Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on Senator Steele-John's motion, and I observe that there are other senators in the chamber who wish to do so also. This government believes that the NDIS is one of Australia's great human rights achievements. It is an achievement that was built on collaboration. Disabled people, who advocated for themselves, worked in partnership with unions, with disability organisations and, ultimately, with parliamentarians. Labor are proud of the role that we played in establishing this scheme, and we're proud of the contribution that it makes. It is a scheme that is unparalleled internationally. It exceeds what is on offer in any other jurisdiction, and that is something that we are proud of on the Labor side, that I think the parliament is proud of, and that I agree that the Australian public is proud of.

Serious social policy involves looking at programs and understanding where there are strengths but also where there are weaknesses. I think, more than a decade in, we should understand that the NDIS is in no measure perfect. There are very significant challenges that threaten the sustainability of the scheme and its social licence. The scheme is growing too fast, and it is already much larger than was ever anticipated when designed. It is distorting other parts of the care economy. It doesn't always provide high-quality supports to participants, and we hear stories of this over and over again. There is too much fraud in the system and too many people who think that they can take advantage of people with disability.

The way that the scheme is designed is making it harder for us to get spending under control. Current projections are that, without an intervention, the scheme will cost $100 billion per year by the middle of the next decade. Senator Steele-John spoke about this being a moral question. He spoke about human rights, and I agree that almost all questions that come before us in this parliament have a moral and an ethical dimension. If we are serious about our ethical obligations to people with disability, we must also be serious about the program design and whether or not it is likely to be sustainable in the future and whether it is designed in a way that it will maintain support from the broader Australian community, because a right that cannot be sustained is a right denied. It's on this basis that the government is looking carefully at the scheme and looking at what would be required to sustain this scheme into the future.

It's on this basis that we've proposed reforms to tackle fraud, to finally make clear who is eligible for the scheme, to reinvest in the social supports outside the scheme which have withered away and left the scheme the only lifeboat in the ocean, and to deal with runaway costs, because the scheme must be sustainable in all of its dimensions, including its fiscal impacts.

I want to reassure people, because a lot of quite frightening things have been put by public figures in recent weeks. After our reforms, the NDIS will still be the second largest social program in Australia outside of the age pension—larger than Medicare, larger than the PBS and larger than aged care. It will continue to be the most comprehensive suite of supports for people with disability anywhere in the OECD. It will continue to grow each year. It's projected that the NDIS will grow at an average of around two per cent over the next four years and five per cent over the medium term. Under our plan—I reiterate this—the NDIS will grow. It will continue to grow, but, instead of costing more than $70 billion in 2030, taxpayers will spend $55 billion.

It is incumbent on those who make the case for no change, for those who argue that the status quo is fine, to explain why they think this is fine, why they think this is sustainable and whether they think the Australian public will continue to support a scheme that is growing at this rate. When we came to government, it was growing at 22 per cent per year. The changes that we made in 2024, which Senator Steele-John opposed in much the same terms as he opposes these changes, have reduced that rate of growth to somewhere between 10 and 11 per cent per year, but that far outstrips the level of growth that we would ordinarily see in any mature social program. We see this growth because of some design features of the scheme that need to be addressed. Any social program needs clear boundaries about who it is intended to benefit. Any social program needs clear boundaries about the kinds of supports that will be available to beneficiaries. These are not presently features of this scheme, and, as a consequence of that, we see the runaway costs that I've already described.

We don't believe this is sustainable. We want an NDIS that is here for the long-term. In a decade's time there will be a little boy or a little girl born, and they will have a significant and permanent disability. I want that child to access the NDIS. I want that child's family to access the NDIS. I want that child's community to know that they will be supported. But achieving that means dealing with the very real pressures and challenges on the scheme as it is. The approach adopted by the Greens and the motion that they have before us is to deny that any of these challenges exist. They propose no solutions, no alternatives, no way to render the scheme sustainable, no way to render it safe, no improvements to integrity—simply opposition for its own sake. I do not believe that that is an ethical way to approach a scheme with the significance of this scheme to the Australian public.

I want to address specifically a couple of the reforms that Senator Steele-John referred to in his remarks, in particular the decisions that we propose in relation to access. As I said, every social program needs clear guidelines about who the scheme is intended to benefit, and that hasn't been the case in the past. It's seen the number of participants grow well beyond what was ever imagined in the original design. This scheme was always intended for people with permanent and significant disability. There are approximately 5½ million Australians living with disability, and between 3.2 million to 3½ million of those Australians are under the age of 65. At the moment, 740,000 people are on the NDIS. It is already the case that not every person with disability participates in the NDIS, and that implies that we need a strong system of support outside of the scheme for all of those people who live with disability and need assistance but are not eligible to participate in the NDIS.

It's on that basis that the government, working with the states and territories, intends to invest $10 billion into supports outside the scheme. We've already agreed on the profile of $4 billion of that expenditure—the Thriving Kids program—and states and territories as we speak are procuring the services and putting in place the arrangements to support families of children with low to moderate support needs who have developmental delay or autism. We can do more. Once upon a time there was an ecosystem of supports outside of the NDIS, and, since the introduction of the NDIS, those supports have been allowed to wither away. We don't think that that is right. We want all Australians living with disability to be able to access the support that they need.

This also means clarifying who the scheme is intended to support. What is the definition of significant and permanent disability? We know that this isn't an easy question to answer. We propose to establish a technical advisory group, a group of people with deep expertise in these areas who can consult and work with people with disability to provide advice to the government about how we would assess functional capacity and what threshold they would suggest to us for permanent and significant disability. Over time, people with high functional capacity with treatable impairments or people who are eligible to receive services from other systems may no longer be eligible for the scheme. We want to be upfront about this. These people will access more appropriate alternative support systems for their ongoing support. People will be required to engage in all medically appropriate treatment. Restrictive practices are not medically appropriate treatment, and the government will seek advice again from the Technical Advisory Group about the way that we approach this. No changes to access will occur until January 2028, giving us time to work through these questions with the disabled community, giving us time to seek advice, giving us time to test these proposals and giving us time to work with the states and territories to put in place additional supports outside the scheme.

I want to speak in the time remaining to the social and community participation budget. The current way that the NDIS funds and supports social and community participation has meant that programs that once afforded real opportunity for connection, real opportunity for engagement and real involvement with a local community have been scaled back. A heavy reliance on individualised supports has seen the volume of community access and therapy supports grow considerably. Spending in just this area has tripled in five years. Spending on community access supports costs around $12 billion a year at the moment, the same as what we spend on the entire Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

We know that the changes we propose will have an impact on people with disability, but we have thought carefully about the fairest and safest way to make changes to deal with these runaway costs. We will reset the total budget for social and community participation back to where it was last year, to prevent further runaway growth, and the average spend by participants will go back to where it was in 2023. The average planned spend this year is around $31,000. We anticipate, under these changes, it will go to $26,000 per year—back to where it was in 2023.

Claims that these supports are being removed entirely are wrong; they are false. People should not repeat them, because they put fear unnecessarily into the lives of people with disability and their families. We accept that the change will have an impact, but the suggestion that all supports are being removed is wrong; it is entirely wrong. Social and community participation will continue to be a feature of the NDIS. It will continue to be funded. We will see people spend at around the same level as in 2023.

I want to conclude by speaking about fraud because another falsity—which is being repeated over and over again by some people in this place and in the other place—is that the reforms do not deal with fraud. Well, let me tell you: since coming to government we have invested over $1.35 billion in tackling fraud and non-compliant claiming. There is $800 million in this budget to do the same. Schedule 2 of the bill is the longest schedule of all of the schedules in the bill, and it's the schedule titled 'Fraud measures'. At the same time, we are investing in mandatory registration for a far wider group of support providers than was ever the case under the previous government. We expect that, when our reforms are in place, around 90 per cent of claiming will be through registered providers, giving people assurance and confidence about how those funds are being spent.

These reforms are designed to improve participant safety and to improve the value for money for the community overall, because every dollar taken from a person with disability by a fraudster is money that is taken away from where it should be spent. We cannot tolerate this. It is a key focus for me, and it is a key focus for the government.

I say to senators that we should consider this bill carefully—of course we should. Reform requires careful thought, and it requires thought about the beneficiaries of these programs now and into the future. I am absolutely determined to deliver an NDIS that is sustainable now and for the long term.