Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make three quick points, and I've made these points before—as Senator Steele-John has made, as Senator Reynolds has made, as Senator Hughes has made and as we continue to make on Mondays of sitting weeks.

The first point, for people in the gallery who are watching this debate: what is happening is that both the Greens and the coalition are seeking crucial additional information in relation to the sustainability of one of the country's most important social programs—that is, the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We're seeking further information with respect to how sustainable the program is given the cuts that were announced, of $74 billion over the next 10 years, by the relevant minister and by the Labor government at the time of the last budget. What the Greens and the coalition are seeking are the actuarial documents, the key supporting documents, for those cuts of $74 billion. How was that figure calculated? What was the basis upon it being calculated? And, as Senator Reynolds has frequently said: if you are going to cut funding from a scheme like the NDIS you are either going to cut the number of participants or going to cut the amount that is spent per participant. There's no other way to do it.

We're seeking the key documents which form the evidential base upon which the government has sought to cut $74 billion from that scheme, and the government refuses to provide those documents to the Senate. We're not seeking those documents for ourselves; we're seeking them for you. We're seeking them for the current participants in the scheme and for future participants in the scheme and their families who try to get them onto the scheme. That's why we're seeking those documents. That's our job as a Senate, as a house of scrutiny, as a house of review: to seek those documents so that we can examine them and ask questions of the government in relation to their assumptions based on the evidential base, and the government is refusing to provide those documents to us.

The second point I want to make is in relation to the basis upon which the government continues to refuse to provide those documents. As Senator Reynolds said, it's on the basis of what's called a public interest immunity claim—that, amongst other things, the release of those documents could harm the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states. It's an absolutely nonsensical argument in my view. How can the release of an evidential base for a decision made in the budget harm relations between the Commonwealth and the state?

Let's just talk about the relations between the Commonwealth and the state in the context of this debate at the moment. This is a quote from the last day or so that was published in the Guardian from the Labor Premier of New South Wales with respect to the scheme:

If Bill Shorten wants to remove people from the NDIS, he can do it.

This is the Labor Premier, Chris Minns. He continues:

What he can't say is the states will take up the services because we handed over both our public servants and our money to the commonwealth a decade ago for them to run it—

to manage the scheme.

That's what the Labor Premier, Chris Minns, said. The state premiers and the minister are at each other's throats already in relation to this. How would agreeing to the Senate's requests to release this information have a negative impact on the relationship between the Commonwealth and the states? It wouldn't. The evidence is clear that the claim of public interest immunity is spurious.

I come back to the original point. This is one of Australia's most important social programs. In the last budget the government announced they were cutting $74 billion from it over the next 10 years, and they refused to provide this Senate—to provide you—with the evidential basis for that. That's the reason for the debate we're having at the moment, and that is the reason why the Greens and the coalition and, no doubt, other members of the crossbench are seeking that information from the government.

Question agreed to.