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

I seek leave to move a motion relating to the government's NDIS bill as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice of motion standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of Senate standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving a motion, namely a motion relating to the government's NDIS bill.

Labor's NDIS bill is just cruel. It should be scrapped. It should be withdrawn. It should be removed. It should be sent back. It should be torn up, quite frankly, loaded into a cannon and, if I had my way, fired into the sun. It is a horrific, inhuman piece of legislation that would see 241,000 disabled people kicked off the NDIS—fellow Australians doing it tough, struggling, stressed, trying to make things work and trying to navigate a bureaucracy that is always apparently against them and always apparently on the side of a government that is trying to find ways to get out of providing the basic supports. For these people, for these community members, this government plans to cut their lifelines to remove the programs, the therapies and the supports that are the source of hope for so many. Just when things were starting to potentially get better, just when the therapy was helping the child succeed at school, just when a disabled person had finally been able to keep a job, just when a new skill was within somebody's grasp, or just when a new friend had been made—a new connection built, a new safeguard against loneliness and isolation—this government would tear it away. Shame on you all.

This bill is a disgrace. The fact that the disability community have had to work and expend their time, effort and energy trying to explain to this Labor government why cutting nearly $40 billion out of the NDIS is a bad idea—that's a joke. It's a joke. One hundred and eighty-five billion dollars over the decade is the largest cut to a Commonwealth program in the history of this nation.

To my crossbench colleagues and to the members of the National and Liberal parties: whatever you may think of the NDIS, these cuts go too far. They go too fast. They will cost too many jobs. They put at risk too many lives. Our responsibility as members of parliament is to listen to the community.

In the brief window that the government deigned to give disabled people and our families to have our say, to speak about this bill that would shape and reshape their lives, we have spoken with a united voice. The verdict was unanimous. Evidence was taken from disabled people and their families, from healthcare professionals, from union members, from allied health professionals, from doctors and from service providers. They sent a clear message: this bill must not pass; this bill must be withdrawn; this bill poses a threat to the lives and safety of disabled people.

So we call on the government today to listen. Withdraw this bill. No parliament, no government, should ever have the powers to shape the lives and livelihoods of people that this bill grants this government—the ability, with a stroke of a pen, to strip away the basic supports needed to have a shower a couple of times a week, to go out into the sun once or twice a month, to keep your job, to go to the doctor, to have enough support work to enable you to get out of bed safely and to be able to help your kids get to school. This is something that no government should have the ability to strike away, to strip from people.

Withdraw this bill. The Greens oppose it now and will at the next vote and at the next vote and at the one after that. We will not stop; we will not bend or bow or break. We oppose this bill. (Time expired)

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be put.

Question agreed to.

Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the suspension motion as moved by Senator Steele-John be agreed to.

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

I move a motion in relation to the government's NDIS bill, that it may be removed immediately and that this motion may have precedence over all other business and be determined without amendment.

Sue Lines (President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is the procedural motion moved by Senator Steele-John be agreed to.

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

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) Labor's NDIS Bill is completely friendless, with almost every witness to the inquiry saying that the bill shouldn't pass in its current form,

(ii) the bill will have a devastating impact on disabled people, their families and carers, and it imposes inhumane and cruel requirements on disabled people, including requiring people to repeatedly prove permanent disabilities and navigate new layers of bureaucracy to access essential services, and

(iii) the government's own modelling shows that they want to remove 241,000 people from the NDIS by 2031; and

(b) calls on the Government to withdraw the bill.

This bill represents one of the cruellest acts perpetrated on a community by the Australian government. It is unfair. It is unjust. It is inhumane. From the moment it was introduced into the parliament, the Greens have opposed it. We will continue to oppose it. We will continue to work day in, day out to see this bill withdrawn—to see it scrapped. That is our goal. That is our purpose. That is the work we are engaged in, and proudly we've engaged in that work alongside the disability community across this country, who are unanimous—who are united in their view that this bill must not proceed.

This Labor government believed that, by forcing disabled people to attempt to pull together evidence, by only giving us eight to 11 days to make submissions to the inquiry into this bill, it would prevent us and our organisations speaking clearly about this bill. Well, it could not have been more wrong, and I want to congratulate every single one of the over 4,500 people who, amid everything else putting pressure on them, took the time to make submissions to the inquiry and who spoke with such clarity and courage in the face of this awful law. We heard such powerful evidence from so many people, across three days of hearings, about the harms that this would do to disabled people, the pressure it would place on families, the jobs it will cost across the economy and the businesses that will go to the wall because of this, and we heard about the risk to life. Again and again, people spoke in the clearest terms. They told us that, if this law passes, people will die. People will die. We must listen, for no apology after the fact, no public statement by a government inquiry, no response to a royal commission decades in the future and no compensation scheme will ever wipe this away or deliver moral forgiveness to those who would vote for a bill that so clearly will do harm and so clearly will put people at risk.

This is a moral question. This is about who we are as a society. The Australian community believes, still, in a fair go, in justice and in support for those who are struggling. The community backs disabled people and our families and expects the government to do the same, not to cut the vital supports that we need and that we rely on to go to work, to go to the doctor or to have a shower. They back the disability community. They have heard our call over decades: 'Nothing about us without us.' They do not accept that any government should have the power to prescribe, to require, to demand or to mandate that, before you can access a basic support under the NDIS, you'd have to prove you've done everything you can to cure yourself and that you've undergone all appropriate treatments to get rid of your disability before you can get support. The community think that is disgusting, particularly given the fact that the legislation in its current form contains no adequate safeguards whatsoever against a future government requiring that a disabled person undergo a restrictive practice before getting access to the scheme.

We heard from the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Rosemary Kayess, and from Women with Disabilities Australia that the legislation as written would allow the government to require children to undergo medical treatments—they would be forced to take medication—before they could access the NDIS. I'm sure the government, the ministers and the backbenchers, are about to launch to their feet and talk about their intentions. Well, I've got a very firm response to that on behalf of every person that gave evidence on that question: we do not care about your intentions. What matters is what the law would allow you or any future government to do. We will not, now or ever, place our rights, safety and liberty upon the safeguard of your intentions, because for generation after generation we have suffered at the hands of governments who have abused, exploited, violated and neglected us while they claimed to have the best intentions. So, no, the fact that you do not intend to do one thing or another does not allay our concern. If these are your intentions amend your bill, or better yet: shred it, and apologise to the communities who you have caused so much distress and fear.

The Greens want this bill revoked—withdrawn, removed—and only the Greens have this clear and steadfast commitment. Two hundred and forty-one thousand people will be kicked off the NDIS because of this bill. That is a staggering number. There are so many people that it is easy to lose connection to the reality that behind each number is a human life, a family and a community. During the course of this inquiry we heard so clearly the harms that the bill will do to so many, and I want to tell you about a couple of people that have come to me, which were shared in the evidence, and about the community members that have attended rallies, events and forums to try to persuade their representatives to do the right thing. I had a mum come up to me in Albany and talk to me about how the cuts that have already been made to her plan mean that she is losing the little function that she has to stand up because the NDIS, through this government, has cut the support hours that she receives. So instead of the two people required to enable her to transfer safely in and out of bed there's only one person, and she has to weight bear. That is wearing out her knees.

She said to me: 'I'm in my middle age. The NDIS was meant to make sure this didn't get worse, and in the last year I'm in more pain than I ever have been.' This person is a mum to wonderful kids. She uses what little funding she currently has from social and community participation supports—which is the very area of funding that this government wants to cut by 50 per cent—to help her kids go to school. She does not know what she will do if this bill passes. She's a single mum. She's it. She's the thing that sits between her kids and a life beyond imagining. She's struggling to make it work, to keep her head above water. She took her time on a Saturday night to come out and use some of those support hours to talk to me about what the legislation would mean for her. It meant so much to me that she did, and it is so inappropriate and so cruel that she had to.

The life of a disabled person in Australia today is complicated. There are joys and struggles and there is success and failure, just like in any other human life. Because of the discrimination that exists, because of the ableism that exists, often life is tough—tougher than it would be for other people. It's quite frankly sick that any government, any person in a position of power, would seek to make that life harder and put more barriers in place.

I spoke to another woman, who works for Foodbank. I kid you not—this person in a powerchair works two days a week at Foodbank in WA. I was there as part of a celebration of that fantastic organisation. She came up to me and talked about what the cuts would mean for her and what the cuts she's already experienced have required her to do. This person can't go out beyond her front door without a support worker to help her. She had had her plan reviewed by the government and her support hours had been cut, so she had had to make a choice: did she want to keep working two days a week at Foodbank, or did she want to go out on the weekend? So she decided to give up her weekends to keep her job. If her plan is cut, if those hours are cut—if they are slashed savagely as this government intends—I don't know how she will keep that job.

The inquiry heard over and over again what this will mean for disabled people. We also heard really clearly from the allied health professions—the physios and the occupational therapists—who do so much hard work to support disabled people, to ensure we get the right technologies and supports and to make sure that the chairs we sit in and the software we might need to be able to read a document work well for us. Those people, those professionals, all across the country have banded together, have put their life's work on the line and have built small businesses in communities to provide people, particularly in small regional towns, with access to these services and supports. These cuts will close their businesses. I heard from an allied health worker in Mount Lawley. She's built a very successful practice. But, if these cuts go ahead, she's not sure what the future will be for all of her workers and for her business.

These cuts go too far. They go too fast. They put too many lives at risk. They will cost too many jobs. They are cruel. They are wrong. This bill must be withdrawn.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) | Link to this | 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.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Steele-John for all of his work on the NDIS, particularly work we have done together—in committees on community affairs and, in the last couple of weeks, on this legislation, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026.

I challenge anybody that sat through any of those hearings to not be affected by that evidence. I challenge them to suggest that this legislation, as it stands, is acceptable to the community, to the people, to the participants and to the Australians that rely on it for their very lives. I challenge them to ask them whether they think it's fit for purpose; to believe them when they say they are afraid of what this will mean for them; and to actually believe them, which I do, when they say they are afraid they will die.

It is not very easy to sit in a room, whether you're there in person or remotely, and hear somebody tell you, 'I am afraid that I will die if this legislation passes.' Why am I here if not to listen to those people? Why are we here if we are not going to hear the voices of Australians who are directly impacted, and we are going to go ahead and do what we've designed because we think we know best. That's why people in this country are angry with us. That's why we have politics of grievance in this country, because we are not listening to the voices of the people that are impacted by the things that we are doing, and it is time for that to change.

Disabled Australians are paying the price for the failures of this government in relation to the NDIS. Disabled Australians are paying the price for the complexity of the scheme. Disabled Australians are paying the price for the inability of the NDIA to manage the behemoth of a scheme that it's become. They just can't do it. It's too hard. It's too big. There are too many moving parts. Disabled Australians are paying the price for the intentional fraud that targets them. These are absolutely all problems that must be fixed, but why is it that disabled Australians are the ones that will be carrying the burden of this? That, to me, is unacceptable.

The minister has spoken about the fraud, and she has commented that there is too much fraud. I agree with that. Not only have I spent a couple of days on the inquiry in relation to this bill; I sit on the Joint Standing Committee on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We have heard from the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, from the NDIA, from the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner, from the AFP, from the ATO—you name it. We've heard from them, and guess what they have told us? They can't quantify the amount of fraud. They don't know how much it is. They call it 'integrity leakage' because they actually can't segment how much of it is intentional fraud versus how much is operational or administrative error, which is people making mistakes, or how much is system error.

An example that somebody gave me was: 'I had to upload my invoices and my claim. I uploaded them both. There was a system failure. Only one invoice was successfully received by the NDIS.' Even though they uploaded both, that is captured as fraud. Sorry; apologies—that is captured as 'integrity leakage' and counted in the whole bucket of fraud. That's not fraud. We need to know exactly how much of this is intentional and how much of it is to do with the fact that the system is so burdensome and difficult to manoeuvre for participants and for providers.

The Fraud Fusion Taskforce told me in multiple hearings that international organised crime has targeted the NDIS. That's a fact. That's not something that we're assuming. It's not something that we've concocted to frighten people. It is a reality, and we are having a great deal of trouble managing that. Surely we should put the resources into the appropriate mechanisms so that we can be clear about what that fraud is; so that we are not frightening disabled Australians if they make an error; or so that, if there is a system problem, they are then not pointed to as being part of this fraudulent cohort called 'integrity leakage'. We need to be very careful about what we are doing here.

It concerns me that we haven't had appropriate scrutiny of this legislation. Our shadow minister in this space, Melissa McIntosh, has repeatedly called for a six-month inquiry. I don't understand why we can't have that. Why can't we properly listen to all of the stakeholders, the people who have the information that we need, and then make our decisions together? That is what Australians expect of us.

I'm going to read to you some additional comments from a report into the NDIS that we published in March:

Coalition members are concerned that the Government and the National Disability Insurance Agency have been unable to clearly quantify the scale of fraud within the Scheme. Without a clearer understanding of the magnitude of fraud and non-compliance, it is difficult for policymakers and the public to assess whether current enforcement measures are adequate.

If we are going to target something, we need to know how much of it there is. We need to know what to target and where. The report says:

Robust integrity systems are critical not only to protecting taxpayer funds but also to protecting NDIS participants from exploitation by unscrupulous providers.

This is a report that we tabled in March. These are the basic fundamentals that the government should have been looking at in developing this legislation, and they haven't. Instead, it's the packages of the disabled Australians that are being primarily impacted.

I noted that the minister also spoke about registration. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce spoke to me about the importance of registration in enabling them to identify the different providers in the market, and I do understand that, but one of the reasons that many providers don't register is because it is complex and costly. I've been told it costs between $10,000 and $15,000 for the paperwork to register.

If you are a physiotherapist in a regional town that may have two clients on the NDIS, it's not feasible for you to do that, but you are a professional who has qualifications—an allied health professional—and you need to go through this process. It the same process that, perhaps, someone who's doing some domestic duties for a participant goes through but doesn't have any credentials or qualifications. Why are we setting the same standard here? Why can't we have, for example, a fast-tracked enrolment process for people who have qualifications, whether they're a physiotherapist, a speech pathologist or some other professional? Why haven't we looked at that? Why are we once again, in this chamber, looking at a 'one size fits all' approach to solve problems? It doesn't work.

No two people living with disability in Australia have the same problem and the same need. Everyone's needs are different. Some of these changes particularly impact people in regional and remote communities, where there are what we call 'thin markets': markets where there are not enough providers already. What does that mean if we drive them out with some of these changes? That means that a disabled person living in a regional community can't access services in that community.

If they need to see a physiotherapist, they can't see that physiotherapist in their town because that physiotherapist just can't afford to operate under the NDIS. So, they're going to have to travel an hour or an hour and a half to go see their physiotherapist. Guess what happens then? Then there are transport costs to get them to that physiotherapist; to go all that way and then to come back. Again, these are unintended consequences of the impacts of some of these changes and, potentially, there are ways to solve these, but we don't know because there hasn't been adequate consultation and there hasn't been adequate time to deal with these issues. There should be; there absolutely should be.

Another element that people have consistently spoken to me about in relation to this legislation is in regard to the ministerial powers. I fail to understand how a minister of government will be able to determine how any particular Australian living with disability is going to have their needs best met. I don't get that. In particular, if I go back to fraud, the minister today currently does not know how much actual intentional fraud there is in the NDIS, yet that same minister is going to make a determination about what someone's plan should look like—or they'll have the power to. Is that right? That doesn't sound right to me. I don't understand what we are doing here, if we are not going to listen to the people who are experts in this space.

There is a significant burden on all of us here to ensure that this legislation, if and when it passes, doesn't look like it does today. There need to be changes to this legislation, and those changes need to take into account the devastating impacts on disabled people, their families, their carers and their communities. Again, I talk to the fact that people are afraid. There was one moment in one of the hearings where someone made a comment that we shouldn't be whipping up fear. This isn't about anybody whipping up fear; people are genuinely afraid. There were people in those hearings that wept in front of us because they were so afraid. I have received emails and messages from parents, from carers and from family members who are afraid. I've received messages from people who are good-quality providers who are afraid they'll need to close down, because they will not be able to afford to operate within the constraints of this system.

I'm going to read to you a message from one of those individuals. 'The Labor government's legislation before the Senate is the cornerstone of their proposed budget, a bill that diminishes the basic human rights of the most vulnerable people in our communities. Over the years, I've seen many people fight the NDIS for access, for basic supports, for a holistic approach to their disability needs. This government has allowed syndicated fraudsters to operate successfully but have framed providers in the media operating in good faith as ripping off Australian taxpayers. It costs more to be compliant, yet anyone can offer services and get paid by the government, with no accountability for what they are providing. This government closed down all state-funded programs, making the NDIS the only lifeboat in the ocean; they closed down important mental health programs, made us transition all of our clients to the NDIS—and, now, the very cohort they want to kick off the scheme, and will, when the bill is passed. I'm not saying the NDIS doesn't need to change. Maria, look back at the disability royal commission and the NDIS review recommendations. This bill completely ignores it all. It places vulnerable people in an untenable position. It places good-faith providers and their amazing staff on their knees. I am disgusted that we are going to sell the rights of people with a disability to the Australian population.'

How can you read that and not be impacted? These are clearly people who know what is going to happen and know what the impacts of these changes are going to be. We need to listen to them, and we need to understand what is and isn't workable in this legislation. We cannot ram it through without considering those elements, and we cannot ram it through without appropriate amendments to ensure that the very people that it was designed to protect are actually protected and not harmed in its implementation.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I am so proud that the first action the Greens have taken in this parliamentary fortnight before the winter break is to move to get rid of this cruel, inhumane bill that would cut over 240,000 people off life-giving support. I'd like to pay tribute to Senator Steele-John, who is such a staunch advocate for the disability community and who enriches our Greens team with his every contribution. I also want to thank his team for the work that it has done on this issue. This is an issue that touches Jordon and every single person with a disability in this community and their families. It touches them all. In fact, it goes to: what is the Australian character?

It breaks my heart that this government has chosen in its most recent budget to punish and to cut support from 240,000 Australians because it doesn't have the courage to raise revenue from taxing export gas, from cancelling AUKUS or from properly cracking down on property investor tax perks that have turbocharged housing inequality. Instead, it has made the active decision to punch down on the most vulnerable in our community as though they are some kind of revenue source. It is disgusting that this government sees disabled people as a means of raising revenue when it's letting the gas export companies, the huge submarine builders and the wealthy property investors off scot-free. Shame on you! We are moving this morning to get rid of this foul, cruel bill. With everything we've got, we will resist your ramming it through this parliament.

I note that the Liberal Party have spoken of their concerns about this bill. Well, follow through and vote against it. Don't team up with the government to ram these cuts through. Your rhetoric is sounding positive, so please do not vote for this cruel bill.

I call upon the government to withdraw this bill. That's what this motion is about. Stop punching down on Australians who need this life-giving support. Find other ways of raising revenue; you've got any number of them that you could use if you actually wanted to take on the one per cent and the big corporations who are ripping us all off. Change tack.

We saw in the inquiry into this bill, which Senator Steele-John and other colleagues in this place participated in just last week, the true inhumane impact of these cuts. We heard gut-wrenching testimony of what this bill would do to over 240,000 people, their families and the people that love them. With the removal of supports to leave the house, it would effectively condemn people to permanent lockdown in their homes. Whether or not it's to go to work, whether or not it's to go to the doctor or whether or not it's to have some valuable social connection, these cuts would mean that that support would be removed, condemning disabled people to be stuck in their homes. No other Australian is condemned to that, now that we're out of COVID lockdown. Why should the disability community be condemned to that because this government doesn't have the guts to tax export gas?

Another change this bill proposes is that people with a permanent disability would need to prove that they've got a permanent disability. Here's a newsflash, folks: permanent disabilities are permanent disabilities. I'm afraid cerebral palsy doesn't just go away. You don't wake up the next morning and find you're not suffering from it. That is not how it works. The fact that this bill would require people with a permanent disability to again prove that—to use their own time, resources and limited financial means and emotional bandwidth to go through that ridiculous process, to prove they have a permanent disability—is just an insult. It is a ridiculous waste of resources, and it is an insult.

Every single witness in the inquiry on this bill, and particularly those with lived experience, said that you cannot fix this bill, it should not pass in its current form, it is not fixable—get rid of it and stop punching down. The Greens are right alongside every single person saying that. We hear the pleas from the disability community to not raise revenue off the back of them and to not use punishment and cruelty against them to try to shore up some budget issue that you've got because you are buying too many shitty—pardon me—second-hand submarines from Donald Trump, don't want to take on wealthy property investors and definitely don't want to take on the one in three big corporations that pays no tax, including the wealthy gas export companies, who are fleecing us all.

This bill is an absolute dog, and it cannot be fixed. The Greens will use everything that we've got to get rid of it. It needs more inquiry, but really we should fire the whole thing into the sun. Is this really the sort of nation that this government wants us to be—a nation where the one per cent and the big corporations can continue to not pay their fair share of tax, where we continue to buy, from a madman, weapons of war that will not make us safer and that we probably won't get anyway, and where we bake in housing inequality by letting existing property investors keep all of their perks and instead we choose to raise revenue from the most vulnerable and needy people in our community, who we said we would stand by as Australians when this NDIS framework was first introduced, something that makes Australians proud that we support each other and that we value humanity enough to invest in people in our communities, including disabled people in our communities? The kind of Australia that the Greens back in is a community where people are looked after and have their needs met and where we raise revenue from the one per cent and the big corporations who aren't paying their fair share, rather than raising it from ordinary people and raising it off the backs of disabled people. For shame!

This Labor government is showing with every decision that it doesn't have the guts to take on the wealth inequality in this country and that it's not going to stand up to the billionaires and the big corporations. Instead, it's going to punch down on disabled people. It's not going to fix the housing crisis. It's not going to properly fund frontline domestic and family violence services. It is making all of the wrong moral choices, and the message that it's sending to Australians is: 'We don't care about you. We don't work for you. We work for our political donors, for those big corporations that donate to our political parties, and for the same billionaires that are boosting the hatred and racism that we see from other quarters of the Senate chamber.'

I'll note that the Labor Party and Pauline Hanson's—or should I say Gina Rinehart's?—One Nation party are the ones that oppose this motion. They sat together and wanted us to just crack on with other business. They didn't want us to be talking about the real impacts of this NDIS cut bill, because they support these cuts. So here we have the government sitting with Pauline Hanson's/Gina Rinehart's One Nation. They are both happy to make savings off the back of the disability community. They are both taking money from the same billionaires and the same big corporations, I might add. They are both happy to boost the existing system that sees wealth inequality get worse. They are now happy to punch down on disabled people, their families and people who love them. Well, let the record show that, when you embolden that kind of rhetoric, you're going to have to live with the consequences of that.

The Greens are proud that every single day we will stand up and fight against these cuts and we will always fight for a fairer economy that actually puts people first and that says that billionaires, big corporations, weapons of war and property investor tax perks are where we should be looking to raise revenue, not from ordinary people—not from Australians working hard, just trying to make ends meet, working harder than they ever have and not even getting ahead. We've got a huge homelessness problem. We've got a huge problem with housing unaffordability. We've got underfunded schools and hospitals. We've got fossil fuel subsidies going out to coal, gas and oil when we should be having solar on every single roof, attached to batteries, to both tackle the climate crisis and keep people's bills down. We could actually have a system that works for ordinary Australians. That's what a representative democracy is meant to be delivering. Instead, we see the government wimping out on all of those important decisions and not raising revenue from those who can afford to pay but instead choosing to make almost $40 billion of savings off the backs of people with a disability.

The government should be ashamed of themselves, and they should be withdrawing this bill at the earliest opportunity. The Greens will not stop pushing for that outcome. Every day, we will keep fighting these cuts because we proudly stand, roll and hang alongside people with disabilities, and we think they are worth it. We think all Australians are worth it. We are worth investing in. Our communities matter. People matter. Billionaires and big corporations, they don't matter to us; people matter to us. I urge the government to withdraw this foul bill that is so un-Australian, that punches down so cruelly on a community that deserves our love and our support and who want to contribute strongly to their workplaces where they are enabled to do so. This bill will stop disabled people being able to get to work, yet you're probably going to blame them for not working in the same breath. What an irony.

I urge the Liberal Party to follow through on some of the positive rhetoric that you've espoused around this bill, and actually vote against these cuts. We could stop this bill. We just need you to vote against it. If you won't vote against it, we need the government to withdraw it. But we're not going to stop shining a light on the cruelty of these cuts, and I'm so proud that we are doing so.

Again, I want to commend Senator Steele-John for having the courage and the determination to never back down when it comes to fighting for his community. We share that love for the disability community and we've got your back.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

The NDIS has transformed so many lives. It's brought people out of their homes and into society. As the minister said earlier, the NDIS is one of Australia's greatest human rights achievements. The government has brought forward a bill that has deeply distressed the disability community. Over 100 people with disability, their families, their carers and their clinicians attended a community town hall I hosted last month. I heard overwhelmingly that people support reform. People want reform. We all share in the benefits of an NDIS that is sustainable, that is well governed, that is protecting against fraud and exploitation, and that gives people with disability autonomy in their own life and equality of opportunity. Ask anyone on the NDIS whether they think that the NDIS could be reformed and could save money and they will likely tell you yes. This came up time and time again at the town hall I hosted, where people said, 'If you want to see savings, I can show you where you can make savings.'

What the Senate has in front of us is a bill that represents the largest change to NDIS since it was introduced. These are difficult reforms. As Senator Kovacic said a little earlier, people are genuinely afraid. The minister is right to say that the sustainability of the scheme is necessary to ensure that it can be available in the future, to ensure that it does maintain its social licence and that significant work is needed to rebuild structures outside of the NDIS for people with disabilities such as in our health system, which is rapidly becoming unaffordable for many people in communities we represent. The minister is also right in saying that we need to deal with fraud. That is a matter we should treat very seriously. Each dollar defrauded is preventing someone with a disability from obtaining the services they need.

This discussion paper is about the very serious cuts to social and community participation that the government is putting forward. The bill gives unprecedented power to the minister to cut everyone's personal, social and community participation benefits by up to 99 per cent, and they can start doing that the day after the bill is passed with almost no safeguards. It's actually not limited to social and community participation. It gives the ministers the power to cut people's funding for activities of daily living—that is, the funding that helps people to have a shower, to prepare meals, to literally live and breathe. Now the government has said that they don't intend to cut activities of daily living, so why do they want the power to do so? If you say that you're not going to do something, you don't need that power. Why give it not just yourselves but to any future minister?

It's important for us to consider the importance of social and community participation funding. This is funding that helps people leave the house, to go to work and to be part of the world, and that is what the NDIS was set up to do. It was never supposed to be a scheme to provide the bare minimum necessary to just keep people alive; it was a scheme that was supposed to allow people to be part of society, a society that we all here in this chamber enjoy. But, importantly—and this is critical—social and community participation stops isolation, which we know can be deadly. The royal commission told us that, when people with disability are isolated, they are vulnerable to abuse, to neglect and to exploitation.

I want to read out a part of the submission to this inquiry by Women With Disabilities Australia and the truly tragic case of Ann Marie Smith, a woman who lived with cerebral palsy in South Australia who died from criminal neglect. It said:

Ann Marie Smith's death shows why community participation is a safety issue. She had cerebral palsy, lived alone, received NDIS-funded care and had very limited contact outside one closed support relationship. Police said she had been left in the same chair day and night, was malnourished, in septic shock and died in circumstances described as "likely preventable". Isolation was identified as a central risk factor, with advocates stating that safeguarding requires "multiple eyes" and "multiple people" in a person's life. The Disability Royal Commission examined what had been learnt since her death and stated that individual cases must identify the "policy and regulatory issues" needed to give practical effect to Australia's human rights obligations. Reducing social, civic and community participation supports risks cutting away the regular contact, visibility and informal safeguards that help people be seen, known and able to report harm. For women with disability, who already experience higher rates of violence, these cuts risk deepening isolation and worsening conditions where violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation are hidden.

This is what we have to grapple with in this bill that the government has brought forward. Every single person who came to the inquiry told us, 'If you cut social and community participation budgets indiscriminately without ever considering someone's personal circumstances, you will leave people in unsafe situations.' It seems, from the committee process and what we've been able to get out of the government and the department, that the government has essentially sought to make savings and retrofitted some sort of policy around that, and, clearly, there wasn't an understanding of what a 50 per cent cut to social and community participation would mean for participants on the NDIS.

If you take, for example, people with Down syndrome, these cuts to social, civic and community participation will mean that many of them will lose their employment. It seems like the government and the department weren't actually aware that Australians with Down syndrome use a big chunk of that funding to get to work, to participate in society, to feel valued and to feel like they are contributing and like they're part of a team and something bigger than themselves. We were told at the Senate inquiry, 'This won't have an impact on employment for people with Down syndrome,' yet you talk to people with Down syndrome and you talk to Down Syndrome Australia and Down syndrome ACT, and they say: 'Of course it will. A big chunk of that bucket of money is used for the supports that enable people to get to work and to stay at work.'

Big reforms like this deserve considered scrutiny. I absolutely support calls for this inquiry to be extended. There is much for us to look at. We need to give people more time to provide feedback. Really critically, what became almost farcical through the Senate inquiry was that the timing of when states and territories presented their submissions. On the morning of the final day of hearings, they basically said, 'Listen, we have no idea what supports we're going to have to provide to who and when.'

How can the Senate be considering a bill when we're told, 'Don't worry, there will be alternative supports provided by states and territories'—most of whom have very serious budget issues; look no further than here in the ACT. We're meant to believe that somehow, even when the very states and territories that will provide these supports are saying, 'We don't even know what we're meant to be doing.' This requires far more scrutiny, and I urge the Senate to ensure that we're doing our job scrutinising this bill, looking at the intended and unintended consequences.

I really welcome this debate in the Senate. This will impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians, and it is very right that we take the time to debate it and to push the government to allow more scrutiny. There's been a very worrying trend lately where we're seeing bills being rammed through this place with little scrutiny and the Senate not actually being able to do their job.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) | Link to this | Hansard source

():  Thank you for bringing this motion to the chamber, Senator Steele-John. I sat with you for two of the three days, where we heard people talk about some of the flaws in this legislation, and it clearly should not have come into this place in the shape that it is in right now. In two days of inquiries, of the three, I heard really sad testimony from people who are worried and concerned, bringing very valid examples of why this legislation needs a rethink. It's so bad that they don't trust the government to get this right. They want to see the detail, they want to know how it's going to impact them and they also want a say in exactly what is planned.

You're right to say that it was completely friendless. Like you, I didn't hear many witnesses at all saying they would pass it in its current form; I heard them encouraging senators in this place to not pass it. Those watching the hearing would be left in no doubt that participants in the scheme want the scheme to be sustainable. They want the support to go to those people who need it most. I was asked on the weekend by someone, 'Who's going to be courageous enough to make the changes to the scheme that mean that it's sustainable?' I said, 'If you listened, like I did, to the testimony, the people who want this scheme to be successful, who want it to be sustainable and who want it to work are the families and the participants of the scheme itself and the people that provide the services to them.'

What was missing from the commentary and the evidence was a commitment to go after the obvious fraud. I think over a couple of days of the hearing I saw some items in local papers about significant charges being laid against people for NDIS fraud. Where there is NDIS fraud, the people impacted are the taxpayers, the participants themselves and the providers. Most providers are doing the right thing. They care about the participants they work with. They want them to live the best lives they can. But there are providers that are doing the wrong thing. We heard, in the inquiry into the integrity of the NDIS, from the Australian Federal Police, from the tax office and from other agencies whose job it is to detect fraud of organised crime and of people who are deliberately targeting vulnerable people to exploit them. I certainly haven't seen enough in this legislation to give me confidence that it will have a great effect.

The government's own modelling shows they want to remove 241,000 people from the NDIS by 2031, but they couldn't tell us who they are or where they are from. It's just an arbitrary number. We asked if it's in regional and remote areas, where there are currently thin markets, but we didn't get an answer to that question.

Let me give you an example that I became aware of. I wrote to Senator McAllister and to Minister Mark Butler about a devastating impact of recent changes to the NDIS related specifically to health impacts for residents living with Machado-Joseph disease on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory. As part of consultation for the NDIS annual pricing review, the Australian Physiotherapy Association told of the devastating impact those changes will have on service provision for those people. They said services in that area are already limited and now they can't provide services at all. Checking that, I spoke to the community itself, and they said they understand they live in a remote area and they live in thin markets but this is having a significant impact on them. I haven't yet got a response to that letter.

Groote Eylandt has the highest known prevalence of MJD per capita globally, which causes progressive loss of mobility, speech and independence. They can't wait for bureaucracy to find the answers. We heard from participants and their families over and over again that there is a void in information about these changes. Imagine what it's like for those people in thin markets, where they're relying on people they've built a strong relationship with to provide services. I asked that the ministers give urgent attention to that matter and provide me with advice and provide the community administrators that run those communities and service providers with that advice. I can hold my breath, but sadly others can't, and I still haven't got an answer to this one.

The NDIS provides not just support but also opportunity, independence and dignity. It is the chance to work, to participate and to access support that people need without feeling like they're a burden on the people they love. It is meant to provide hope for the future. I've been contacted directly by people in South Australia who talk about their real fear about what this will mean not just for the participants but for their families. What they're saying is not only that they don't understand what's going on here and they need all the detail but that there hasn't been an appropriate level of consultation. It seems like a pin was arbitrarily thrown to find a number the government needed to hit to reach its bottom line. It's policy laziness. That's what it is. It was writ large in the consultations.

What people with disabilities told us constantly throughout these consultations is that they feel invisible, they feel unheard and they feel like they are being reduced to a line item in the Albanese government's budget papers. It's no wonder they feel like that. While this government shuffles Treasury spreadsheets to fill its near trillion-dollar deficit and to make it look more manageable, it's the most vulnerable Australians who are left wondering why it is them who are paying the price for Labor's inability to control its spending.

There is no denial that the NDIS has grown far beyond what was originally expected when it was established 13 years ago. It was a scheme designed to support about 410,000 Australians, but it's now supporting 760,000 people and growing at about 10 per cent a year. It was originally expected to cost $13.6 billion, but it's now approaching $50 billion a year and it's projected to blow out to about $70 billion by the end of the decade. This is the NDIS that Labor built. This is their third attempt to rein in the scheme, to rein in that growth and to protect participants from bad actors. They have failed on all of those measures.

In August 2023, Labor promised growth would be reduced to eight per cent. They failed on that measure. Then, in January this year, despite growing that target, they pledged to reduce growth even further—five to six per cent. Guess what? They failed again. Now, a few months later, with no achievements under the belt, there's a pledge to reduce it by just two per cent. I want to be clear: the coalition's support for this scheme remains unwavering. We believe the scheme must be there for Australians with significant and permanent disability—exactly as it was intended—but the integrity of the very scheme that we're talking about here is weak. Criminals know the guardrails are weak and the fences meant to protect them are flimsy. Australians have heard the stories day in, day out; the NDIS has lost the social licence that it once had.

This government is in charge. It's been in charge for more than four years. It's their job to find the answers. It's not their job to bring legislation like this into the parliament, which has failed to convince not only the people it is there to support but also ordinary Australians who are quite happy to pay for it. But they're not happy to pay for the fraudsters or the criminals, which are the people that we need to go after. They're not happy to pay for the red tape, the bureaucracy, that means that money is not spent where it's intended. We heard about people needing to get reassessments for profound, lifelong, incurable disabilities. What a waste of money. I don't even have to work in the sector to realise that. What's the saving if you reduce the requirement to do that? It would make a huge difference.

This bill is a substantial bill. It provides significant change to the scheme. That's why it needs more consideration; that's why it needs more time. From hearing all of the submissions and the witness testimonies, I'm certainly convinced it could be much better in making the scheme more sustainable and in addressing the fraud that is plaguing it. One of the most concerning parts of the witness testimonies that I heard was about the impact on community supports. You could hear the fear in people's voices. You could hear it; you could see it. They were concerned about becoming invisible and about not doing, or having the ability to participate in, the things in life that we take for granted. That was the thing that caused the most anxiety for participants and their families.

Community supports are critical. Earlier we heard concerns about the impact of removing community supports on jobs. If people can work, they should work. It might not be in the same way that I, or someone else, can work, but if they want to be able to contribute by working, volunteering or doing things out in our communities then they should be able to do that. But to make an arbitrary cut to the ability to do that across every participant—I was left scratching my head and thinking, 'How is that right?' There's not even a suitable explanation to explain how this legislation got to that point. Meanwhile, dodgy operators continue slipping through those cracks while legitimate providers are buried in paperwork, bureaucracy, compliance and red tape. And it's not just the providers. The participants are bogged down in this. And their families are bogged down in this; what they want to focus on is improving the lives of the people they love. It's a simple request; you'd think it wouldn't be that hard.

The scheme must be sustainable for the future to continue supporting those Australians with significant and permanent disability for generations to come. There were very few people that I heard that wouldn't agree with that sentiment. There is opportunity to address its cost to make it more sustainable, but the way Labor is presenting it is not the way to do that. The inquiry should be extended and this bill should not be presented.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion put forward by my colleague, Senator Steele-John, and I want to associate myself with the statements made by Senator Steele-John and Senator Waters.

Within less than a fortnight of this bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, being introduced into the parliament, people with a disability around the country mobilised to tell the government that this is not the way to be caring and supporting for people with a disability in our community. It would appear that the government isn't listening. If it were, it would have withdrawn this bill and engaged in a true process of co-design with people with a disability, their families, advocates and other stakeholders to come up with something that was not this.

This is a bill that is designed to do one thing: to make budget savings now and to continue to make budget savings in the future off the back of people who need support. This is a pattern that we are seeing from this Labor government. We've seen it in aged care, using the argument that they're implementing the recommendations of a royal commission. In fact, they're making the system worse for older people, making them pay more so that many of them can't afford care. The government are tying older people up in assessments and bureaucracy, which means they either wait years or they die before they ever receive support.

Just at the weekend I was talking to some older people in a workshop, and one of them said to me, 'We feel they just want us to die. because then they won't have to pay for us.' And it's hard not to wonder whether that is, in fact, the case, because the same thing is going to happen here with the changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. There are people who are going to die as a consequence of these changes.

Removing social supports for people arbitrarily can have catastrophic consequences for people. Not that long ago we had COVID lockdowns and so many people were saying that they were going stir crazy locked in their houses, asking, 'When would it end?' Well, this bill will consign some people with a disability to a lifetime of being locked down in their homes. Shame on you!

We keep hearing the word 'sustainability'. What's sustainable about chucking people off a scheme that supports them when we know that that's a false economy? Poor mental health is going to go through the roof, and we already have a mental health crisis in this country that we are not addressing with adequate supports. We're going to see more hospital admissions because people haven't had the care and support that they need. It's just like we're seeing with aged care: hospital beds are filling up because people cannot get the care that they need in their homes. We are going to see that repeated here.

Forty billion dollars in savings—I can think of a whole bunch of other places where we could find $40 billion in savings. Let's not buy submarines that are just going to put us on an offensive war footing against a country that's one of our major trading partners. That's not going to make us safer. How about we have a gas tax? Stop letting big corporations off scot-free without them paying their fair share. Let's tax the one per cent and make them pay their fair share. Let's stop giving massive subsidies to fossil fuel companies. Let's not grandfather into the never-never capital gains tax and negative gearing. There is so much money out there if the government had the courage to stand up to powerful vested interests, to not do their bidding, and actually do the job of government, which is to care for people.

People on the NDIS have said the scheme is not perfect. There are aspects that need reform. There are people who are being negatively impacted by fraud in the system. Why don't you start by going after that first? You could actually have a concerted effort to bring legislation into this place to seriously tackle the fraud that some providers are perpetuating, which is harming people on the scheme, and then reassess where you're at. But, no; you want to start with cuts. You want to not only start with cuts but give the minister virtually unfettered power to make more cuts into the future. Who knows who will be the government then? I find that pretty scary.

There are some parties in this place that would love to decimate the NDIS, and you're basically giving them a blank cheque and a free pass to do whatever they want in the future to cut people's supports. There is a pattern with this government: tying people up in bureaucracy and automated assessments. We're seeing algorithms creeping in to the way people are going to be assessed on the NDIS. We're already seeing what a disaster that is in the aged-care space—automation in social services and cutting people off from their payments. That's another group of people in our community who should be supported and looked after by governments, but this government refuses to do what needs to be done. They're getting savings out of not raising the rate of income support. It's just another example of going after savings from the people in our community, who governments are supposed to be helping, instead of standing up to vested and powerful interests.

This is a government that came to this parliament with a massive majority. This is a government that has a pathway through the Senate to do good things for people in our communities. What did we see with aged care? We saw them do a deal with the coalition behind closed doors about the financials, and now we've got a mess of a system where people can't afford to access care. They can't get care. I guarantee that we're looking down the barrel of the same thing again. They are working with those parties who are happy to help the government use the vulnerable people, the people who need our help in our community, as the cash cows to balance their budget, because they don't have the courage. Notwithstanding their massive majority, and notwithstanding the fact that they have a clear pathway through this place to do good things that will help our community, they want to punch down on the people who need and deserve government support.

How shameful it is that one of the ways that you've tried to build up consent in the community for these cuts is to put fraud out there like it's this massive emergency. I've seen people in the street with a disability getting spat on because the community has been led to believe that it's the participants who are committing this fraud. It's been quite convenient for the government to let people think that, because that will help manufacture consent for changes that are going to really harm people.

We know the focus groups were there; the research is there. How do we get consent to chuck 241,000 people off the NDIS? I know; we'll start telling everybody about fraud, even though I can count on my two hands the prosecutions for fraud. It's punching down on people who need support—people with a disability, older people, people who need income support. That's how this government rolls. And the public is noticing. I honestly don't know how you sleep at night. I don't know how you can have so much power, such a majority, and then not help people. It blows my mind.

What blows my mind even more is when I'm at rallies like one for the NDIS and I'll have someone who I know is a Labor volunteer or supporter come over and say, 'Thank you so much for speaking out.' Well, who's speaking up in your party room? Who's speaking up in caucus? What's the point of having 94 of you in the lower house, if you can't stop something as bad as this? Why even bother? I say to those Labor backbenchers in the Senate and the lower house, where are you? Where are you standing up and speaking out about cuts that are going to devastate people with a disability.

They already know. They've had a taste of what this is going to look like, because they've already had supports start to be cut and they know what that means for their lives. They know that it means some of them won't be able to get out of bed. They know that it means they're going to be disconnected from their communities. They know that it means they're going to be locked inside their houses. They know that it means they're not going to be able to get to work. Parents know that it means the family that's just hanging on by a thread as it is, because of the challenges that they are facing with their kids who need support, are going to go under. Knowing all that, what's the point of sitting on the Labor backbench if you can't speak up in your own party room?

I am really proud of the work that the disability community, people with a disability, have done despite the challenges, to stand together and to tell the government that this is not okay. I am proud of the work that the disability community has done to speak out and tell the public what this is going to mean for them, how devastating this is going to be for them and their families. Make no mistake: in addition to people with a disability paying for these cuts, women in our community are going to pay for these cuts. Who's doing the bulk of the caring work when the government's not giving people the support they need? Women! They're the ones looking after our parents and grandparents because they can't get access to aged care. They're the ones looking after kids with a disability and other family members with a disability because they can't get the support they need. This is a government that's supposed to be about women. We've heard that women and people with a disability are going to be more likely to experience violence, abuse and neglect if they get their supports taken away. Yet this is a government that tells the community, 'We care about violence against women. We're doing everything we can to stop violence against women.' There are things that you can do that will help such as not taking away people's community supports in the NDIS; getting rid of the partner income test in social services, which we also know exposes women to violence; getting rid of gambling advertising, which we also know drives violence. You talk the talk, but you're not very good at walking the walk. Again I ask: what is the point of having a Labor government with a massive majority if you're not going to act on the issues that really impact people in our community, if you're not going to look after the most vulnerable, if you're just going to keep bowing down to vested interests and powerful interests and do their bidding? You've had over four years, and that is the pattern that keeps repeating and repeating and repeating.

This bill is a dog of a bill. It will harm people. If this bill passes, there are people who will die. I urge the government to scrap this bill, to withdraw it from the Notice Paper, to go back and start again and to have a genuine process of true co-design with people with a disability. Come back and tell us how you are actually going to tackle fraud from providers that are taking care away from people with a disability.

I urge the coalition: do not support a bill that is going to harm people and that will see people die.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to join my voice with that of others in this chamber who are asking the government, imploring the government, to throw this bill out and to provide the care and support that disabled people across our country deserve. I associate myself with the remarks of my colleagues Senator Steele-John, Senator Allman-Payne, Senator Waters and with Senator Kovacic and Senator Liddle and with the important evidence that you have brought forward. We share in asking the Senate to revisit this bill and for Labor to change their minds. No-one could have sat through those three days of evidence without feeling deep concern about the losses that individuals, disabled people, will suffer if Labor persists here. No-one could be under any doubt about what this bill will mean for families. It will cause a cascade of loss of freedoms, loss of life and certainly loss of control for the many millions of carers across our country who are supporting and looking after disabled people with complex issues.

This bill is an attack on disabled people. It is an attack on the care workforce. It is an attack on the economy of care, which provides such important services and freedom to people with disability. It is a cruel and inhumane act. It does not do justice to our standards as a community, as a parliament and as a society. Some 241,000 disabled people, a huge number, will simply lose their NDIS services, and a cascade of consequences will follow. If they had listened to the evidence of the individuals who came before this parliament and asked us, implored us, to understand their experience and what this meant for them then Labor could not persist with this bill.

The bill itself grants massive new powers to the government to cut supports for those who are reliant on NDIS. It cuts support for so many thousands of people who have disability, who make contributions to our labour market every day with great complexity in their lives. They manage complexity in getting transport to get to work, complexity in doing their jobs, but they do it and they manage it, in many cases because they have the kinds of support that this Labor bill will remove. It will remove people's ability to shower themselves and to look after their own personal hygiene with support. Can people imagine what that means for 241,000 households? That loss of that kind of basic amenity impacts on individuals. It impacts on households. It impacts on our labour market and our economy.

This bill also creates new access barriers which force people to undergo potentially expensive procedures not recommended or not required by their doctors. This is cruel, and it really will have a massive impact on those individuals, their families, their parents, their carers. It pushes all of that care back onto those individuals. We know what this means for the privacy of individuals, of people with disability. We know what it means for the many, many carers.

The minister said here this morning that there is no other way to do this. That is wrong. There are many other ways we can fund appropriate levels of care. There are many other ways we can end massive fraud where very big entities are practising aspects of providing disability support which are fraudulent. There are many things we could do. The minister has closed them all off. I feel like I'm back in Thatcher's Britain. 'There is no alternative.' There are many alternatives. I spent three days last week in hearings, two of them around housing. Many people came forward and said, 'If we didn't have the kind of grandfathering provisions that bake in massive benefits for very, very wealthy property investors, we would have billions of dollars added into our budget which could do exactly what is being removed here—fund the services that disabled people need.'

I spent a whole day on Friday listening to the cowboys and scoundrels in KPMG telling us about the kinds of activities they have been engaged in, misusing confidential information, to generate huge buckets of revenue. KPMG's revenue last year was $2.3 billion. There are 680 partners in that firm who do not pay corporate tax. They don't pay payroll tax. We could change the way in which we tax the big four and generate very significant levels of revenue.

We have a bill of $271 billion that Labor has committed to pay on the AUKUS submarine contract, a bill where we're very unlikely to get a significant usable product at the end. We're already sending billion-dollar cheques off to the UK and the US for this very implausible contract which is very unlikely to deliver what we need, and there are billions of dollars wasted in our defence budget. We can tax gas corporations. A 25 per cent tax could generate $17 billion in a single year. We could stop giving away masses of billions of dollars to fossil fuel companies in fuel subsidies.

There are so many things we could do that are alternatives, and we sit here and hear the Labor government say, 'There is no other way to do this than to punch down on people in our society, people we know in our streets, in our communities and in our households, that depend on our support.' For every $1 that we invest in the NDIS, Per Capita's research tells us we get a $2.25 return to the Australian economy. We have a very significant care economy there which deserves support and which should be backed in rather than cut and treated in the way that Labor proposes.

We had a select committee into work and care here a few years ago with very firm evidence about the role of carers in our economy, assisting so many thousands of Australians. Witnesses came before us and told us what the care responsibilities meant for them and how NDIS support was critical to their participation in our economy and their participation in public life—all of the activities, voluntary and paid, that they contribute. Make no mistake, this bill is diabolical in its implications for women. This bill is an attack on women. This bill is an attack on the millions of women across our economy who provide care to Australians who desperately need it and rely on it for being able to participate in their lives. This is a bill which attacks women. It's an attack on carers, disproportionately women. It is wrong. It is an attack by a government that wears its credentials on its services and support for women every day out there in public. But this bill is a clear demonstration of their failure to understand the implications of these massive cuts for women, for their participation in work, for their participation in their family life and for their participation in so many other activities.

Turning to the experience in South Australia, I have had so many South Australian constituents make contact with my office and ask for their voices to be represented here. They come forward with stories—for example, a 50-year-old woman who finally gained full independence not so long ago and confidence that her son could act in this community with the help of a support worker. The parent is now able to enjoy retirement knowing their adult child is supported. Parents who are able to work and pay tax because they have some physical and mental load taken by a support worker are now at risk of losing all of that. This is an incredible loss not only for the economy but especially for the individuals and for those they care for. Their teenager has the chance to get involved in teenage activities, following years of support by a parent, and get the independence so important for young kids. People who are able to walk without fear of falls due to equipment and who've joined a gym with support from a support worker are now at real risk of losing that. And people with intellectual disabilities who have brought their stories to my office are currently able to save up hours and travel out of town. Before the NDIS, they were unable to leave their small town and overcome issues of isolation.

Through the NDIS, people across the state of South Australia and our whole country have been able to gain confidence, to escape isolation, to work on goals, to get jobs and to aim for dreams like others do. Cutting back on all of this is a disaster for these individuals. I can't talk about this evidence without mentioning the incredible example of the loss of the life of Anne-Marie Smith in South Australia. This is a story of isolation—a failure in the life of a disabled person to see enough people which resulted in the appalling circumstances of her loss of life—which shocked and horrified everyone in our own state, South Australia, and across our country. Key multiple support interactions are critical to saving the life of someone like Anne-Marie Smith.

People will suffer due to this bill. We have heard people say over and over again in this chamber that people will die. We will be back at inquiries in the future that will look at the cost of this 241,000-person loss of services. We really need to see this for what it is: a Labor bill that is cruel, a Labor bill that is not necessary and a Labor bill which cuts services which could be funded by a whole range of possible actions that could have held off this massive cut. I think of the recent stats we've seen in this country of the growing number of billionaires. We're now at over 178 billionaires in this country, and their wealth grew by $25 billion last year. We do not tax those billionaires at anything like the rate we tax our nurses, our teachers and our retail workers. We have a whole range of tax levers available to us in this country that mean we can fund decent services for disabled people. We can fund a decent social safety net which supports people to live with dignity. How dare a government who promised that they wouldn't cut the NDIS now balance their budget by selling disabled people's dignity? It is all wrong and all against our national values. It's disgusting that Labor would strip a sense of hope away from disabled people and their families when the ultrawealthy are doing so well.

We are an increasingly unequal society. It shocks me how much our country has changed in the last 30 years. We have a massive pulling away of very wealthy people at the top who are not taxed enough, and down at the bottom are a growing number of people who are really struggling. And we wonder, as people in this place, why people are changing their vote—why people are moving their vote away from the big parties. The reason is they don't feel listened to. They don't feel heard in a place like this and they are bringing their experience to us in their many hundreds, saying: 'Look at what this cut will do to me. Look what it will do to my child, my teenager or my aged parent.' We need to listen to those voices if we want people to have any confidence in our democracy. If we want people to engage in a serious way with policy, we need to show we are listening. Labor is showing in this bill that it is cruel, it is not listening and it is going to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians for the worse.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Let's be very clear about what Labor is proposing to do to disabled people in Australia. It is attacking the NDIS—a great Labor reform, I might add, from the days when Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister. Labor is intending to attack the NDIS to the extent that somewhere around 240,000 disabled people are going to be booted off the NDIS. That means they will lose access to critical supports that, in many cases, are life-saving supports: access to carers, access to services and access to desperately needed equipment. People will die as a result of Labor's attacks on the NDIS and, by extension, Labor's decision to attack disabled people.

This is a diabolical proposal from Labor. It is the biggest single cut to a program in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. Labor will say they have no choice and they have to rein in costs. We in the Greens say to Labor: there is always a choice. The choice that you have taken is to fund, for example, the AUKUS nuclear submarines at a cost heading rapidly towards $400 billion over the life of that program and, at the same time, move to cut tens of billions of dollars of support from disabled people. The choice you have made is to not tax the one per cent in this country and to not make the billionaires and the ultrawealthy pay their fair share of tax so that we can do more to support people who desperately need support, including disabled people. The choice Labor has made is to not make big corporations pay their fair share of tax. The choice Labor has made is to not put in place a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports to make the big, polluting, profiteering, price-gouging fossil fuel corporations pay their fair share of tax. At the same time, Labor chooses to punch down on disabled people.

Make no mistake; these NDIS cuts will force every single participant to be reassessed, placing massive stress on those people and the family networks that do so much to support them. Even participants with lifelong conditions like cerebral palsy will have to be reassessed with the specific intention of either removing them from disability supports or lowering the level of support that they receive. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to leave their house and their not being able to leave their house. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to have a shower and their not being able to have a shower. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to improve their verbal communication skills and their remaining non-verbal, unable to communicate verbally. These cuts will be the difference between a disabled person being able to remain in a mainstream classroom to learn and be educated and their not being able to remain in a mainstream classroom. These are disgraceful and diabolical cuts that Labor is proposing, and they are cuts that Labor is choosing to make.

Labor's rhetoric about having no choice but to reduce costs to the NDIS system is absolute rubbish. It is a diabolical spin on a diabolical proposal. There are always choices in politics. Every day, governments make choices. Budgets are all about choices. Labor has the choice to walk away from this diabolical proposal, and the Liberals have a choice to stand with the Greens and prevent these cuts from happening. Make no mistake—if the Liberals are genuine about wanting support for disabled people to continue at reasonable levels, they have an opportunity here to vote with the Greens in this Senate and stop Labor's NDIS cuts.

But, before we get to that, the real choice here is for the government. The government could simply acknowledge the stories that were told in the Senate inquiry hearings over the last few weeks—the horrendous stories about what people will face if these cuts go through, about the harm that will be caused to disabled people and about the death that will be caused to some disabled people. Those stories surely are enough now for Labor to admit the error of its ways and to withdraw this bill from the parliament. No-one who listened to that evidence that was given so bravely and courageously by so many disabled people could possibly argue that this bill should be supported by the parliament. From witness after witness, day after day, we heard heart-rending stories of how much so many disabled people rely on the NDIS to lead dignified lives and how much they rely on the NDIS for the supports they so desperately need. Those stories were heart-rending. Those stories were told from the heart and from the gut by people who came in because they wanted to be heard and demanded that they be heard by this parliament.

The Greens are here to fight these cuts with every fibre of our being. We will do everything we can to ensure that these cuts do not go through this parliament. These cuts should not receive support from this Senate. Even if the government, Labor, won't see the error of its ways and do what it should, which is withdraw this legislation, the numbers are still there if the opposition joins with the Greens to vote this friendless piece of legislation down. These kinds of cuts have no place in a compassionate, contemporary society like Australia's. I have no doubt that the email inboxes, the phone messaging apps and the letterboxes of every single senator are being flooded, as mine are, by people with disabilities and by people who care for people with disabilities who want to make sure that these cuts do not progress.

I want to relate one story—just one out of the countless stories that have been told to me. It's from someone I know well, a friend of mine and a constituent of mine in Tasmania who has a child with Down syndrome. As he points out, he's a very proud father of a son with Down syndrome. He goes at length into the consequences for him and his son if the level of supports for his son are withdrawn. He also makes the point that, while it is great for people with disabilities—in particular, people with Down syndrome—to have support for social experiences, what is often lost in this debate is how the lives of everyone else are enriched by an interaction with someone with a disability like Down syndrome. As my friend says, it breaks moulds, it enlarges thinking, and it encourages special insights. His son has recently started work at a grocery, and his son who is non-verbal has brought the best out of the other staff at that grocery. He is bringing out their better selves as they find ways to interact with him and then subsequently improve their interactions with each other.

This is not just a debate about how we can support disabled people. It is a debate about what disabled people bring to us—the gifts they give to us and the opportunities they bring to us to learn about ourselves, to improve ourselves as people and to improve ourselves as a society. Those are the opportunities that Labor wants us to spurn, and those are the opportunities that either Labor can ensure we continue to have by withdrawing this legislation or the Liberals can ensure we continue to have by joining with the Greens to oppose this legislation.

Let's be very clear about budget choices. In this budget, Labor chose not to impose a minimum 25 per cent export tax on gas. Labor chose not to make the super wealthy pay a wealth tax in this country. Labor chose not to put in place genuine reform of our tax system, from negative gearing through to capital gains tax, to not only do something significant to fix the housing crisis but also to make sure the super wealthy property speculators pay their fair share of tax. Labor chose to proceed with the AUKUS nuclear submarine proposal, which, over the lifetime of that program, is now heading up towards $400 billion, and I predict will end up even more than $400 billion. They chose to do and to not do those things, and, at the same time, they chose to punch down on disabled people and make a massive budget saving—the single biggest saving of a single program in this budget and in the history of the Australian Commonwealth—by slashing funding to the NDIS.

This is not just about inquiries. It's not just about reports. This is actually about people—people who need and deserve support so that they can have a dignified life and their families can have some much-needed relief for the supports that all families with disabled people give and continue to give to their family members who are disabled. So this is a very stark choice. This is a moment in time for the major parties in this parliament—the Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals—and it is a moment in time where people need to stop and think about the impact of the decisions that they make in this place on the so many millions of Australians who rely either directly or indirectly on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. When folks do take a moment to think about the implications and to think about the impacts of the decision that this parliament will shortly have to make in regard to the NDIS legislation and Labor's proposed NDIS cuts, when people genuinely think about those impacts and those implications, any decent, compassionate, reasonable thinking human is going to come down on the side of protecting the NDIS from these cuts. There are savings to be made elsewhere. There is so much revenue that Labor has chosen to leave on the table through its budget choices that this choice to protect disabled people from Labor's NDIS cuts should be abundantly clear. This legislation should not and must not pass this parliament, and the Greens will do everything that we can to ensure that that is the case.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Steele-John be agreed to.