Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. Before I go any further into detail, I want to take a moment to reflect on what people in my community are actually experiencing right now. A constituent who is looking after elderly parents as well as a disabled child wrote to me recently, 'I'm not a case number on a bureaucratic desk; I'm a drowning mother in your community.' Other comments from recent emails demonstrate similar struggles: 'It's going to be another uphill battle for me to survive with the cuts to the NDIS. I have no hope left. I'm so tired of fighting the system.' Another one says, 'If this funding were to be cut, I feel it would have catastrophic consequences to my daughter's wellbeing.' Another wrote: 'I have no hope left. I'm really tired of fighting.' And another one says, 'This leaves us in a constant state of burnout and also highly concerned and worried not just for the present but also for the future.'

So this debate is not theoretical; it's playing out in people's lives. They are not isolated cases. These are real people, and they are anxious and uncertain. They're asking a very simple question of this parliament: 'Will the NDIS still be there for me when I need it?'

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is a really important social reform in the history of our nation. It was built on a simple but powerful principle: that Australians living with permanent and significant disability deserve dignity, independence and the opportunity to participate fully in our society. I remember when the then Labor government brought it in. I remember the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, saying:

The NDIS is an idea whose time has come.

There was a lot of support for the concept of doing something like this. Precisely because the NDIS matters so deeply, we must get these reforms right. When we talk about the NDIS, we're not talking about abstract budget lines; we're talking about people: families, carers, communities. We're talking about Australians who rely on this scheme every single day.

I don't think anyone in this House disputes that the NDIS must be sustainable. The scheme's growing rapidly, and there are genuine concerns about its trajectory. It is absolutely critical that we deal with the fraud, the rorting and the inefficiencies that we all know are out there. This scheme and system must deliver value to the taxpayer, and we must ensure that support is there for future generations. But sustainability cannot come at the expense of fairness, and it must never come at the expense of the most vulnerable Australians.

It's worth noting that the Morrison government proposed, for NDIS applicants, independent assessments conducted by privately contracted allied health professionals. But Labor, then led by Bill Shorten, former member for Maribyrnong, ran what was a fairly effective scare campaign on the reforms and lobbied state leaders to block the changes, and it forced the coalition to abandon that policy in late 2021. There was an opportunity to build a more sustainable NDIS, and that opportunity, unfortunately, was lost, and we are now faced with greater changes to try and rein in the costs and rein in this scheme.

When I came to this place, I was getting a lot of inquiries about the NDIS and could see that there were a lot of problems with it. I asked colleagues who had been here through the coalition government and who I trust, 'Why couldn't we get it under control when we were in government?' And those people, who I trust, said, 'There were a lot of design flaws to begin with, and Labor wouldn't let us fix it, for partisan, political reasons.' And that is a real disappointment. We know from correspondence and stakeholder engagement that people are deeply worried about what the changes we're proposing now might mean for them, and that is why a Senate inquiry is critically important. These reforms must be properly scrutinised. It is absolutely critical that the Senate do its work and look at what these changes mean for Australians.

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