I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that despite the Government increasing the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) workforce by more than 5,700 public servants since the 2022 election, participant complaints, funding disputes, fraud investigations and demands on parliamentary electorate offices continue to grow;

(2) further notes with concern, the increasing seriousness and urgency of matters being raised, including cases involving loss of essential supports, participant safety, housing insecurity, hospital discharge delays and risks to health and wellbeing;

(3) expresses concern that administrative failures within the NDIA are placing an increasing burden on carers, providers, support workers and electorate offices, to resolve participant matters that should be addressed promptly by the NDIA; and

(4) calls on the Government to:

(a) urgently reduce the backlog of reviews, reassessments and participant decisions;

(b) prioritise participant-facing service and decision-making roles over administrative growth;

(c) reduce waste, inefficiency and unnecessary bureaucracy within the NDIA;

(d) strengthen accountability, timeliness and transparency in decision-making; and

(e) ensure that investment in staffing, technology and artificial intelligence delivers better and more timely outcomes for participants rather than greater administrative burden.

On this side of the floor, we know that bigger government doesn't necessarily mean better outcomes, and nowhere is this more obvious and evident than in the National Disability Insurance Agency.

I understand the logic here. You think putting more staff means more hands on deck, which should mean that those decks are cleared more swiftly and more effectively, but anyone working in an electorate office right now—it's a job that I would not like to do. It's a very difficult job, but we've got great people doing it. Anyone in an electorate office right now will tell you that they have never received more urgent and justifiable pleas for assistance from their constituents than they have in the past few months. Electorate staff have increasingly become an emergency escalation point at levels that they have not experienced before, particularly in regional seats like mine in Cowper. You've got to ask how that can be.

The NDIA has more than doubled its public service workforce since 2022, from just over 5,000 to a whopping 11,052. They've doubled it. They're now working on the federal scheme at a federal level, and they should be clearing it at twice the rate. This isn't just anecdotal feedback. You only have to look at the complaints lodged over a three-year period to see the outcome erosion in black and white.

As of 30 June 2024, around 71 per cent of requests undertaken that year were completed within 60 days. Seventy-one percent—that's not too bad. But that number fell to 54 per cent in June 2025 and then fell to just 30 per cent by 20 December 2025—30 per cent! It's a disgrace, considering that the workforce has doubled. These stats are taken from the government's own performance dashboard, and we need to remember these aren't just numbers on a page or a screen. These are people in need waiting for months and months and months for care, desperate care and, in many cases, people who have previously received care and have been unceremoniously cut off. We've all had examples of that.

Again, you just need to look at the government's own reports to validate this. The latest report shows a clear split between simpler front-end decisions and more complex matters for existing participants. Only 48 per cent of internal reviews were completed within 60 days, and only 32 per cent of participant requested assessments and 44 per cent of scheduled reassessments were completed on time. With the further impending changes to the scheme, this situation is only going to get worse. Foundational supports are capped at $10 billion over five years, jointly funded by the Commonwealths and states. Thriving Kids accounts for $4 billion of that amount, but not all states have signed up to the Thriving Kids, leaving implementation gaps.

Continued poor transition and implementation rollouts like these—we've seen service restrictions and closures and workforce losses and gaps in support, particularly in regional communities. This issue has to be addressed. Today, I'm calling on the government to publish the size and age-of-review reassessment and decision backlogs, show how many additional staff are participating in face-to-face roles and what results and efficiencies they have delivered, provide transparency over service standards for decisions, reviews and complaints, and report performance publicly. The government has doubled the NDIA workforce and is now reshaping how billions of dollars in disability support are delivered, but the results for participants most in need are already speaking for themselves. The government are failing on the NDIS, and they need to do better.

Is there a seconder for this motion?

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

I've got to say, when I hear the opposition talk about the NDIS, it really is a lesson in absolute rank hypocrisy that they come into this chamber with this motion. Because it is such a huge problem that we've been left with, it's difficult to know exactly where to start. But why don't I start at the beginning? I'd like to remind people that I had a life outside of politics. I worked on sheep and cattle stations. I ran a construction company. I had my own small businesses, which succeeded to various degrees. I say that as preface to the fact that I also worked for Senator Murray Watt from 2018 onwards.

The significance about 2018 is that that's when we really saw the NDIS begin to roll out. The member for Cowper talks about the strain on electorate offices. What I saw from the vantage point of being an electorate officer was a system that failed from the beginning, and it failed to have the support of the government. All of the problems that existed in 2018 when the scheme was really in its infancy expanded as the scheme expanded. What we were left with in 2022 was a scheme that was growing at about 22 per cent, something completely and utterly unsustainable. For the member for Cowper to talk about concern about administrative failures, to somehow blame the administration of the NDIA, is just a complete and utter inability of self-examination to realise it is them, their legislative failures and their policy failures that have left this government and our community with something which should be so good but for so many people has been so bad.

I know that from personal experience. My own son—Riley, 22—is autistic. I don't often talk about my family, but he's asked me to talk about this. He is somebody that probably doesn't need supports in the NDIS. He probably needs a little bit of help around the house and a little bit of help with daily living. But at the end of the day was the NDIS really designed for somebody like my son Riley? It is the question that we have to ask when we've got a scheme which was essentially designed for 95,000 Queenslanders. How have we ended up with a scheme with 175,000 Queenslanders? How did we end up with that?

That is because of the failure of the previous government to actually do the work of implementing it. I don't know what it was. They were too scared to touch it, completely and utterly negligent, or both. They just let it run completely off the rails to the point where it does cause absolute heartache for parents. I spent probably half an hour yesterday talking to a mum with carer burnout, and carer burnout is real. It is to the point where she's getting up multiple times in the night to clean the bum of her 14-year-old daughter. She has just had enough. She has had enough trying to deal with a system that actually in some way exacerbates that carer burnout.

That is not because of the administrative failures of the NDIA. It is not because of the fact that they are somehow negligent in the way that they carry out their duties. It's because they have been landed with a dog of a system. There are really two ways that you can look at it. I think it's the job of this place. Either there are administrative failures where the legislation is not being carried out properly or there is a problem with the legislation itself. It took this government to fix that problem. Many of the problems that we have seen, which we do see in electorate offices every day, I think are going to be solved by the fact that that we are now going to be able to take a more consistent approach to assessing people's needs, which is what should have happened back in 2018, by the way.

We are going to take a more consistent approach to eligibility, and we are going to support the supports that should exist outside of the NDIS as well for people like my autistic adult son. There are so many things in this motion that really just show a complete lack of self-reflection. One of them though, the one that I'll finish up with, is when they talk about fraud. There is one stunning figure which we know now. This government does more reviews into claims at the NDIA every single day than the previous government did in a single year. I oppose this motion with its hypocrisy, and I urge members to vote against it.

I rise to second the motion moved by the member for Cowper. This motion calls for the desperate need to fix the National Disability Insurance Agency and find a better deal for the Australians who depend on it. In Hinkler, we have 6½ thousand NDIS participants, placing us among the top 25 electorates in the country. That's 6½ thousand people whose independence, support and wellbeing depend on timely decisions that are right for them. Yet every day my offices in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay receive complaints from people struggling to get answers. Participants are waiting for reviews, carers are chasing decisions, and providers are delivering essential services without certainty they will be paid. Behind each complaint is a person. Behind each delay is a family trying to hold things together.

Take Simone. Her internal review remains unresolved, while essential supports continue despite insufficient funding to pay the providers. Those supports are needed now. The bills do not stop arriving while the NDIA considers her case. Aaron has had his support hours reduced and is seeking a review of the decision to cut his funding. He needs assistance but is now trying to manage with less support while he waits for answers. Then there's Dean, who has severe agoraphobia, complex PTSD and level 2 autism, with significant sensory processing needs. After spending time in a Hervey Bay facility, Dean was released into homelessness. He is concerned the assessors have not given appropriate weight to his medical, functional and risk evidence. These cases show why timely decisions matter. We're talking about essential supports, participant safety and whether someone has a secure place to live. Across Australia, electorate offices are dealing with increasingly urgent matters, including housing insecurity, delayed hospital discharges, exhausted funding and risks to health and wellbeing. The burden falls on participants, carers, providers and support workers. It also falls on parliamentary officers trying to resolve matters that should be addressed promptly by the agency itself.

Labor has more than doubled the NDIA workforce since 2022. Staff numbers rose from around 5,300 to over 11,000 in 2025, an increase of about 110 per cent. In 2025 alone, the agency added another 1,900 staff, including more than 400 executive-level employees. With that increase, Australians should expect faster decisions, clearer answers and fewer disputes. The government must explain why, even with the more than doubling of the workforce in the past four years, so many existing participants are still left waiting. The reporting shows that 96 per cent of access decisions and more than 97 per cent of first plans were completed within the required timeframe. In contrast, only 48 per cent of internal reviews were completed within 60 days, and only 32 per cent of some participant requested reassessments and 44 per cent of scheduled reassessments were completed on time. The agency is doing better at processing entry into the scheme than resolving complex problems for people already relying on it.

These delays have real consequences for families in Hinkler. Even contacting the agency can become another hurdle. Its enhanced identity authentication process requires identity, authority and consent to be rechecked for each phone contact. Safeguards do matter, but the process must allow authorised representatives to help people resolve urgent problems. People should not have to turn to their local MP simply to find out where a review stands. My staff will continue helping our community, but the agency must take responsibility for its own decisions and delays. Families already managing disability should not have to spend their time repeatedly explaining their circumstances, chasing paperwork and wondering whether the support they rely on will still be available. This motion sets out what the government needs to do—publish the size and age of review, reassessment and decision backlogs; show how many additional staff are working directly with participants and what improvements they have delivered; make service standards for decisions, reviews and complaints transparent and report publicly; and do not remove or reduce supports before viable alternatives are funded, staffed and operating.

The government cannot measure success by staff numbers, announcements or claimed savings. It must answer for the services Australians receive. The test is whether people get the right support from a viable provider without months of delay. Simone, Aaron and Dean and thousands of others like them deserve answers. They deserve certainty and a fairer go, and I commend the motion to the House.

The NDIS was built on a fundamental Australian value: fairness. It's built on the idea that, where we can, we help each other, support each other and build communities where everyone has the opportunity to lead a fulfilling life. Since it was introduced as a pilot program in my region, the Geelong region, the scheme has changed the lives of so many people with disability, their families and carers, and the people who have helped make this possible are those who work at the National Disability Insurance Agency. Many of these people are from my region, across the Bellarine and the Surf Coast, working at the NDIA head office in Geelong. They care and they work hard and they want to get things right for people with disability and their families. Those workers deserve our support, not criticism.

When the Albanese government came to office, we inherited a scheme that had been neglected for a decade. Costs were rising, wait times were a problem and the NDIA lacked the workforce and oversight needed to manage a scheme that was growing year on year. Around 2020, hundreds of staff in senior executive positions at the NDIA were engaged through labour hire. Labour hire can lead to instability and high turnover—two things you don't want when it comes to senior executive roles. Importantly, people with disability deserve better when they're trying to access support through the NDIS.

We have taken a different approach. The Albanese government has invested in more than 1,000 additional frontline NDIA staff, strengthening the capacity of the agency to support participants and manage the scheme properly. As Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on the NDIS, I chaired an inquiry into the NDIA'S capability and culture. During hearings, we heard about the dedication of its workers, alongside the areas where the agency needed to improve. We can all acknowledge those shortcomings without belittling the people working to address them.

In the June quarter this year, more than 96 per cent of participants received their first plan within the participant service guarantees timeframe; more than 96 per cent received an access decision within 21 days; 79 per cent received a decision within 14 days of providing additional information; and 97 per cent of home and living applications were closed within 90 days. We know there is more to do. Anyone who has waited too long for support knows that, but these results matter and so does the work of the people delivering them. In the same quarter, there were 10,867 participant complaints, equivalent to 5.1 per cent of active participants. That was the lowest complaints rate in two years. New participant critical incidents also fell from 3.1 per cent in September 2025 to 2.6 per cent in June 2026, and the NDIA's national contact centre recorded customer satisfaction of 93 per cent. The coalition should be thanking those staff and not attacking them.

Importantly, we are also fixing the problems the coalition failed to address. In October 2022, an NDIS participant who was medically ready to leave hospital waited, on average, 34 days to be discharged. By June 2026, that average had fallen to 15 days, with a median of zero days. That means more people are returning home to their families sooner.

We are also taking fraud seriously. The Australian National Audit Office found that, under the coalition, the NDIS lacked basic controls to prevent fraud and noncompliance. That came through loud and clear in the NDIS committee's integrity inquiry. In response to our inquiry and as part of the government's work to tidy up the coalition's mess, we invested more than $1.35 billion in tackling fraud and noncompliance, introduced whistleblower protections and banned kickbacks and inducements. On top of that, the Fraud Fusion Taskforce has launched more than 600 investigations, with close to 100 operations underway, and has referred 50 people to court.

In closing, we are focused on securing the future of the NDIS and doing that alongside people with disability and their families. Of course, there's more to do. The Albanese government will keep strengthening the scheme alongside participants and their families and ensuring the NDIS remains there for those who most need it.

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.