Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

There is a saying very well-known to disabled people here in Australia. It is simply this: 'Nothing about us without us.' Its simplicity belies its radical nature. It's a statement that, when it comes to the systems and processes that shape our lives, we must be included in those decision-making processes—in fact, that we must lead the policy discussions in relation to disability policy. It's not a high bar or a hard ask. It is certainly that which should be able to be expected by disabled people, their families and organisations of a government that has under its responsibility a scheme as transformational and impactful to disabled people as the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and, indeed, has carriage and care for the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. This is a simple bar that the government has not risen to in this piece of legislation, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Streamlined Governance) Bill 2019. In fact, their conduct in relation to this bill has been the diametric opposite of those most basic of expectations.

Let's just go through it. This ridiculous bill, for which nobody can seem to draw a direct line to it coming from anywhere other than the mind of the minister, went to an inquiry and at that inquiry disabled people and their organisations gave their view, and their view was unanimous that this legislation should not pass, yet this government comes in here this afternoon and attempts to go ahead anyway. I ask you: Whom did they talk to? Whom did they consult with?

Did they consult with people with disabilities in Australia? No. Did they consult with the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations? No. Did they consult with children and young people with disabilities in Australia? No. Did they speak to Carolyn Frohmader, from Women With Disabilities Australia? No. Did they speak to Dwayne Cranfield from the National Ethnic Disability Alliance? No. Not a single organisation did this minister reach out to. They unanimously came before the inquiry and said: do not do this. And your response has been: we will do it anyway. Shame on you. What gives you the idea? I have spent two years in here talking a lot about disability issues and our experience in Australia. And one of the things that has never failed to stun me is the arrogance shown by the non-disabled folks in this place in their belief that they can speak for, and craft policy on behalf of, disabled people and their family and organisations without talking to disabled people. It is a stunning arrogance that seems, more and more, to be given form by this minister and his attitude to his portfolio.

Let's be absolutely crystal clear about what this bill does. This bill enables the minister to stack the board of the NDIS and the Independent Advisory Council. That is its purpose, that is its mission, that is why the government is working so hard to pass it through. The NDIS was a scheme founded upon transformational principles. It still retains the possibility of transforming the lives of the four million disabled people who live in Australia. Yet under this government six years have gone by—six years of failure, broken promises and stress beyond belief. At the core of that problem has been the government's appointment to the board of the agency of people who don't know what they are doing—people from organisations that wouldn't know a social security program based on a social model of disability if it painted itself purple and danced naked in front of them. We have hospitality chiefs, people from PwC, people from McKinsey and people from the institutions which live like pilot fish off this government, swarming into this board. This board has made decision after decision that has put profit and so-called efficiencies before disabled people and their rights, resulting in a scheme that is broken to the extent that $4.6 billion in allocated funds was not expended. That is bloody convenient given that that was just the right amount to get this crew of economic vandals over the line and back into the so-called black.

I honestly can say that I entered this job with the hope and belief that, when presented with facts and information and the voice of community, there may well be an ability to craft a bipartisan agenda when it came to the NDIS. I reserved judgement on the new minister, hoping that his appointment to a dedicated portfolio signalled a fundamental shift in this government's approach to the scheme. I met with him in good faith and shared my views with him frankly and openly. However, this piece of legislation shows that he was not listening. He did not pick up the phone and talk to the folks who would have told him what the impact of his decisions were and what the views of the community that is affected by this legislation were. If you cannot pass the basic metric of talking to the people affected by the legislation you are crafting, then you have no business being in any portfolio within a hundred million miles of social policy.

There's much debate yet to come on this piece of legislation. However, the reality of the Senate is that numbers mean so much in this place. We would not be debating this bill at all if the government didn't think it had a chance of getting it through. It thinks it has a chance of getting it through because it thinks it has secured the support of Centre Alliance. It thinks it has secured the support of Centre Alliance because Centre Alliance's portfolio holder in this area, Ms Sharkie, the member for Mayo, has indicated that they will support this legislation when it comes to a vote.

A couple of weeks back, when this legislation was so comprehensively condemned by disabled people, I had much hope in my heart about our ability in this place to act as a house of review to check the government's arrogance, as we so often are called to do, and to send a clear message to this government that, should it bring the bill forward, the bill would fail. I had this confidence based on the fact that I have in the past done much good work with Centre Alliance in relation to disability, particularly with Ms Sharkie. So I approached conversations with her and her office expecting to find the friend and ally of the disability community that I had so often found in them and their team. I have been very distressed and disappointed to discover that that has not been not the case.

I have had over the course of this week many a conversation with Ms Sharkie and her office and, where once I found, on the issue of disability, a community representative of compassion and care willing to engage with the substance of legislation, instead I found a politician whose only response was that she had already given a commitment to the government which she was not willing to break. No matter how many times I have had the conversation about the impact of this legislation during the course of this week, no matter how many times disabled advocates have rung her office—and, good Lord, countless individuals have rung her office, begging that team to change its mind—they have steadfastly refused to do so. I remain of the opinion that Centre Alliance are, on the whole, good people—better than many who often occupy these benches. However, they are about to make a bad decision, and I do not believe it is a decision which the people of Mayo support.

The NDIS has the potential to be a fundamentally transformational scheme. It has the ability to empower participants to live lives of purpose and dignity in their own time and on their own terms. It was brought about because of the comprehensive failures of the state based systems. There still remains an opportunity for the scheme to be that which people need it to be, but it cannot be that. It will continue to be mutilated if the corporatisation of the scheme is allowed to continue, and that is what this bill facilitates. It greases the wheels of the corporatisation of the scheme when there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that that will create better outcomes for participants. And after the debacle that has been the preparation for this legislation, after the steadfast refusal of the minister to countenance the views of disabled people, I have to ask the chamber: is this really a man which this place would like to give more power to to unilaterally appoint folks to the board of the agency—a bloke that apparently can't pick up the phone to the frightfully small number of national organisations which represent disability and our families at the federal level, a bloke who can't read a dissenting report, it seems, which so clearly sets out concerns? This is not the kind of person that we want to grant additional powers to.

At such a critical moment in the scheme's life, when so much is going wrong, we in this place, now more than ever, need to be guided by the voices of disabled people. Disabled people were saying to us very clearly this afternoon: 'Do not vote for this piece of legislation. Vote it down.' I would ask all of us in this place, before we cast our vote, to consider what gives us the belief that we are in a position to ignore those views? How can we truly say that we are representing the community if we are willing to simply brush aside those opinions because they're inconvenient, because they don't meet the script that we've written for ourselves about how to act in this area, because they're not what the agenda that we've laid out for ourselves looks like? That's not what the Australian people want to see from this place. They want to see us listen and they want to see us make life easier for people who are struggling.

A tremendous effort has been expended by disabled people in this week alone. Hundreds of calls have been made to MPs across this chamber on this one question. Advocates have spent hours, backwards and forwards, on phone calls, trying to convince this minister, trying to convince Centre Alliance at a time when—do you know what, folks?—we've got other things that are also really bloody pressing. We've got a royal commission, and each one of us, each one of the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of us, are trying to process how to put into words the pain and suffering and violence that we've been subjected to. But we're not allowed to be alone with that and to deal with it. The organisations that represent us are not being given the space to prepare for that deep work, that deep supportive work. This government have brought in here an administrative bill that's part of a long-term agenda to turn it over to their appointed mates—in many the same way, I have to add, that has now transpired with the AAT, that absolute administrative nightmare. It seems to be the sole preserve of whichever particular MP that feels like it to stack his friends onto the bloody thing.