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

Labor members will tell you that one of the great legacies of the Gillard government was the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and they'd be right—not that they put any money towards it. I can remember that, when John Della Bosca was going around the countryside seeking support for the NDIS, I was the first New South Wales federal parliamentarian from the coalition side to sign up, because Kurrajong Waratah at Wagga Wagga told me it was the right and proper thing to do. But when it comes to callous cuts, the reductions in pricing that Labor have just introduced would be the cruellest of all; they certainly would.

In its annual pricing review, the National Disability Insurance Agency has taken an axe to the pricing arrangements and price limits for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, cutting the maximum prices that registered providers can charge NDIS participants. Now, that might not affect the larger regional hubs, which have people who don't need to travel out to see Australia's most vulnerable, but you've got people an hour from, say, Wagga Wagga, Tumbarumba, Narrandera and even Junee. Those people are now not going to get serviced. People who need podiatry, physiotherapy and speech therapy are going to be sacrificed on the altar of the cuts made by Labor, and it's simply not good enough for Australia's most vulnerable—NDIS clients—to have these cuts which are going to have such a drastic effect on their lives.