Ali France (Dickson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The NDIS is dignity, opportunity and independence. It is a promise to take care of people with significant and permanent disability. However, we all know the NDIS needs structural change. Change is frightening, particularly to those who rely on the NDIS to have a shower, to eat a healthy meal and to get out in the community. We read about rorting on social media and we see the sceptics creeping in. People with a disability and their families are distressed by the criminals and rorters that have tainted our NDIS lifeline. The NDIS has transformed lives for the better, but we must ensure the NDIS and broader disability support services are safe and leave no-one behind.

We have done the work. As soon as we came to government in 2022, we ordered a review of the NDIS, exposing the need for change. There were no basic fraud or compliance controls during the nine long years the coalition were running the NDIS. We are fixing that. The vast majority of providers are unregistered and unregulated. We are going to fix that. The coalition allowed the states and territories to step away, to stop being the provider of last resort, to stop delivering support when no other provider was willing to set up in a country town or remote community. The exit by the states has left a deep hole in our mainstream systems of support. We are throwing the sink at that.

I spoke with the mum of a participant a couple of years ago, who was absolutely thrilled her adult son was able to move into purpose-built independent living, designed for his needs. It was the first time, as a man in his 30s, that he'd lived away from his parents. But, when he moved in, he was unable to get nursing support, despite having the funding for 24/7 care. He lived a two-hour drive from Brisbane in a large regional town, where there are many participants but zero providers with nursing care. He tried desperately to get the state back involved in his care, because the alternative was to go back to his parents or a nursing home.

I've spoken to families in my electorate of Dickson who live around Dayboro, probably an hour and 15 minutes drive, on a good day, from the centre of Brisbane. They struggle to get any providers or any non-NDIS community supports to their village. We all know that children with autism wait too long for diagnosis and early intervention, and many kids from regional and remote backgrounds and areas and those from disadvantaged backgrounds get next to nothing.

That is why foundational supports and Thriving Kids are so very important. We need change because we must have support for all kids, no matter where you live or your socioeconomic status. We need early intervention in early learning settings, in schools and in the community. Support from health agencies, schools and community providers were allowed to dwindle by those opposite. The exodus is so complete that, in most areas, non-NDIS supports have disappeared for many families whose needs don't fully align with the scheme's original scope. Those outside the scheme have been falling through the cracks—cracks that began to appear a decade ago and are now deep chasms of inequity. We must fix this. The state-run health services, including allied health professionals, speech therapists and other specialists, provide services across my state of Queensland, servicing Medicare and aged-care patients, but they won't touch NDIS participants.

We are now doing everything we can to renegotiate with the states to get them back in, to ensure everyone gets the support they need to begin with foundational supports. I say to people with a disability and their families: we have your back. We will walk on this journey of change together. We will listen. We will not let the NDIS fall into total disrepair. I also say to the states: you are failing kids and people with a disability on a grand scale. You know this. You see it. You hear it. Don't turn away from us.