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

Today, I speak to the changes to our NDIS and focus on integrity and on safeguarding. Day after day, disabled people experience violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. These injustices must be eliminated. This bill moves us steps in the right direction, and, for that reason, the Greens will be supporting it.

That said, there is still much work to be done to ensure that disabled people are free from abuse, from neglect and from violence. We must continue to strengthen our laws, and the NDIS must evolve so that participants and their individual needs are truly at the centre of the scheme. Today, I am putting forward amendments to address key gaps in the NDIS, backed by disabled people, advocates and service providers. One of the key ways that we can strengthen our NDIS is by making it easier for people to speak up when something is going wrong.

A critical reform is strengthening whistleblower protections. Right now, support workers who speak up about neglect or fraud risk discrimination, punishment or the loss of their livelihoods. That is unacceptable. Stronger protections exist in aged care, and the disability sector should be no different. People who come forward to expose wrongdoing deserve protection, not punishment.

Our amendments will allow anonymous disclosures and expand protections to more people, including former workers and participants, so that fear of retaliation does not silence them. I understand the government will be supporting the Greens's amendment. That is a positive step—one that will help more people come forward and expose wrongdoing within our National Disability Insurance Scheme—and I am proud that it will improve the safety and wellbeing of people.

We must be clear: there is still more to do. Even with these amendments, whistleblowers in the NDIS are not yet fully protected. While we have not secured every single change today, I welcome the government's commitment to further consultation. In this bill, the NDIA will get new power to request information from a participant or from a provider. There aren't a lot of guardrails around this change. That's why I'm proposing that the NDIA must consider privacy when it is requesting information. This will mean better protection for participants and those providing a service. It'll mean the participants won't have to choose between exposing their personal information and paying a bill.

Now, I must take this opportunity to raise the deep challenges that disabled people and our families are experiencing because of the significant changes to the NDIS as a result of Labor and the Liberals teaming up in this place. What I am hearing from the community is consistent—cuts, concern, uncertainty. One of the big stinkers that the Liberals and the Labor government teamed up to do was removing the 'reasonable and necessary' supports definition. This definition guaranteed that each NDIS participant would be able to argue for the individual support that they needed. In its place, we have a yes/no list. That yes/no list is too restrictive, leaving disabled people across the country without the support that they have relied on for years.

We need to return to 'reasonable and necessary', and my amendment today would make that happen. Sadly I do not expect the government or the opposition to support this. I nevertheless commend these amendments to the Senate. Each disabled person is different. The supports we need are different and unique, and that should be reflected in our NDIS.