can't speak up for veterans affairs and if the veteran behind me—the member for Herbert, who has given more for this country than most of us in this chamber and certainly anyone in this chamber right now—can't, then I don't know who can. So, with all due respect, I take your point of order, but it is perfectly relevant to the legislation.

Further to the legislation, aside from veterans, the NDIS is a mess. It is a total shamble. It is chaotic. Deputy Speaker and Member for Bendigo, I'm sure your office has been—just as mine has been and just as everybody who sits in this place has been—inundated in recent years with complaints, concerns and suggested changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I am a supporter of the NDIS. The member for Capricornia, who spoke before me, is a supporter of the NDIS. And, when the former Labor New South Wales cabinet minister John Della Bosca was around, it was his job, before the NDIS was legislated and after former prime minister Gillard had put the scheme up for discussion—he was seeking support. I was the first federal member from New South Wales to endorse the everyone counts campaign. It wasn't something that had been funded. It wasn't something the coalition had come out and said, 'You need to support the NDIS'—but I knew the work that Kurrajong Waratah in particular had done in the early intervention space in Wagga Wagga for nigh on six decades, and I knew that if that organisation supported it then it was incumbent upon me to do the same.

Those people on NDIS are our most vulnerable, and those veterans who are on NDIS are in the same category. They are in the same boat. They deserve every bit of help that we can give them, and to be short changed—as this mean spirited, cruel government is doing at the moment—is beyond the pale. Minister, I would appeal to your better judgement to not always accept what the bureaucrats down the hill bring you and to not always accept what is said around the cabinet table. There are people around that cabinet table who just rely on numbers. There are people around that cabinet table who just believe in savings.

When the savings come at the expense of those people who've donned a uniform, gone out and protected us—I feel safer at night knowing that they have, but they deserve the very best treatment that we can provide—it's not right. It is not right that they are being neglected and ignored as part of this legislation by this government in this appalling budget—a budget of broken promises, a budget that there has to be some restoration of. Minister, it's your responsibility to do just that. As I said, I've got respect for you. Please, for and on behalf of the veterans who you are supposed to serve, do the right thing.

When it comes to the NDIS, the difficulty with the changes that are being made as part of this broken-promises budget is that they are going to hurt Australia's most vulnerable—particularly in regional, rural and remote Australia. It wasn't bad enough that, in January, this government made changes by which the travel component of service appointments was bundled up. For anybody living an hour from a major regional centre—such as Townsville, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Tamworth, Bendigo, and those sorts of places where there are service providers—the travel was all of a sudden part of the service fee. They stopped doing their speech therapy. They stopped doing their podiatry, because the service provider felt as though they couldn't then continue to provide the same service at less expense.

Then we've got the fuel crisis on top of that, which has hit regional communities even harder. But city-centric MPs, particularly those around the cabinet table, would not know that. They wouldn't care about it either. They wouldn't care about it, because they only ever think of themselves. They only ever think of the budget bottom line. I've sat around that cabinet table, and I've had those discussions. I have banged my fist on that table and said, 'This simply isn't good enough.' It's not good enough when you are a regional member at the cabinet table. When you are a veterans' affairs minister at the cabinet table, you have to stick up for the people who send you here to do the job because, if you don't, no-one will.

Then you get the likes of the Treasurer—the city based, Brisbane based member for Rankin. They don't understand the hardships that regional Australians endure every day simply to get podiatry, speech therapy, physiotherapy and all of those sorts of things. They should listen to the veterans. Every piece of legislation in this place should have a component of: how will this affect regional Australians? How will this affect veterans? How will this affect veterans who live in regional Australia? They're doing it the toughest, and I feel for them. I will fight for you. I will fight for them. I want you to know that.

This minister needs to do the same because, long after our political careers are over—and they are only fleeting; we are only custodians of positions—people will look back. They will stop you in the street, and they will say: 'What did you do for me when that budget of broken promises was handed down in 2026? Did you stick up for me? Did you have my back like I had yours when I put the uniform on, went on tours of duty and served this country?' You need to be able to look back at those people, Minister, and say, 'Yes, I did.' At the moment, I fear that you don't.

It's a pressing thing on each and every one of us to stick up for the people whose lives depend on it. At the moment, the NDIS does need an audit. With these changes brought about in this budget, you know who'll be okay? 'She'll be okay, mate.' It'll be the shysters, the grifters, those vile rent-seekers and the charlatans who pervade that sector and sponge off Australia's most vulnerable. They'll still get paid. They'll still get the work and the money that's coming to them.

I could not believe it when, a few years ago in Wagga Wagga, a mother of a Down syndrome son came to see me and said her son needed to go and prove it every year. Every year, they had to go to a GP to get a certificate to say his Down syndrome was still a condition. I mean, do you believe that? You don't get over Down syndrome. You don't recover from it. Yet he had to prove that he still had Down syndrome. That is the problem with the NDIS.

I'm not saying that the coalition covered itself in glory either, in one sense, because both sides of government have allowed the NDIS to grow into the beast that it has, to grow into the monster that it has, to allow some of these service providers to take the Commonwealth for granted. It's not right. That is why a full audit is needed to eke those people out and, in some cases where corruption can be proved, to send them to jail where they belong because they are sponging off and bleeding dry the vulnerable members of our community who need our support and our assistance. This legislation doesn't give it to them. They are going to be the ones who are going to suffer the most because their disabilities aren't going to improve.

You only have to listen to your constituents to know that. In Wagga Wagga, Donalee Gregory talks about the lack of consideration for each child's development journey. Caroline Hillier from Woodstock says that removing participants is blaming people with disabilities, not the cause of the cost blowouts. Julia Palmer from Cowra, whose 18-year-old son has high needs, says: 'I wish to note I understand why there needs to be cuts to the NDIS. However, I would humbly suggest the government go after those who are rorting the system, not the most vulnerable participants, as appears to be the case in my situation.' Do you know what? Julia and Caroline and Donnalee are all very correct. They are all very correct. The government needs to listen to people such as them.

The Minister for Veterans' Affairs needs to step up. He does. The NDIS ministers—I appreciate we've got one in this place and one in the Senate—also need to step up. They need to do an audit into the NDIS and get rid of these grafters and shifty people who are taking advantage of Australia's most vulnerable. (Time expired)

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