Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I want to shine a light on a Tasmanian organisation that has quietly held our community together for generations: St.Giles. Many in the chamber will know the name because St.Giles is Tasmania's longest-serving disability support provider. They've been standing with Tasmanians living with disability since 1937. That's nearly nine decades of showing up day after day for the people who need them most.

St.Giles operates right across the state, and every year it works with thousands of Tasmanians. Most of those it supports are young children aged from nought to seven. In the last financial year alone, their therapists saw over 3,000 individual children. To put that into perspective, that's just over 10 per cent of the under-18 population in Tasmania. With numbers like that, it's no wonder almost every Tasmanian family has a St.Giles story. If they haven't used the service themselves, they know someone who has. St.Giles's therapists help toddlers learn to crawl, help school-aged kids build the skills to keep up with their peers and help teenagers get the confidence they need as they take their first steps into adulthood. St.Giles delivers the full suite of allied health therapies: physio, speech, occupational therapy, psychology, dietetics and more. They provide assistive technology, from powered wheelchairs to communication systems for people who need extra support to be heard. And, importantly, they provide NDIS support in homes and communities right across Tasmania. Many of the participants they work with have the highest and most complex support needs—people living with overlapping diagnoses, significant health challenges and enormous daily barriers. St Giles doesn't shy away from this work. In fact, in the sector, they're often referred to as a provider of last resort. They work at the narrow end of the wedge, exactly where the NDIS was meant to make the biggest difference when it was created in 2013.

You really grasp their impact when you hear the stories from their staff. One example stuck with me. We all know what a physiotherapist does, right? We think of them helping someone to move better or regain strength. But sometimes their work literally saves a life. Recently, a St.Giles physio received a referral for a seven-month-old baby who wasn't rolling as they should be at that age. Instead of just ticking a box and moving on, this physio dug deeper. They spotted other warning signs and worked with the family's GP to organise an urgent MRI. Because of that decision, that tiny baby received life-changing neurosurgery, and I'm very glad to say that the child is now recovering well. That is the value of high-quality, face-to-face, hands-on therapy.

But right now, like many other NDIS providers, St.Giles is facing a perfect storm of pressures that are undermining its ability to keep supporting the people who rely on it. Years of NDIS price freezes on allied health services have taken a toll. The scheme has also failed to fully pass on the Fair Work age increases for staff, despite everyone knowing you can't run a service without paying your workers properly. On top of that, there are longstanding flaws in the NDIS pricing model itself—assumptions that simply don't reflect the real cost of working with clients who have complex needs, especially in a rural state like Tasmania. This year's NDIS price guide has made things even harder. The steep cuts to travel rates for rural and regional providers hit states like ours the hardest. For an organisation with staff driving across long distances to see clients, that change isn't just inconvenient; it's financially damaging.

All these pressures have eroded St.Giles's financial services and forced them to make some tough calls. Last month they announced they were cancelling their redevelopment of a multipurpose hub and hydrotherapy pool, despite having secured $7½ million in government funding. Let me be clear: it's not because those services aren't needed. They are desperately needed. I'm told the simple truth is this: St.Giles is no longer in a position to absorb the cost overruns or the expected losses during construction. That's how thin the margins have become.

And they're not alone. Providers across Australia, especially not-for-profit organisations, are facing the same pressures. Many have decades of history, deep community trust and the highest standards of care, yet they are struggling to stay afloat. While I think we can all agree that the NDIS needs reform—serious, sensible reform—if governments don't step in soon, we risk losing exactly the kinds of providers the scheme was built to support. Tasmanians living with disability cannot afford to lose them. Let's make sure St.Giles remains a strong, steady beacon of hope in the Tasmanian disability landscape for decades to come.