Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an issue which is of great concern to all people in Kooyong, the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme. When I was at university I was a volunteer tennis coach for the Kids Tennis Foundation and had the privilege of coaching kids with Down syndrome. It opened my eyes. Since then I have met with many inspirational people with disabilities and with their families and carers. They each need and deserve our complete support to ensure they have every opportunity available to them. The NDIS is an important step towards this goal.

In Kooyong we are fortunate to have numerous organisations and individuals who are driving the NDIS reform. The Chairman of Yooralla, Bruce Bonyhady, is a constituent and friend, and his energy and acumen have been instrumental in getting us to this point. Wonderful local organisations like Villa Maria in Kew, one of Victoria's largest providers of disability services, the Association for Children with a Disability in Hawthorn, and Belmore Special School in Balwyn are all playing their part. Just last week I again visited Q ArtStudio, which provides an important environment for talented artists with a disability to reach their potential, and just next door VATMI Industries have a huge warehouse providing employment in packaging and boxing to hundreds of people with disabilities.

Today more than 750,000 Australians live with a significant disability. To carry on their daily lives they require regular care, support and specialised equipment, services that often come at great cost to families, who are invariably under significant financial pressure. While state and federal governments have already provided significant funding to the disability sector, some $6.2 billion in 2009-10, the system is not working; it is broken. The Productivity Commission's draft report on disability services released in February found that there is a current unmet need for support of $6.3 billion and that too often access to financial support is determined by where someone lives or how they acquired their disability. The draft report also found that people wait years for specialist equipment like wheelchairs, that their funding for service providers was uncertain and inadequate and that there was a distinct lack of access to respite and home modifications, requiring those with disabilities to stay in hospital when it was clearly inappropriate for them to do so.

A new national scheme providing insurance cover for all Australians in the event of a disability is a groundbreaking reform. With funding to come from consolidated revenue, it is estimated that around 360,000 people will receive scheme funding. Such a system would be more equitable, more efficient and more effective in delivering critical services to people in need. This reform will require bipartisan support and will need the federal, state and territory governments to overcome the argy-bargy of traditional jurisdictional battles. At the federal level the coalition has made clear we are working with good faith with the government, for the status quo is no option.

I join many colleagues on both sides of this House, and thousands of people in Kooyong, in saying that disability support is core government business, one of the most important functions a government can fulfil, and I hope the National Disability Insurance Scheme becomes a reality.