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

The disability community has had a massive win recently in the Federal Court. The court ruled that the NDIA must fund a motorised scooter for Lee Eastham, a disabled man and NDIS participant with hearing and vision impairments as well as limitations on his mobility. Instead of funding his scooter in 2022, when Mr Eastham requested it, the NDIA spent almost four years fighting this case, wasting huge sums of money in legal and court fees. This is what the government's cost-saving measures look like in practice—disabled people and their advocates being required to fight the NDIA, and its very expensive lawyers, for basic supports they are entitled to.

This is not happening in a vacuum. It was reported on 3 March that business leaders have been calling on the Treasurer to further cut the NDIS in order to fix the budget. One of these business leaders is the CEO of CommBank, an organisation which earned $10 billion in profits in the last financial year. This is what is actually going on when we hear calls for cuts to the NDIS.

The truth is this: one in three big corporations pay zero tax, and the ultra-wealthy would prefer to see the rug pulled from under disabled people and our families than start to pay their fair share. But this Labor government continues to pretend as though disabled people are the problem. We are not the problem. It is time for us to take our wealth back. It is time to make the one per cent pay tax. (Time expired)