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

In April 2023, the so-called leaders of the Australian nation—the Prime Minister, the premiers and the chief ministers of this country—met to conduct a national cabinet, and at that National Cabinet they discussed how they were going to cut billions of dollars from our NDIS. In response, and immediately, the Greens, together with the rest of the Senate, demanded to know precisely what had been discussed at that meeting. They demanded to know the documentation, the records, kept of that meeting. In response to those demands, this Labor government refused, so the Greens and the Senate took the unprecedented step of demanding that one of the most senior cabinet ministers in the government attend the Senate at the beginning of every single sitting period to either disclose the documents requested or provide us with a satisfactory response. Month after month, for nearly a year, the government has refused to do either. We've no documents and no satisfactory answers.

We are nearly at the end of the parliamentary year. There are but two weeks left before the government and the opposition go away for their Christmas break. I had hoped that today we might get something more substantial—that we might get answers, that we might get documents—but no. Yet again, there's refusal from this government to provide the basic information as to what was agreed a year ago when politicians got in a room behind closed doors and talked about how to cut billions from our NDIS.

Although the silence by this government continues, their actions are now speaking far more loudly than their words ever could. Recently it has been revealed that, in the last six or so weeks of Labor's NDIS, this Labor government has conducted over 7,000 reassessments of eligibility of NDIS participants. Eighty per cent of those reassessments have been of children. 'What is the outcome of those reassessments?' people may indeed wonder. Well, 50 per cent of these reassessments result in kids or participants of other ages getting kicked off. And there is more data that the agency is yet to reveal.

These approaches, these decisions and these massive cuts are often what are driving the perverse glee that is on the faces of so many Treasury department bean-counters and ministers in this Labor government. The cuts that we are seeing—the kids being kicked off the scheme—are why the government has recently been able to update by a billion dollars their forecast of how much they will cut from the NDIS by 2028. They're now so proud to share with the community that by 2028 they will have cut $20 billion worth of funding and supports from disabled people and their families.

This is a disgrace. It is causing so much fear. This Labor government is sending over a thousand letters out to disabled people and their families informing them that they are being reassessed and that, if people wish to provide additional evidence, they have but 28 days to do so. There is so much fear. It's totally unacceptable.