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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) to a question without notice asked by Senator Steele-John today relating to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Disabled people—NDIS participants—have for 10 years feared the federal budget, because every year we have known, with the Liberals in charge, that there was a government at the helm that never really believed in the NDIS and that had been working to kick us off the NDIS, to cut our plans, to deny us the support we need. This fear is very legitimate. In 2019 we woke up on budget day to find out that the former government had reallocated $4 billion from our NDIS back to the general revenue pool in order to deliver their 'back in black' moment. Remember those teacups the former Treasurer was so proud of? What did that mean?

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

Coffee mugs!

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

'Coffee mugs,' Senator Scarr interjects. I'm sorry; they were coffee mugs. Very funny.

The reality of those cuts was the beginning of a fear campaign run by the former government with a very clear message: disabled people are too much of a burden financially for the federal government to bear, and so we must make cuts and so we must change policies with the aim of kicking them off. That was the message of the former government. That was the fear under which we lived as disabled people. Let me remind the Senate that when an NDIS plan is cut, that means that a disabled person isn't able to have a shower every day, isn't able to get food every day, isn't able to get out in the community to make friends and have work. It means that we are subjected to violence, abuse and neglect. That is the reality of a plan cut. That is the reality of an underfunded NDIS.

The disability community looked to the election result with the hope that the fear campaign would end, that, finally, disabled people and NDIS participants in Australia would be able to have confidence that their NDIS would not be plundered, that their plans would not be cut, that they could be safe in the knowledge that they would be able to get the support that they need.

Today, in the Senate and in the House, I and my colleague the Greens member for Ryan gave the finance minister in the NDIS minister the opportunity to end the fear campaign, to put their money where their mouths so often are, to rebuild that trust and to provide certainty. We asked them a very simple question: will you guarantee that this budget will deliver not one cut to the NDIS? Will you guarantee that the funds, if they are unspent in the scheme for this year, will be retained for participants? Well, all the minister in the House could guarantee was that the NDIS under Labor would be a positive experience. All the finance minister, who actually holds the purse strings in this conversation, could say was that they were concerned to ensure that the budget was placed on a sustainable footing and that the NDIS wasn't a focus for that work. I can tell you what: for disabled people who have been denied access to funds, services and supports because the NDIS must be sustained and sustainable, whether you are going to make cuts in this budget, whether you are going to retain funds in this scheme is our primary focus, because this is our life.

The government had the opportunity today to end the fear, to provide the certainty, to ensure that the over 500,000 NDIS participants and their families could finally, after 10 years, breathe out in the knowledge that they would not have to worry about cuts to the NDIS in the upcoming budget, that they would no longer be used as the can kicked around the floor, as the money bag smashed when the government wants to get some money back, maybe to pass out to their fossil fuel mates or to their friends in the gas industry, for instance. The government failed to do that, and so it will now be the work of the Greens and the disability community between now and budget day to ensure that all pressure is applied and to ensure that the government does not cut our NDIS.

Question agreed to.