Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) | Hansard source

While the government has a lot of sympathy with the spirit in which the member has moved these amendments, we will not be supporting them in the House. Let me say a few words about why.

The future of the NDIS is going to rest on two new approaches to eligibility, and a plan setting and plan management. The bill seeks to do what we have been advised to do now for some time, including through the NDIS review, and that is to put in place an objective system of functional capacity assessment to determine eligibility—to move from a diagnosis based system to an objective assessment of someone's functional capacity. That will be an objective test.

Once eligible, a person under new framework planning will be subjected to a support needs assessment. That support needs assessment will look at the person's functional needs and also their environmental circumstances. Their living circumstances, issues of language and cultural factors—the things that the member for Fowler has raised in her amendment—will certainly be factors that are very important in the support needs assessment of individual participants under the new framework planning.

But the functional capacity assessment is an objective assessment that looks at a person's functional capacity, and that will be developed over the coming months with the support of the technical advisory group. Those matters that the member for Fowler has raised will be accommodated in the system of support needs assessment.

For those reasons—and also in terms of the question of permanence and the question of appropriate treatment, where we will be supporting some other crossbench amendments—we're not supporting the amendments from the member for Fowler.

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