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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Senator McAllister) to questions without notice asked today.

In my question to the government, I really tried to keep it very, very clear as to what I was asking during my three questions today. These questions are ones I put to the government on behalf of the disability community and of our families; questions that they are asking in the aftermath of your announcements. Your announcements about NDIS cuts and restrictions are striking fear in the hearts of so many Australians tonight.

One of the easiest questions for the minister to answer should have been, 'Who are the people you are planning to kick off the NDIS?' because the government came out and said at the National Press Club that they would remove 160,000 people from the NDIS—gone! That is an outrageous and disgusting target to set yourself. It's a violation of everything you went to the election on, and it makes a mockery of anything that could be called traditional Labor values. Let's just be honest with people. Who is in your sights? Who are you intending to remove? You could not answer that simple question.

Every NDIS participant and their family members deserve an answer to that question, just as they deserve an answer to the question, 'How will every person on this scheme be reassessed?' because that is also what you're intending to do. You intend to have every person reassessed, regardless of whether they've just spent thousands of dollars on a specialist report to be provided to the government and to the agency to prove their eligibility. How will that work? There are no answers from this government, just a lot of spin about rorts and fraud. Let me be very clear: disabled people and our families care about rorts. They care about provider fraud more than anyone else because when it occurs it is us who lose the services.

You have so recklessly taken control of this conversation and misused it, this vital issue of NDIS fraud—which disabled people have been raising with this government since the beginning of the scheme—that you have co-opted it as part of your smokescreen to disguise the $35 billion of cuts which you intend. Disabled people across the country are now being screamed at in the street by community members who believe they are rorting the scheme because of the way you have done this and because of the way you are talking about the NDIS. A friend of mine posted a video on Instagram yesterday. She was moving along a sidewalk in her community and a man stopped and screamed in her face, 'The NDIS is a rort!' That's what she had to experience because of the way that you are trying to distract the community from the reality of the cuts that you are preparing for the NDIS.

Budgets are about choices, and it is revolting that you are choosing to cut the NDIS and choosing to remove the supports and services that disabled people need to live our lives, to go out in the sun and to have a shower a couple of times a week. You are making those cuts rather than making the billionaires pay or taxing the gas exporters. It is a disgrace and we will oppose you every step of the way. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.