Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 and I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that:

To the 761,426 participants and your families: I have heard you. That is why I fought so hard on behalf of the coalition for you to have your say at a Senate inquiry. I hope the government hears your anxiety, worries and concerns too. For Australians living with significant and permanent disability, the NDIS provides not just support but opportunity, and sometimes it is life and death. It is independence, it is dignity and it is the chance to work, to participate in community life, to live with greater freedom and confidence, and to access the support they need without feeling like a burden on the people they love. It is meant to provide hope for the future.

But, right now, too many people in the disability community feel like hope is slipping away. They feel invisible, they feel unheard and they feel like they are being reduced to nothing more than a line item in the Albanese government's budget papers. But behind every number in this debate is a real person, a real family and a real fear about what comes next. I want people in the disability community to know this: I have read your emails. My office and I have read your stories. We have listened to your fears and we have heard your frustrations. Your experiences matter, and I thank you for sharing them.

That is why the coalition has called for a Senate inquiry into this bill. Submissions close this Friday, and I encourage anyone who wishes to make a submission to do so. Public hearings will then be held in the week commencing 8 June. These changes are too significant and the consequences too serious for this parliament to simply wave them through without scrutiny. To every person with disability, every family, every carer and every provider watching this debate unfold: you deserve answers about what these changes mean and how they will affect you.

Australians still do not know exactly how the Albanese Labor government intends to deliver these savings or what the real impact will be on people with disability. Instead, while this government shuffles numbers around Treasury spreadsheets to make a near-trillion-dollar deficit look more manageable, Australians with disability, their families and their carers are left wondering why they are paying the price for Labor's inability to control spending.

There is no denying the NDIS has grown far beyond what was originally expected when it was established 13 years ago. A scheme designed to support around 410,000 Australians is now supporting more than 760,000 people and growing at 10.3 per cent a year. A scheme originally expected to cost $13.6 billion is now approaching $50 billion a year and projected to blow out to around $70 billion by the end of the decade. By the government's own figures, the cost of paid supports continues to surge. This is the NDIS Labor built. If this is what the government calls sustainability, Australians are right to ask whether anyone is truly in control, because the current trajectory of the scheme is simply not sustainable. We need to be honest about that, especially when this is now the Albanese government's third attempt to rein in the growth of the scheme.

In August 2023, the government promised growth would be reduced to eight per cent. They failed. Then in January this year, despite missing that target, they pledged to reduce growth even further to between five and six per cent. They failed again. Now, just four months later and with no achievements under their belt, the 2026-27 budget pledges to reduce growth in the NDIS to just two per cent.

I want to be very clear about this. The coalition's support for the scheme remains unwavering. We believe the scheme must be there for Australians with significant and permanent disability, exactly as it was intended, but the integrity of the scheme is weak, and Australians see this. Day after day we see shocking stories of criminals exploiting the NDIS for hundreds of thousands of dollars and in some cases millions. Just a few weeks ago, a Sydney man appeared before the courts, accused of fraudulently claiming NDIS payments as a registered provider. The man, who authorities allege has links to serious organised crime, is accused of claiming more than $1.5 million for services that were never provided.

But it is not just the theft of taxpayer money that should horrify this parliament. Behind the fraud statistics are vulnerable Australians being exploited, manipulated and abused by people entrusted with their care. Participants allegedly are being trafficked for their support packages, left without the essential care they need and deserve, coerced into approving invoices for services never delivered, having their identities stolen to drain the very funding meant to support their independence and their dignity. The list just goes on and on, and it is utterly horrific and a disgusting abuse of power against some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

The Australian National Audit Office estimated that up to 10 per cent of payments are noncompliant, incorrect or fraudulent. That's 10 per cent. That's up to $5 billion a year on today's expenditure. That's $5 billion of taxpayers' money just walking out the door. That's $5 billion that could otherwise help fund vulnerable people, our hospitals, our schools, our roads and our critical infrastructure. Criminals know it. They continue gaming the system because they know the guardrails are weak and the fences meant to protect are flimsy.

With Australians hearing these stories day in and day out, the NDIS has lost the social licence it once had. In Minister Butler's Press Club speech, he admitted seven in 10 Australians believe the NDIS is too large and struggles with dodgy providers. Worse still, six in 10 Australians think the NDIS is broken. What was once a beacon of pride for our country has become a national disgrace.

But it's not the criminals fleecing the NDIS nor the dodgy providers who are billing for services never delivered who are under attack; it's people with disability and the honest providers trying to do the right thing who are feeling the government's wrath on this. I've received thousands of emails since Minister Butler's speech just a month ago from participants, their families, their carers and providers, all desperately seeking answers about whether they will keep the supports they rely on as the government moves to reassess every participant's plan. We haven't just read those emails; my office has been on the phone speaking directly with participants, families and providers right across our country. Every interaction has been a plea from a person with a disability, their families, their friends, their support workers and providers to fix this, to stop participants being caught in the fallout of a failing system. They are scared and their families are scared, and they are looking to this parliament for certainty.

I've spoken to families who are doing everything right and still being let down by the current system. A mother was waiting for more than eight months for a wheelchair for her 13-year-old son, leaving him unable to safely get to school or to appointments. A woman with Huntington's disease whose condition is deteriorating is now receiving just 13 hours of care a week, but medical experts say that she needs more than five times that. She's at risk of choking, falling or even worse. This is happening across the board. This is the system as it stands today.

I've also met with many of the peak bodies and advocacy groups about the proposed changes. They're scared too. They don't know what these changes mean for them and the people they support. Why? Because the government has yet again made a big announcement that lacks any substantive detail. We've had a month of media stories talking about cuts, cuts and more cuts by this government, which has done nothing but induce and escalate that fear.

This bill is substantial. It proposes introducing an entirely new functional capacity assessment for people applying to the scheme. From 2028, new participants will be assessed against a threshold of significantly reduced functional capacity. But here is the problem: the criteria have not been designed. The details have not been released. Australians are effectively being asked to sign a blank cheque on reforms nobody has seen. This unknown test is set to apply to all new participants from 1 January 2028. It does not stop there. Every existing NDIS participant will also face reassessment between 1 January 2028 and 31 December 2030—reassessment against criteria that remain completely unknown. That uncertainty is terrifying families.

I had one mother recently contact my office at absolute breaking point. Her son relies on a feeding tube to stay alive. Imagine the panic of this mother as she wondered how she will keep her son alive after his plan reassessment was rejected. The family support coordinator was not even informed, and suddenly the family was forced to ration essentials: feeding supplies, continence aids—the basic items their son depends on every single day to survive. Again, this is sometimes about life and death. A feeding pump was approved, but there was no funding to repair or replace it if it failed. Without intervention from my office, the consequences could have been catastrophic. It should never have reached this point.

I want to be able to tell families like this that everything will be okay. I want to tell them that, if their loved one clearly needs NDIS support, they will continue to receive it, but right now I cannot honestly give them that guarantee. In cases like these, I am imploring the government to not burden participants with reassessments and with having to provide new medical evidence. Their condition isn't changing. A lengthy, stressful and traumatic reassessment process is cruel and unnecessary. Media reports have said the number of people on the scheme will be reduced by around 160,000 participants, but that number will be far greater when you combine the number of people who won't enter the scheme with the number of people who'll be exited from the scheme because they won't meet the new functional capacity assessment.

From mid-June, the government has committed to establishing a technical advisory group to develop a new functional capacity assessment. My ask of the Albanese government on this is to please consult with the disability community; it's really important. They have a wealth of knowledge. They have lived experience, and, more than anything, they want the scheme to remain for themselves and generations to come. Please do not exclude them from this process.

The bill will also make changes to plan reassessments. A participant or their support team can ask for a plan reassessment if they believe their needs have changed. In Minister Butler's Press Club speech, he stated:

One in five plans are currently subject to an unscheduled reassessment each year.

You do the maths—760,000 participant plans divided by five equates to roughly 150,000 plan reassessments a year, or around 12,000 reassessments every single month. According to the minister himself, most reassessments are currently resulting in funding increases, not decreases, of around 20 per cent, which is a major driver of the scheme's escalating cost. This bill seeks to tighten that process. Under these changes, only participants, their nominees or their guardians would be able to request an unscheduled review and only where there has been a significant and ongoing change in functional capacity.

But herein lies yet another problem. Providers are already telling me the review process is inconsistent, confusing and difficult to navigate. One provider described the planning process as a lottery, saying, 'Outcomes depend on who receives the report and whether the assessor actually understands the participant's needs and medical evidence.' Another said, 'Reviews are already proceeding without providers present if they're unavailable at the scheduled time, leaving decisions to be made without the full picture of a participant's circumstances and care needs.' That does not inspire confidence, and it raises serious concerns about how these tighter reassessment rules will operate in practice for vulnerable Australians and their families.

The bill also seeks to clarify that NDIS supports will be funded only where the need arises directly from the participant's recognised impairment, with broader health conditions intended to be treated through Medicare and the mainstream health system.

There will be changes to the existing settings for plan renewals. Currently, plans don't have a specified end date and, for ease, have been continued while a participant's plan is reassessed and a new plan is created. In many cases, unspent funds from the previous plans have been carried over. From 1 February 2027, this won't be the case. Plans will have a legislated end date, and any unspent funds will no longer roll over into the new plan period. Let me make this very clear to the government. There can be no gap between the end date of one plan and the commencement of another—not one day, not one hour and certainly not many weeks or months—because, when you are talking about feeding supports, personal care, mobility equipment or essential therapies, even a short administrative delay can have devastating consequences.

The government must get this right administratively. No participant should ever lose access to essential supports because of bureaucratic delays or failures within the system. Consider yourselves on notice, government, because Australians have already seen what happens when delays and backlogs become normalised in other parts of the system. We see it in Centrelink every single day. People are waiting for months for applications to be processed to the point where six-month waits for an age pension barely even make the headlines anymore. The disability community should never be expected to accept that as normal.

The bill will also introduce some additional categories for provider registration. Supported independent living providers will already have mandatory registration requirements applied this year, and this is a good thing. You are caring for and responsible for our most vulnerable people. You must be held to the highest standards. There will be mandatory registration requirements for plan managers. I've heard from many plan managers over the last month who I can tell are genuine, caring and compassionate people. They have the participants' welfare front of mind. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad actors who are doing the wrong thing. They are not looking after clients or their packages. They're charging hundreds of dollars for printing documents that were never provided, charging for services never coordinated or inducing people with disability with food, alcohol, cigarettes and iPads to become the new plan manager. This is wrong, it is abhorrent and, unfortunately, the actions of some have meant we need stronger safeguards in place to protect participants.

I was appointed to this portfolio only a few months ago, and one of the very first things I identified was a lack of mandatory requirements for providers managing people's plans or daily supports. If you are entering someone's home and providing any personal care, I believe you should have basic qualifications—first aid certificates, working-with-vulnerable-people checks, criminal history checks. This is not going on right now. The NDIS was established to support and protect people with disability, not expose them to greater harms. These checks and balances are everywhere else in our work. Our healthcare providers have them. Our aged-care workers, childcare workers and teachers—anyone who works with vulnerable people—must have these checks for safety, and the NDIS should not be excluded from that. I recognise that there are some providers who provide services where people may think these aren't necessities, but if we want to provide people with the best service and the best care, these shouldn't be considered barriers.

Perhaps the most jarring change of all for the disability community will be the planned changes and reductions to community supports. Minister Butler said costs for community supports have blown out from $4 billion in 2021 to $12 billion this year. I understand the need for us to review this—and the costs have tripled in just five years—but so far the Albanese government have failed at every turn to explain exactly where these costs have blown out. From the feedback I have received, this change alone is causing the greatest anxiety for participants and their families.

Meanwhile, dodgy operators continue slipping through the cracks while legitimate providers are buried in paperwork, compliance costs and bureaucracy. One provider in my electorate of Lindsay told me participants are having their packages wiped out by fraudulent activity. They said they've lodged six separate fraud reports in just two months, but they don't hear anything back. That is deeply concerning. Providers are also raising serious concerns about the role and the accountability of some support coordinators within the system. One provider told me, 'We work with the clients more than they do.' Another said change-of-circumstances requests are often not lodged in time, leaving participants stuck in limbo while their needs go unmet. Others raise serious concerns about participants being pressured into changing providers or living arrangements against their wishes.

While honest providers are trying to do the right thing, many say the cost of registration and compliance has become prohibitive, with little meaningful incentive to remain registered beyond basic optics and credibility. To put that into perspective, one provider employing 300 staff and supporting more than 800 participants told me they recently paid $35,000 for a single audit on top of existing registration costs. We all want the scheme to be sustainable into the future, to continue supporting Australians with significant and permanent disability for generations to come. When the NDIS was established in 2013, Australians overwhelmingly supported that vision. But the social licence underpinning the scheme can only be rebuilt if this parliament confronts the rampant fraud, dishonesty and abuse occurring within the system today.

Disappointingly, there are very few measures in this bill that directly target that misconduct. A digital payments platform, claim timeframe changes, receipt retention requirements—these are the only real changes the government is making to address fraud. You know it, I know it, Australians know it and participants on the NDIS know it. That is why the coalition has called for a Senate inquiry into this bill. That is why submissions are currently open to participants, families, carers, providers and advocates right across Australia. And that is why these proposed changes must be properly scrutinised before vulnerable Australians are asked to place their trust in reforms that the government still cannot fully explain. People with disability deserve transparency, deserve honesty and deserve certainty about what these changes will mean for their lives going into the future.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, it is, and I reserve my right to speak.

Carol Berry (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I need to start by outlining my sense of disbelief in relation to the sudden concern on the part of the coalition for the future of the NDIS. I have worked alongside people with disability for about 17 years, and I have to say that, for that entire time, I have not felt a deep sense of concern about the NDIS from the opposition—so I found all those words somewhat disingenuous, I have to say.

I rise today to speak in support of this important bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. As I just mentioned, I worked alongside people with disability and their families for many years in various roles before I became a member of parliament. I am therefore particularly passionate about protecting and promoting the rights and interests of people with disability. The job I had immediately before I became a parliamentarian was CEO of the Disability Trust, one of the largest providers of disability services in Australia, where I worked hard to ensure we provided quality services in order to support people to fulfil their aspirations and live their best lives.

Early in my career, I worked as a human rights lawyer for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, where I supported people with disability to have their rights upheld. I later became the CEO of the New South Wales Council for Intellectual Disability, where I advocated for people with intellectual disability and their families to get access to better supports and services. This was back in the mid-2000s, before the NDIS was introduced. At that stage, the idea of individualised funding was largely an untested concept. I saw firsthand how difficult it was to get any attention on the issues affecting people with disability and their families. Funding was inadequate and people did not receive the services they needed. There were waiting lists for critical services like accommodation supports, and people were placed in living arrangements by a panel of decision-makers rather than being able to make their own choices.

After working at the New South Wales Council for Intellectual Disability, I worked for the Community and Disability Services Commissioner at the New South Wales Ombudsman, where we were responsible for the oversight of the closure of large residential centres in New South Wales. These were the centres where people with disability had been housed in previous generations. There was a time in the not-too-distant past where, if you were born with a disability, you would likely be institutionalised. Part of my role at the New South Wales Ombudsman was to provide oversight in relation to the closure of these large residential centres like Stockton, near Newcastle, which, at one time, at its peak, housed over 1,200 people. I met people with disability who had been raised in these institutions. Their emotional suffering was immense, and some had also been physically and psychologically abused.

It was in this context of profound suffering, exclusion and trauma that the movement around the rights of people with disability emerged and flourished. It was a great privilege for me to meet and work alongside incredible self-advocates like Kim Walker and Robert Strike—people with disability who grew up in institutions and then fought relentlessly for them to be closed. Meeting these incredibly strong and determined advocates quite simply changed the course of my life. Kim Walker's book, Forgotten and Found, is a powerful read and is available on the website of the New South Wales Council for Intellectual Disability. The foreword to this book is written by Jim Simpson, a formidable advocate for people with intellectual disability, who I had the great privilege to work alongside at the New South Wales Council for Intellectual Disability. Jim states:

Kim wrote this book because she wanted it be read by politicians, senior bureaucrats and parents of people with disability. She wanted them to hear her story and heartache and make sure that what happened to her never happened to other people with disability.

…   …   …

Kim led an extraordinary and harrowing life. Countless of us have benefited from her friendship. Society is that bit better for her example and relentless advocacy.

As Kim herself said:

When I was less than three years old, I was sent to live in an institution for children with an intellectual disability. This was a time, in the 1950s, when lots of children with a disability were sent away from their families … I grew up without knowing my parents or my brother and sister.

I was forgotten.

I am writing this story about my life now because I want everyone to know what life has been like for people like me. I want people to remember what happened to us, how we were shut away and forgotten, and I want people never to forget this … And I want to make sure that what happened to me will never happen to anyone again.

Back then, people with disability were shut away and forgotten.

Out of the movement to change all this came the green shoots of the NDIS, hard fought for and won by people with disability and their supporters. The motto of the movement for the rights of people with disability is 'nothing about us without us'. It's also in this context that the NDIS and all that it's come to represent has been fiercely defended, and for good reason. I understand people's profound concern that the NDIS will be watered down, cut or lost altogether. I have watched as the NDIS has come under intense scrutiny, and for good reason, as it has design flaws which need urgent correction. But this is a scheme born of a movement, and the movement wants it protected. It should be. It's important also to note that Labor created the NDIS, and Labor will defend it. As an elected member of parliament, I will continue to focus on how we can improve the lives of people with disability, and that includes through my membership of the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS.

As I mentioned, the NDIS is a great Labor reform, but it was driven by people with disability themselves. It also reflects the fair mindedness and decency of the Australian people. It has changed many lives and our country for the better, and it's a world-leading scheme. However, the NDIS needs to return to its intended purpose, and, unless we take action to make it sustainable, I fear that it will lose its social licence and will not be here in the future for those Australians who need it the most. The NDIS was originally intended to support around 410,000 people with a disability. Today there are 760,000 people on the scheme. We can't afford for the NDIS to continue to grow at its present rate, but, more importantly, we can't afford for the NDIS to fail.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 addresses two key issues. The first is sustainability. The NDIS is growing at a rate that was unforeseen when it was established in 2013 and, if left unchecked, will put the scheme's future at risk. The second major issue addressed by the bill is fraud. Unbelievably, given who it's designed for, the NDIS has become the target for fraudulent activity, including through organised crime, and this is having a devastating impact on too many participants and their families and the integrity of the NDIS itself.

Importantly, the reforms contained in this bill draw on the Independent Review into the National Disability Insurance Scheme conducted in 2023; the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce completed in 2024; the Australian National Audit Office's 2019 report on the scheme's fraud control program; and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, which ran from 2019 to 2023. It's important to recognise the amount of work that was done by people with disability and their supporters through all of those processes.

Schedule 1 of this bill sets out the key measures that will help put the NDIS back on a sustainable footing both now and into the future. The Independent Review of the NDIS, known as the NDIS review, found that the current approach to accessing the scheme is inconsistent and inequitable and not always targeted to those people with disability who require the most support. This has contributed to participant numbers becoming far greater than was envisaged when the scheme was created to support people with permanent and significant disability. This bill clarifies the meaning of the term 'functional capacity' and provides for the assessment of thresholds of functional capacity, an amendment that is consistent with recommendation 3 of the NDIS review. Further work is needed to identify the appropriate threshold of functional capacity, and it's important to note that the government will establish a technical advisory group to provide expert advice on an appropriate threshold and assessments for substantially reduced functional capacity.

Another amendment in schedule 1 enables the minister to make determinations to reset funding for supports like social, community and civic participation and capacity-building. These supports were intended to act as a framework that opens society up for people with disability and allows genuine community participation. However, while many support workers provide valuable supports—I've seen that firsthand—there is evidence that some providers are not delivering genuine and quality community participation. Not only is this aspect of the scheme not working as it was intended but it is becoming increasingly expensive. Spending on these support streams has tripled from $4 billion per year to $12 billion per year over the past five years, which means it now costs about the same as what we would spend in net terms on the entire Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and it could reach $20 billion by the end of the decade if nothing is done. Importantly, the government will establish a $200 million fund, the Inclusive Communities Fund, to rebuild capability among community organisations so that NDIS participants have new options to genuinely participate in their local community.

Schedule 2 of the bill will strengthen the ability of the National Disability Insurance Agency to effectively manage the integrity of the NDIS. The Albanese government has made significant investments to tackle fraud and noncompliance under the NDIS. Labor established the Fraud Fusion Taskforce shortly after coming into government, and it identified eight recurring design failures in longstanding government programs that make them susceptible to fraud. It found the NDIS has all eight. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has also identified seven fundamental building blocks for high-integrity programs, and it noted that the NDIS has none of these. These structural flaws mean that measures we've introduced to control spending are simply not working as we intended. It's important to note as well that governments of both persuasions have been responsible for these issues.

A key area of focus is provider registration. Only one in 16 providers is currently registered, and this needs to change. Not every provider needs to be fully registered, but the bill will expand categories of mandatory registration to include higher risk activities, personal care, daily living supports and supports provided in closed settings. This builds on existing mandatory registration requirements and also on our decision to introduce mandatory registration for supported independent living as well as platform providers from 1 July 2026, and I'm strongly in support of these reforms. Registration requires providers to meet defined quality and safeguarding standards, undergo independent audits and suitability assessments, comply with worker screening and reporting obligations, and maintain ongoing adherence to governance and safety requirements.

This bill also extends the NDIA's monitoring and investigative powers so that it can investigate serious fraud and noncompliance in relation to claims and payments in the scheme. It also inserts a range of new civil penalty provisions to deter providers and individuals from engaging in unlawful non-compliant conduct by imposing significant financial penalties. The bill will require providers, nominees and participants to retain records relating to the provision of supports and/or claiming of NDIS amounts for specified periods of time, and a civil penalty will apply to providers who fail to comply with this requirement. The NDIS review identified a range of issues with the agency's approach, and this change will establish a clearer and more transparent mechanism to set and enforce prices under the scheme. We're making it possible for the minister to be the core decision-maker in relation to pricing, and I'm strongly supportive of that change as well.

I am proud that Labor built the NDIS, and I'm also proud that we are taking responsibility for securing its future. I'm deeply committed to this work, and I will continue to be a passionate advocate for people with disability in this place. This bill is needed to restore the NDIS to its original intent of supporting people with permanent and significant disability, to stabilise the growth of the scheme and make the NDIS available and secure for those who need it most for generations to come. That is why I commend this bill to the House.

Henry Pike (Bowman, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the previous speaker, who did a very good job of articulating what the original purpose of the NDIS was and the importance of how we need to undertake the necessary reforms to ensure we get back to that purpose. As we all know in this place, and as we've all been seeing for many years, the sustainability of the scheme is of deep concern. It's not just the growing numbers we see in the budget but also, an important point—it was a point that the minister made in his Press Club speech outlining the reforms which have gone into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026—that there is a decline in the social licence of the scheme. The fact is that the sorts of challenges that we've seen in terms of the runaway growth and also the fraud and the misalignment between what the original purposes were and what we've ended up with are undermining public confidence in the scheme. I think it is important at the very start of this debate to note the positive impact that the scheme has had across so many lives. I know all of us are connected in with our electorates and receive a lot of correspondence from people out there who are beneficiaries of the scheme and their families and also the many providers that are operating in the scheme. I know that a lot of providers get a bad rap and get blamed for a lot of the things that we've seen. Of course, there are bad operators operating within the NDIS ecosystem, but there are so many that are doing the right thing and that are benefiting from this scheme in the right way. So many providers go above and beyond, and I think it's critical that we don't demonise them or the users of this scheme—the participants and their families—as we undertake the process of trying to undertake that commonsense reform.

Unfortunately, this is, I suppose, a bit of a moment of reckoning for the Labor Party on this topic. For many years, they would be in this chamber and outside telling us that there was no problem with the sustainability of the scheme. In fact, Bill Shorten famously said at a conference that 'anyone who told you that there is a sustainability problem with the NDIS is telling a lie'. That's what he said, but here we are. Of course, we're going to have multiple contributions to this debate, and I think everyone on both sides and on the crossbench will be articulating that there is a sustainability issue with the scheme. The problem is that, if you deny the fact that there is a sustainability issue with this scheme and you bury your head in the sand around the challenges with the scheme, you very quickly allow that lack of stewardship to drift unchecked and we reach the point where we are today.

The coalition is very keen to work with the government to ensure that we get these reforms right. But it is clear that poor stewardship has led us here and Labor has allowed the costs of this scheme to drift before resorting to very blunt cuts which are going to see about 21 per cent of participants removed from the scheme. That 160,000 participant number that has been put out there doesn't include those that are going to be added to the scheme over the next few years before we reach that point in 2028 when these reassessments begin. So there's actually a lot more than that who are going to experience—or have at some point experienced—the scheme, have been a participant on it and will be excised from it.

Undoubtedly, there is a huge amount of concern within the community from not just those who are participants but those who are connected with them—family members. They are worried about these reforms and are worried about what it's going to mean. There are a lot of unanswered questions, even in this legislation, about how we're going to go about that process. So if I can encourage the government, as a principle, as we go through this journey—and this journey is going to be a lot longer than just the passage of this bill through this House or in the other place. The journey of reform on the NDIS is going to take years. I'll touch on some of the particular reforms, but we're not going to have these functional capacity reassessments until 2028. This is multiterm reform, and it's important to remember that.

What I would encourage the government to do is ensure that we get the ultimate level of transparency that we possibly can. If we're thinking about multiple options, in terms of how we implement these reforms, let's let people know about it, and let's let people in the disability sector have their say on it. Certainly, they're filling my inbox at the moment with their thoughts on and concerns for the legislation, and I'm very pleased that we're going to have a committee process in the other place to get to the bottom of this; although, it will be a short timeframe. I echo the sentiments of the member for Lindsay: I encourage any stakeholder listening in to make sure that you get your submission in on time and have the opportunity to have your say.

The coalition is very keen to potentially amend this legislation in the other place to make sure that we're getting this completely right, because it is a large bit of legislation. There are many components to it, and it is obviously something that has been pushed onto the sector at very short notice. A lot of the measures that are being proposed had previously been championed by the coalition, but they were, I'll note, strongly opposed by Labor at different points. Functional capacity assessments are effectively a repackaged version of the coalition's independent assessments model, which Labor was opposed to. We've been strongly pushing for stronger registration as well, and I note the comments that people have made about the need for greater registration so we can tackle those quality and fraud issues.

I also note that, really, what we want—and I think I'm speaking on behalf of the government, as well as the opposition—is to ensure that we get to a tiered level of registration. If someone is just providing some bit of equipment, or if they are mowing someone's lawn, obviously we don't need to have that same level of regulation and detail. So we need to get that tiering correct to ensure that we are appropriately applying the rules and the regulations on those that are at the higher-end needs and at the most acute levels of care, but we also need to make sure that those who are more incidentally touching the NDIS aren't adversely affected.

One of the key reforms that is involved in this package and is being instigated, or will be allowed to take place through this legislation, is the introduction of a digital payment system. This is something that the coalition has long championed. It's something that will increase the ability for the government to keep an eye on the transactions and make sure that, where fraud is occurring, we're stepping on that and making sure that we are taking the appropriate action in real time. But it also increases the convenience for both the participants and the providers, and it's something that we had pushed in the final years of the last government to try to get to the point where we were ready to launch a digital payment system. Think of a sort of high-caps model for the NDIS.

Unfortunately, one of the things that we were incredibly frustrated with was, when this government was elected, all that work seemed to go straight in the bin, and now here we are four years later having to reinvent the wheel. So I would strongly encourage the government to take a look at the work that was done on the digital payments system in the final days of the Morrison government. You'll find that it was very much advanced; you'll find that it was almost at the point where it was ready to launch. I'd encourage the government to, rather than spending I think it's $300 million in the budget to try to implement that reform, perhaps we can recycle some of the work that the coalition did. It is, of course, one thing that the stakeholders tell me is absolutely critical to both tackling fraud and reducing costs across the scheme.

One of the points of reform that the government is seeking to do here is to end planned rollovers. It's an interesting concept because they're also tightening the criteria for unscheduled reassessments. It's certainly been my experience—and I'm sure I wouldn't be Robinson Crusoe here—with those who've contacted my office in relation to these reforms and the NDIS changes that we've seen over the course of recent months that people actually aren't putting their heads above the parapet to say that they want to have an unscheduled reassessment. What we've seen is a series of quiet cuts within the NDIS.

I'll give you an example. I had a lovely bloke come and meet with me. He lives not far from me, in the Redlands, and his wife very tragically is enduring early onset dementia. She'd be in her late 50s or early 60s, and she's unfortunately at the point now where she requires around-the-clock care. This is having a massive impact. Her husband's one of the most quietly spoken but just absolutely dedicated men you'll ever meet. He's a tremendous individual. And he's been advocating very hard on her behalf. They needed a little bit of extra support through their package to pay for some extra supports that they needed. When they asked for a reassessment, that triggered a full reassessment of their whole scope, and we ended up with a 43 per cent reduction in her package.

These are the sorts of quiet cuts that we've seen. I don't pretend that these aren't happening across the entire country, but these are the sorts of cuts that I'm seeing in the Redlands and I'm sure many other members are seeing. When we reach the point where the sustainability of the scheme is at crisis point, we see these quiet cuts being made. Unfortunately, they're not being made on the fringes. They're not being made to the back end to reduce red tape or reduce the number of expenses that we're seeing within the scheme. They're being made to those who are the most vulnerable and the least likely to complain.

That is ultimately the reason why we need to ensure that we get these reforms absolutely right. It's those people that the scheme was actually designed to support—most of all those at the highest end of the spectrum, those with the highest needs and those that many of us envisage that the NDIS would be supporting. That certainly hasn't been the experience that I've had in recent months as the government's tried to tackle the runaway costs.

I've touched on the digital payments system, but I also want to raise concerns around the transfer of pricing decision responsibilities to the minister. We've got an issue with pricing within the NDIS. It will take me much longer than the 3½ minutes that I have left for my remarks to touch on, and I might make a further contribution at a later point on that topic. One of the major things that we're hearing from providers is the need for a truly independent pricing process. We're rapidly approaching the end of the financial year. Many of these professions and services haven't had an increase in their pricing capacity for many, many years. Many haven't been able to increase their costs since pre COVID. Despite that, all their overheads are moving, of course, in one direction, and we've seen significant inflation over that period of time.

My fear is that, if we move the powers of pricing within the scheme under greater control of the minister—and this isn't an attack on the current minister; I think this will be the case for any minister who holds this portfolio over the life of the scheme—we're going to see greater political pressure trying to reduce and screw down those prices, and that is not necessary. That may be a good thing for the budget, but it may not necessarily be a good thing for those who are actually receiving that support or providing that support. We will be looking at that further as we consider the inquiry recommendations and the evidence that's seen through the Senate's consideration of this bill, and we will be potentially proposing some amendments in respect of that.

I also want to touch on fraud. Obviously, that's a major concern for many people out there. We've seen some horrific examples and we've seen some prosecutions too in relation to that. There is very little in this bill, I would say, that truly tackles fraud head on. It's lacking in detail. We've already had two packages of legislation that have been through here in the course of this government that have sought to tackle fraud. Unfortunately, despite all the resources, despite all the effort, despite all the legislation, we're actually seeing very little done in terms of prosecutions, and the detection of fraud is still at levels that I don't think would be considered to be appropriate, given the scale of the problem.

We're concerned that the government's proposals will also not achieve their budget cost savings. We know, from the last quarterly report, that the NDIS is growing at 11.3 per cent, up from 10.3 per cent, so it's actually heading in the wrong direction, despite all the efforts that they've made and the NDIA has made to try to bring those costs down. They had a growth target of eight per cent that they missed. They had a growth target of five to six per cent that they missed. They're now telling us that, through these changes, which are more back ended to the end of the decade, we're somehow going to get to two per cent or below two per cent. I'm very concerned that those budget savings were built into the budget long before these reforms were dreamt up.

Can I finish by encouraging all the stakeholders who've got an interest in this space to make sure that they get their submissions in. We will look at those very, very closely and propose amendments in the Senate.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 goes to the very heart of restoring the National Disability Insurance Scheme to what it was always intended to be—a system that supports Australians living with permanent and significant disability—while ensuring that it remains strong, fair and, very importantly, sustainable into the future and for generations to come. The NDIS is one of the most important social reforms in our nation's history. It was a once-in-a-generation change for the disability sector, and it's changed many, many lives. I was here in this House when the NDIS changes were made pre 2013, and I clearly recall sitting in the Speaker's chair, doing my shift on the Speaker's panel—as you are now, Deputy Speaker Chesters—when the bill finally went through. I remember the joy on the faces of Jenny Macklin, Julia Gillard and many others. It was an achievement that was going to change people's lives.

I also recall, way before the NDIS was being discussed, when it was just bits and pieces of ideas from the disability sector for how it could be funded. At the time, in 2005, Bill Shorten was the disability services shadow minister. He had visited my electorate, where we had a disability forum with members of the disability sector, people with disabilities, educators and parents to discuss a whole range of issues and how to better fund better services et cetera for people with disabilities. At that very meeting—it was held in Glenelg, in my old electorate of Hindmarsh, with about 100 people in the room—there was an idea that perhaps a disability insurance scheme should be looked at for the services and requirements of people with disabilities. Mr Shorten, at the time, was engaging with this idea at other forums as well. So I suspect that a bit of a role that I played was to plant the seed that day for the shadow minister, who then went on to become the minister. With Julia Gillard, who then took over, and Jenny Macklin, all of that was brought to fruition.

It was a very, very noble bill. It was a bill, as I said, that changed people's lives. It was there to give people dignity—people who perhaps don't have the same ability that we do to just get up in the morning to get dressed and go to work and who need assistance and help to be able to participate, whether it be at work or in the community, as a full member of our community. That's what the NDIS was designed to do—to give people the opportunities to be able to participate regardless of disabilities.

As I said, it has changed many, many lives. It's transformed lives. It's restored independence, and it's provided dignity, confidence and opportunities to hundreds of thousands of Australians and their families. For many, it represents not just support but also recognition from governments, government agencies and those that make the rules of the importance of offering support to people so they can participate and be fully fledged contributing members of the community. We've seen, as I said, many lives changed. It's also recognition that every Australian, regardless of their circumstances, deserves the opportunity to participate fully in our society.

But, of course, with a scheme of this scale and importance comes an equally significant responsibility—a responsibility to ensure that it works and is working as it was designed to work; a responsibility to ensure that support is being delivered to those who genuinely rely on it, those for whom it makes a difference and turns lives around; and a responsibility to ensure that the NDIS is protected so it can survive well into the future to service future generations of Australians. As I said, it's not just for those who depend on it today but also for those who will rely on it well into the future. If we fail to act at this point of time, when reform is needed, then we risk undermining the very system that Australians depend on.

This bill represents an important step forward in meeting that responsibility. It gives effect to key elements of a broader plan to restore the scheme's integrity, to bring it back to its original intent and to ensure that it continues to deliver meaningful outcomes for those that it was designed to support. When I read those words, it brings back memories of a forum in Glenelg where members of the disability sector were asking the then government to design something to give people support. I think of those people in that room who have turned their lives around since then because of the NDIS and have benefited from it. The bill introduces reforms that focus on the core foundations of the scheme—access, eligibility and planning—ensuring that decisions are clear, consistent and grounded in the needs of participants.

This bill strengthens the governance arrangements, improves transparency around pricing decisions and introduces more structured and effective planning frameworks. Importantly, it provides for the transitional arrangements necessary to support participants as changes are implemented, ensuring that no-one is left uncertain or unsupported through the process.

This bill also addresses a critical issue that has increasingly come to the forefront: the need to protect the scheme from misuse and ensure its long-term integrity. Fraud and noncompliance do not just the affect the system; they affect the lives of people in the system and all of us. They take resources away from those who need them the most. They undermine confidence in the scheme, and they place unnecessary pressure on the sustainability of the scheme. That is why this bill provides the NDIA with stronger powers to improve oversight, strengthen compliance and ensure that the scheme operates in a way that is fair, accountable and responsible. It's about ensuring that the NDIS remains compassionate but also consistent, that it is supportive but also sustainable and that it continues to deliver for those who depend on it most, without compromising its future. The NDIS is more than a program. As I said earlier, it is a promise, and it is our responsibility to ensure that that promise is kept today, tomorrow and, importantly, for many generations to come.

In my federal electorate of Adelaide, I see firsthand how important the NDIS is because my office deals with participants—as your office does, Deputy Speaker Chesters, and many other offices do—and their families every single day. More often than not, they're not coming to us because everything is working well. They usually come to us because they need help either navigating the system or cutting through to the services that they require. They're coming to us because something in the system has not worked the way that it should have, and we hear from constituents who feel overwhelmed navigating that system.

It is a complex system. Those of you who deal with it in your electorate offices see the complexity of it. It's everything from families struggling to understand changes to their plans to, most concerningly, people who feel vulnerable in a system that was meant to protect them. We've seen cases where providers take advantage of those who are most at risk. We've seen the frustration from participants who believe their funding has perhaps been reduced without clear explanation or whose changing circumstances aren't being properly recognised. These are not isolated incidences in the electorate office. They're the real experiences of people in my community, and they highlight something important: while the NDIS has changed lives, it must also be strengthened to work better for the people it serves and for those it was designed to serve. That is why these reforms matter so much.

Securing the NDIS is not about sustainability; it's about fairness. It's about ensuring that participants across Australia and in my electorate and my community can trust the system. It's about making sure that supports are delivered where they're needed. It's about stopping the kind of behaviour that undermines confidence in the scheme. Stronger action on fraud and compliance, clearer eligibility and better planning processes will help restore that balance. There've also been calls for more practical safeguards, including placing limits on what providers can charge. We've seen unscrupulous providers charging exorbitant fees that, outside this system, would be much cheaper. I've seen that firsthand. We need to ensure that those participants are not overburdened and that the funding is used in the way that it was intended: to service people with disabilities.

Ultimately, these reforms are about making the system work better on the ground and not just in theory. They're about protecting people who rely on the scheme, they're about restoring confidence for those people and their families, and they're about ensuring that, when someone turns to the NDIS for the support that they need, they're met with fairness, clarity and care. For the people in my electorate of Adelaide who depend on it, it's not just the policy; it's their daily life. It's their everyday life, and it's core. This bill is about protecting one of the most important social commitments this country has ever made. The NDIS is not just a program; as I said, it's a promise. It's a promise to Australians living with permanent, significant disability that they will be supported, that they will be included and that they will be given the opportunity to live with the dignity and independence that they deserve.

But, for that promise to endure, we need the scheme to be sustainable, and that's what this bill is all about. It must be fair, it must be accountable and it must work as it was always intended to—that is, supporting those who need it the most. That's why these reforms truly matter. Securing the NDIS means more than just managing the costs; it means restoring confidence, strengthening integrity and ensuring the support is delivered where it is genuinely needed. It means tackling the fraud and stopping misuse, clarifying access and eligibility, improving planning and ensuring quality services for participants.

We've already seen the importance of acting responsibly. Growth in the scheme has been unsustainable. Without intervention, it would have continued to place pressure not just on the system but on the very people it is designed to support. Without action, it will collapse. It may go on for a few years, but, without action—such as this bill—it could collapse. That would have been very detrimental. This bill builds on the work strengthening governance, improving safeguards and implementing those reforms that reflect the recommendations of independent reviews that have been done and the voices of the disability community itself. Importantly, this work was not done in isolation. The government remains committed to working with people with disability, their families, their carers and the broader community because the success of the NDIS depends on trust, cooperation, a shared responsibility and sustainability.

Australians expect the NDIS to continue transforming lives, as it should, and they expect it to provide certainty. They expect it to provide dignity, and they expect it to be here not just today but in the years ahead so generations of people can have the facilities and be serviced in a way that provides that dignity. It's more than just reform. It's about responsibility, and that's what this government is doing. It's about protecting one of the most significant social agreements this nation has ever made and ensuring it endures with strength, fairness and integrity.

This is so important because the NDIS is not just the policy; it is a lifeline. It is the difference between isolation and inclusion, between dependence and independence, between uncertainty and dignity. If we get this right, we secure that promise for generations of Australians who will one day rely on it and for those who already rely on it. But, if we fail to act, we risk weakening the very system that so many depend on. This moment, this bill and these reforms truly matter because securing the NDIS is not about— (Time expired)

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. The NDIS is a vital program that people in Indi and across the nation value deeply. Before entering this place, I spent most of my career as a nurse, midwife and rural health researcher in a pre-NDIS healthcare system. From that perspective, I know how far we've come in improving care, support and opportunity for people with a disability.

I regularly hear from constituents in Indi about the independence, the dignified care and the opportunities that the NDIS has given them and their loved ones. Patricia from Benalla wrote to me recently about her adult son, Pete, who has cerebral palsy. Thanks to the NDIS, Pete has been able to access additional therapies that have significantly increased his function, including support from an occupational therapist who helped Pete learn how to feed himself. Patricia said, 'I don't know how we would have learnt this without NDIS support.' The NDIS, as we know right across the chamber, is literally a life-changing program. Stories like this show what is at stake and why we must protect the NDIS for the long term.

I think we can all acknowledge that, for the long-term viability of the NDIS, it does require structural reform. It's simply not sustainable for the scheme to continue to grow at its current rate. It's already supporting close to double the number of participants it was designed for. That's not to say people don't need and deserve support; they absolutely do. But what kind of support? The NDIS was never meant to be everything to everyone, but it's now so large that it's crowded out a lot of other services and programs. For too many people and their families, it doesn't matter if a NDIS plan is really the best option, because, frankly, it's the only option there is. I know of a 23-year-old man who's currently supported by Mansfield Autism Statewide Services. He receives a small amount of funding for help with things like job applications, grocery shopping and attending community events. A small amount of support is all that's needed to make sure this young man doesn't become isolated, underemployed and, indeed, hungry. At the moment, there is really nowhere else to get this kind of support outside of the NDIS, especially in regional towns.

Of course, there are concerns about fraud and rorting. We've all heard about services that go from $30 to $200 as soon as those four letters are mentioned. Dodgy providers are ripping off not just the taxpayer but also Australians with disabilities. Something has to change.

The question is whether the bill before us makes the right kinds of changes and strikes the right kind of balance, and I'm not entirely confident that it does. This bill proposes significant changes to the way the NDIS operates. Schedule 2 of the bill contains measures for fraud and integrity. These include improvements to the NDIS regulatory and information-gathering powers and the minimum record-keeping requirements in relation to payments and receipts. There'll be new civil penalties for things like providing false information to the NDIA. The timeframe to submit a claim will be reduced from two years to 90 days from the date of service.

Schedule 2 also expands mandatory registration requirements for providers delivering personal care. There are more than 275,000 active NDIS providers in Australia, and just six per cent of them are registered. It's staggering. Not only do NDIS providers receive public funding; they regularly interact with some of the most vulnerable people in our community, often in deeply personal settings. It's not unreasonable for there to be an accreditation process. Now, I understand some providers are concerned about the impact of these changes, particularly the financial burden that registration may place on small operators. The registration requirements won't come into effect until 1 July 2027, and I urge the government to engage with providers during this period to minimise these costs where possible.

For the most part, these are sensible, welcome changes that seek to improve quality and accountability under the scheme. Providers in Indi have told me that the streamlined payment system in particular could be game changing, making it easier to upload invoices and be paid promptly for services they deliver. But, as with so much of this bill, the devil may not be in this legislation but in how it is operationalised in reality, especially in thinner regional markets.

Schedule 1 makes radical changes to NDIS access and plans. As I've said, the NDIS is worth radical change if that's what's required, but I have concerns with many of these changes. The bill creates a new power for the minister to reduce funding for certain support types as a whole, not in response to individual circumstances but for every single participant. The government have said this power will only be used in relation to two categories: social and community participation, and certain capacity-building supports. But the power is not limited to those areas. There are no guardrails to prevent it being used in the future to reduce funding for essential personal care, allied health services or equipment. People with disability deserve certainty that funding approved for daily living will not be reduced below what they need, and I intend to move an amendment that prevents this ministerial power from being used to reduce funding for support to complete activities of daily living.

The legislation tightens the meaning of permanence by reducing access where an impairment is otherwise considered treatable. The NDIS was established to support people with permanent and ongoing disability, and, in principle, that's what Australians expect it to do. But the practical effect of this change matters. As drafted, the bill creates an extra barrier for people in rural and regional Australia, because it requires them to have undertaken 'all appropriate treatment'. Aside from the question of who determines whether a treatment is appropriate and on what clinical basis—which we're told will be considered in the future by an expert group that doesn't yet exist—this completely fails to account for whether treatments are genuinely accessible and available. In fact, new subsection 25A(2) explicitly states that a treatment might still be appropriate for someone whose geographical or financial circumstances actually prevent them from accessing it. So, of course, I'll be moving an amendment to reverse this provision and provide clarity that supports may not be appropriate if there are none nearby or if they're completely unaffordable.

The bill clarifies that a person won't be eligible for the NDIS in relation to an impairment for which they have access to an alternative scheme. These include work cover and state and territory motor vehicle compensation schemes, and I've no objection to that. But the bill goes on to enable the minister to prescribe any other alternative. It's not clear what the government has in mind or whether something prescribed would be a genuine alternative to the NDIS. I'll be moving an amendment to require the minister to consider whether an alternative is reasonably available and accessible.

The bill introduces new considerations when assessing reasonable and necessary supports, largely to do with cost comparisons and value for money. However, in relation to whether a support is likely to be effective and beneficial for a participant, the bill establishes a hierarchy of evidence that makes it a statutory requirement to give greater weight to general evidence than to evidence of the participant's own outcomes using that support in the past. In fact, it goes on to enable certain kinds of evidence to be ignored completely. I'll move an amendment to remove these provisions. Where evidence is available, it should be considered and weighed up on its merits.

The bill includes a definition of 'functional capacity', a new concept that will be central to the operation of new eligibility requirements. However, the definition is just a shell. It's subject to rules that may set out any matter whatsoever. There's almost no point in discussing it, because it will mean whatever the government says it means in the rules.

Schedule 3 includes amendments in relation to scheme governance, pricing and automated decision-making. The bill would allow the minister to set the prices that providers charge for NDIS supports, and the bill explicitly provides for pricing to be differentiated based on location and remoteness. While the NDIA must provide pricing advice, there is no requirement for that advice to be made public. The minister may act reasonably on that advice, but without transparency it'll be difficult to build trust in the use of this power. I'll therefore move an amendment to require the NDIA's advice to be tabled in the parliament. I'll also support others' reasonable amendments that expand on what the minister must consider in making a pricing determination, including its impact on thin markets and regional areas.

Schedule 3 also deals with automated decision-making. I'm not opposed to harnessing technology to improve efficiency. There are hundreds of thousands of NDIS claims every single day, and we should be looking for every opportunity to streamline, operationalise and optimise how they're processed. But I'm worried about automated decision-making—not data-matching or calculations but substituting a computer program for a human being making a judgement, exercising a discretion or forming a state of mind. These are described in the bill as 'evaluative actions' and they are categorically allowed to be automated.

To its credit, the bill establishes very clear requirements for the development of standard operating procedures, setting out exactly how this will occur. Decisions can only be automated where the CEO is satisfied the circumstances are sufficiently objective that their existence or non-existence can be ascertained by a computer program. But we don't have an opportunity to see these operating procedures. It's not clear how the CEO might satisfy themselves as to the objectivity of a decision or what safeguards will be in place if the computer gets it wrong. At first, automated decision-making will apply to a limited set of provisions in the act, but that list can be expanded at any time in the legislative instrument.

A striking feature of this bill is how much it doesn't say. There is so much crucial detail that is left to be addressed in rules determined by the minister or considered by the technical advisory group that the government has said it will establish but about which little else is known. The NDIS is incredibly complex, and I accept there is a lot of detail that may not be appropriate to capture in primary legislation. But we are being asked to vote on this bill with only the barest of road maps for how all the blanks will be filled in, and by whom and when.

What's most apparent to me in reading this bill is that it does not address the reality of life with disability in an electorate like mine. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the new definition of 'appropriate supports', which explicitly says that it does not matter if you can't access a support because of where you live or how much money you earn. I'll move an amendment to rectify that particular subsection, but its inclusion speaks volumes about how little thought has been given to regional Australia.

A sustainable NDIS should not be built on the inaccessibility of services. Real sustainability means investing in workforce and service delivery so that participants can access the supports they need. The reality on the ground is already difficult. In Indi, around 5,600 people are on the NDIS. Plan utilisation across most of Indi is below the state average. In Strathbogie, package utilisation is 63 per cent. In Murrindindi, it's 65 per cent. And that's not because demand is low; it's because the workforce is not there to meet people's needs.

I'm not convinced the bill will address these problems for my constituents. While it's clear that the NDIS is too important to fail, it's also so important to get these reforms right. The NDIS has transformed lives in Indi and across the country, and it deserves and needs reforms that strengthen its foundations—and I'd like to the parliament to work collaboratively to achieve that. I encourage the government to consider my amendments to ensure the scheme remains responsive to the needs and dignity of people with disability. I expect there will be a number of reasonable, constructive amendments to the bill, and I very much hope the government will give them serious thought.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be granted leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed if she requests.