Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 and move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate notes that:

(a) in 2023, the Government announced a target growth rate for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) of 8 percent and was unable to achieve it;

(b) in January 2026, the Prime Minister announced a new target growth rate for the NDIS of 5-6 per cent, which the Government again failed to meet;

(c) in April 2026, the Health Minister announced yet another new annual target growth rate for the NDIS of 2 per cent over the next four years, despite the Government's ongoing inability to meet any of their previously announced target growth rates;

(d) the Government and the National Disability Insurance Agency have been unable to clearly quantify or comprehensively address the scale of fraud within the NDIS;

(e) the Australian National Audit Office estimates that up to 10 per cent of NDIS claims are inappropriate, mischievous or outright criminal;

(f) the Government is failing to do more to prevent the fraud and rorting that is rife within the NDIS despite this being the primary concern of 7 in 10 Australians, by the Government's own admission;

(g) the changes in the bill will do little to remove bad actors from defrauding participants and taxpayers and fails to adequately meet the expectations of Australians for greater integrity within the Scheme;

(h) robust integrity systems are critical to protect taxpayer funds, restore the Scheme's social licence and to protect NDIS participants from exploitation by unscrupulous providers; and

(i) the Government must ensure that participant safety remains a core value of the NDIS and that adequate safeguards are built in to ensure that vulnerable Australians with severe and permanent disability will be supported".

For Australians living with significant and permanent disability, the NDIS provides not just support but opportunity, independence and dignity—the chance to work, to participate in community life, to live with greater freedom and confidence and to access the support they need without feeling like a burden on the people they love. The NDIS is one of the most significant social reforms undertaken in Australia and has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability, but the scheme is at a crossroads.

It has grown rapidly since its establishment. Originally expected to support about 410,000 Australians, the NDIS now supports 782,000 people, nearly double the original estimate, and it continues to grow. Originally estimated to cost $13.6 billion, expenditure this year is more than $50 billion. The latest projections show that costs will reach $70 billion by 2030 and around $100 billion by 2035. This is the NDIS Labor built, and its trajectory has become unsustainable. We need to be honest about that. The bill represents the Albanese government's third attempt to rein in the growth of the scheme. In August 2023, they promised growth would be reduced to eight per cent; they haven't achieved that. In January this year, despite missing that target, they pledged to reduce growth even further to between five and six per cent; they failed again. Growth is still at nearly 11 per cent. Now—in this year's budget, with no achievements under their belt—they have committed to reduce the growth in the NDIS to just two per cent. In some ways it's hard to believe that this is not just another accounting trick by the Albanese Labor government to make their near-trillion dollar deficit look better. There is every likelihood, given the government's track record, they won't achieve this new target either.

The bill will establish a new framework to assess a person's eligibility for support through the NDIS. Until now, eligibility has been based primarily on a person's diagnosis. This bill will change that to be based on a person's reduced functional capacity as a result of that diagnosis. There are a lot of people right now who are exceptionally worried about whether they themselves, their child, their family member or their loved ones will be eligible for support through the NDIS. The answer still remains unclear.

The bill establishes the legislative mechanism to change the way a person is assessed but provides no detail on what that new assessment will look like. The Albanese government hasn't developed it yet. This, in and of itself, has caused a level of fear and anxiety amongst the disabled community. Changes of this magnitude need to be done right. People need to be consulted; they haven't been. These changes won't roll out until 1 January 2028, so the Albanese government say they still have time. I hope they are true to their word, but broken promises have become the norm with this government.

The other concern is that all existing NDIS participants will be progressively reassessed over three years, between 1 January 2028 and 31 December 2030. With more than 760,000 participants, that's a lot of reassessments. And where do they go? Our state and territory health systems are already bursting at the seams. People are turned away daily from our emergency departments and hospital services. Getting an appointment at a doctor takes forever, and, despite what the Albanese government say, too many people are still paying massive out-of-pocket expenses. Wait lists are months long. We are hopeful that people with significant and permanent disabilities will not be put through the wringer during this process and asked to provide multitudes of new and, usually, very costly medical reports to prove and re-prove their disability. The Albanese government needs to use commonsense during this process.

The bill will restrict a person's ability to ask for an unscheduled reassessment of their plan. The Albanese government has said that around 12,000 unscheduled plan reassessments are taking place each month, with most reassessments resulting in additional funding variations of 20 per cent. Right now, a participant or their support team, including their plan managers, can ask for a plan reassessment if they believe a person's needs have changed. Unfortunately, we are seeing this power misused by some bad actors who are just out to skim additional funds from participants for services never provided. The changes in this bill will restrict who can ask for a plan reassessment to a person's plan nominee or guardian, and these will only be considered when there has been a significant and ongoing change in a person's functional capacity. This will ensure a participant or their trusted nominee or guardians remain in control of their needs.

The bill clarifies that a person will only receive funding and supports for the impairment for which they're assessed by the NDIS. The government has advised that in some cases where a person has sought support for additional medical conditions for which NDIS support was not intended and which have not been granted—the Administrative Review Tribunal has overruled these decisions. This is an important clarification in the legislation. It was always the intention that the NDIS support people with significant and permanent disability, but other medical conditions should be supported by the health system—as was intended.

The changes to support for NDIS participants are what is concerning the disability community the most. This is completely understandable. These supports are relied on by many to build independence and assistance with daily living skills. This looks different for each participant depending on their goals. The government has stated the changes will apply to two support categories: social, civic and community participation supports; and capacity-building activities. We secured changes to the bill in the House of Representatives which will protect daily living supports and employment supports.

The bill will also change the way a person's plan is renewed. At the moment, plans don't have an official end date, and a person's unspent funds are, in most cases, rolled over into the next year. The caution we have for the government on this is to ensure there is no gap between a person's plan ending and a new plan being created. There can be no delay in supports for people with disability because of slow bureaucracy.

The bill will clarify the definition of permanence of disability to allow access to the scheme. These changes will require a person to have had all appropriate treatment for their condition, for that treatment to be unlikely to materially improve their condition and for the condition to be lifelong. Importantly, there will be rules to exclude some circumstances for people. For example, a person with a hearing impairment may not be required to have a cochlear implant. The government must work through this very carefully to ensure that participants are protected.

The coalition's support for the scheme remains unwavering. We believe the scheme must be there for Australians with significant and permanent disability, exactly as it was intended, but there is no denying that the integrity of the scheme is weak. Australians can see this. Day after day, we see shocking stories of criminals exploiting the NDIS for hundreds of thousands of dollars or, in some cases, millions of dollars. Our law enforcement agencies have said that organised crime outfits are now targeting the NDIS, and these criminals continue gaming the system because they know the guardrails are weak and the fences meant to protect it are flimsy. The Australian National Audit Office has estimated that up to 10 per cent of payments are non-compliant, incorrect or fraudulent—10 per cent. That is $5 billion a year on today's expenditure. That's $5 billion of taxpayer money just walking out the door and delivering no care.

In March this year, the Australian Federal Police raided a Sydney home linked to a man accused of fraudulently claiming NDIS payments as a registered provider. Authorities allege he has links to serious organised crime, and he's accused of claiming more than $1.5 million for services that were never provided. In February, a Darwin NDIA employee was charged over an alleged $5 million fraud. In New South Wales, three people were jailed for a $5.8 million fraud. Another case involves an alleged $14.5 million scheme tied to major provider networks. In my home state of South Australia, there was a provider who not just overclaimed but charged for services never provided. Recently, another two men in South Australia were caught defrauding the system of over $460,000. The list goes on.

It's not just the theft of taxpayer money that should be horrifying us. Behind the fraud statistics are vulnerable Australians being exploited, manipulated and abused by people who have been entrusted with their care—participants allegedly being trafficked for their support packages, coerced into approving invoices for services that were never delivered, having their identity stolen to drain every funding meant to support their independence and dignity. These cases show a disgusting abuse of power against some of the most vulnerable people in our society. With Australians hearing these stories day in, day out, the NDIS has lost the social licence it once had.

In Minister Butler's Press Club speech, he admitted seven out of 10 Australians believe the NDIS is too large and struggles with dodgy providers. Worse still, six in 10 Australians think the NDIS is broken. What was once a beacon of pride for our country has become, to some, a national disgrace. Every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar taken away from someone who genuinely needs support. Despite all this and the Albanese government's rhetoric that it is tackling fraud, the original bill presented to the parliament did very little to address fraud or target criminals that are infiltrating the scheme. In fact, the government's own modelling for the reform measures contained within the bill noted the fraud and integrity measures will only reduce the estimated $5 billion walking out the door each year by $300 million, and none of this will even kick in until 27-28 financial year.

The bill presented to the House of Representatives included digital payments platform, changes to claim timeframes and requiring people to keep receipts, as I mentioned earlier. Don't get me wrong, these measures go some way to addressing inappropriate claims, but it is not a strong enough response to what we know has become a criminal ecosystem. The coalition has been clear: more must be done to address the fraud occurring within the scheme.

The coalition has been working across the parliament with the government, the Australian Greens, specifically Senator Steele-John, and members of the crossbench to improve this bill. There were also additional amendments which will require the pricing advice received by the minister to be tabled and a review of these reforms to be undertaken and tabled in the parliament. We continue to work with the government to make additional improvements to this bill. We all want to see the scheme protected, but the scheme's growth and expenditure are unsustainable at current levels.

One of the things that stood out during the Senate inquiry was the disability community's outrage and heartbreak that they were not consulted on these reforms before they were introduced. There has been no consultation with the disability community, representative organisations or even state and territory ministers on these reforms. State and territory disability ministers even made a submission to the Senate inquiry. They said:

… Disability Ministers have not been meaningfully consulted in the development of these reforms, signalling a broader shift away from shared governance despite the Scheme's joint funding responsibilities.

With state and territory ministers pushing back on the Albanese Labor government's signature reform package of this year's budget, there is a clear risk that alternative supports will not be in place for participants who are exiting the scheme when these changes commence. The coalition has raised this concern extensively since April, when the changes were first announced. The minister for disability and the NDIS has said he won't let people fall between two stools. When questioned on Insiders on the weekend, the Minister for the NDIS said they will not leave people without support.

The welfare and safety of participants must remain paramount. The success of these reforms relies heavily on the co-design of measures and their careful implementation. The coalition urges the government to consult with the disability community. It is essential that there are escalation pathways should there be any concerns for a participant's welfare and safety. Ensuring people remain safe from abuse, neglect, violence and exploitation is not negotiable, and the government must ensure that participant safety remains the core value of the NDIS.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The NDIS is a vital piece of social infrastructure in Australia. It was first introduced by the Gillard government with bipartisan support, and it has transformed the lives of thousands and thousands of people with disability, and, indeed, provided relief and confidence to their carers. I was a member of the committee that heard testimony over the last eight weeks from numerous stakeholders in this sector. This was a community affairs inquiry that received over 4,000 pieces of evidence.

We can tell that the community is highly invested in this scheme, and we understand that. What was telling though was that while we heard evidence that people were trenchantly opposed to any changes in this bill, we also heard testimony that NDIS was failing other families—and sometimes even failing people within the same family. We heard examples where one child would be receiving supports and another child, a sibling, with similar needs was not getting those kinds of supports. There was a real paradox here. We, as a government, understand the vital importance of the NDIS—after all, it is a Labor scheme—but we also understand that we need to protect it for future generations. This means that we need to confront some hard truths.

The first is that growth in the NDIS has been unsustainable. The scheme currently costs $50 billion for 760,000 participants. This contrasts, for example, with Medicare which costs $40 billion for 28 million Australians. The scheme, without any changes, is on track to hit $70 billion in 2030 and, a decade from now, in 2035, it will hit $100 billion if no changes are introduced. This is clearly unsustainable and it is pulling and tearing at the social licence of the scheme with the Australian taxpayer.

In addition, we know that the scheme has been riddled with fraud and rorts. It has become a honey pot for syndicated crime. This is why this government introduced a package of $1½ billion to combat fraud in the system. We introduced, for example, the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. We strengthened that further with the NDIS safeguards and integrity legislation. And we have further empowered the agency, the NDIA, to strengthen integrity and chase down these fraudsters. The NDIS has effectively become a honey pot for shonks and criminals and that is not a costless crime.

In addition, we have problems with eligibility. That was evident throughout the inquiry, even within families with children with similar needs. There is far too much inconsistency around eligibility, and this has really been born from the fact that eligibility has been determined by diagnosis. As a doctor, I trenchantly oppose any medicalisation or pathologising of health conditions. In fact, what has happened is these access lists have become a gateway for entering into the NDIS when actually we are trying to shift it to a more functional test. So, the NDIS was established to help and to assist those with permanent and significant disability. We are moving away from the diagnostic gateway—frankly, it has led to diagnostic inflation—to one threshold that is more based on functional needs. Those thresholds will be determined by a technical advisory group that we have stood up that is chaired by a person with expertise in occupational therapy. It's this group that will provide evidence to the government as to how we should set thresholds for entry into the scheme, but it should not be based on medical diagnosis because those lists are as long as your arm, and they have not worked. In fact, what we are doing instead, I think and I fear, is pathologising a whole range of conditions, and that can lead to other problems.

The NDIS is there to support people with permanent and significant disability, so we want to really dial back some of the scope creep that has entered the NDIS. As architects of the NDIS, we are absolutely determined to secure its future, and that is what this bill does. It builds on four pillars: fighting fraud and stopping the rorts; slowing the rapid cost increases; clarifying eligibility requirements, which I've talked about; and ensuring that we continue to deliver quality services and supports to participants both now and well into the future. The scheme is far too important to allow these to slide.

Under the coalition, in the 10 years that they were in power, the scheme completely went off the rails. The growth of this scheme was in the order of 22 per cent when we came to government. We halved that growth to 10 per cent, but it wasn't enough. The actuary clearly told us that the scheme was on track to cost $100 billion in less than a decade, so we have to make further changes. That's why, in January of this year, National Cabinet agreed on bringing the cost down to five to six per cent. The scheme will still continue to grow—I just want to make that clear—but it will grow at a lower, more sustainable rate, and one that retains integrity and preserves its social licence. We know that this growth cannot come at the expense of other services Australians need, whether that be Medicare, hospital funding, regional and rural health services and so on.

Importantly, in creating a more sustainable NDIS, it allows us to look at other groups who have, I think, been neglected for too long. In my practice, I saw a lot of patients with psychosocial disability. What does that mean? For example, it might mean people with burnt-out schizophrenia. These are people—often young people, I might add—who are heavily medicated, who have really challenging psychiatric disorders that require ongoing specialist input, and they are unable to work. They rely on the state. They rely on the safety net. The problem is the safety net is sometimes not adequate for these people. They end up homeless. They go from boarding house to boarding house. They enter the hospital system like a carousel—in and out, in and out. Sometimes they fall through the cracks. We as a government recognise that this is a problem. This has been discussed with the subnational governments. We want to help these people and try to enable the NDIS to provide that kind of support to these people. I agree with that because the current status quo cannot be upheld for this particular group. So we will continue to work with the states on creating space in the NDIS for groups that have been neglected.

We're also working with the states on restoring wider supports in the community. Those are called, broadly speaking, foundational supports. One such is the Thriving Kids program, which is due to open in October of this year and will officially go live on 1 January 2028. This will be pitched towards children who are eight years or less with autism and/or developmental delay but with lower needs. We have seen a massive growth of autism spectrum disorder in the NDIS. We have around 300,000 participants with this diagnosis. The problem with autism spectrum disorder—and don't take it from me; take it from the neuroscientist who did the seminal research in ASD, Professor Uta Frith—is that it has become so inclusive as to be meaningless. What we are trying to do now is move away from this diagnostic labelling gateway to a more functional assessment that determines entry into the NDIS. Creating the Thriving Kids program will ensure those children—and this is a good thing—spend more of their time in the community, in schools, in playgrounds and on sporting fields while still receiving their supports. Children do not need to be spending time in the waiting rooms of doctors and specialists and therapists. That is not in their best interest, absolutely not. I say this as a medical professional.

That's not all we're doing. We're also going to be introducing a new scheme that builds on community and social participation. Right now, this particular element of the NDIS has seen rapid growth. It has seen a tripling in just the last five years. It's not clear that it's actually serving its intended purpose. We heard a lot of testimony from participants. Mind you, the people who come to the hearings are a very small sample size, and for them this was an enabler of employment and participation in broader society. We absolutely heard that loud and clear. But, when you scratch beneath the surface, this scheme is not working for a lot of people. We're seeing people with disability who have support workers with them out in the community. Support workers are on their phones. You can't tell me that that is actually doing any favours to these participants or embedding them in any type of social program. It isn't. We're seeing far too much of that. So we need to restore some integrity to the scheme.

We're going to be creating a $200 million fund, the Inclusive Communities Fund, in order to rebuild capability in mainstream society, in community organisations and in sporting clubs. I think this is really important. I don't want to see people with disability tucked away in a corner of a cafe with a support worker on their phone and no interaction going on. What I would like to see is people with disability actually participating in mainstream programs. Not only will that be good for them, but it'll be good for everyone else—people without disability. It helps build bridges. It helps build empathy. It helps build understanding. That's where we need to get to. That is the purpose of establishing this Inclusive Communities Fund.

In addition, we're bringing in changes to provider registration. Currently, there are around 1,400 plan management providers. What we've seen is a massive growth in an industry around plan management. There are a lot of people clipping a ticket here and not necessarily providing the quality or the integrity. This is a vulnerable group of Australians who are at high risk of exploitation. We will be requiring all providers of high-risk NDIS supports—for example, people who need suctioning, ventilation support and so on—to register. This is a safeguard and integrity measure designed to protect these vulnerable Australians from harm, and I fully support it. Registration is commonplace for healthcare professionals, whether they be nurses or doctors or allied health professionals. It should absolutely be the case with providers who are provisioning high-risk care to NDIS participants. It will also give participants and their carers and families the confidence that there is an oversight mechanism here. Once these providers are swept up into the umbrella of registration, it means that they are then bound by rules, and that is a really important oversight mechanism.

There are a lot of different elements to this bill, but in addition we will be strengthening some of the powers of the NDIA in ensuring that integrity is maintained in the scheme and Australians can have confidence in the scheme going forwards. As I said, the NDIS is a vital piece of social infrastructure. Prior to its beginnings, people with disability were segregated and living in the shadows, with families under enormous carer stress. We will, as a Labor government, always protect the NDIS, but we need to ensure it is sustainable and secure going into the future.

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

The eyes of 5.5 million disabled people fall at this moment on this parliament. The hundreds of thousands of Australian community members who are our allies are in solidarity with this community. History is watching this debate. Every word spoken by every senator will be recorded and remembered.

The Australian disability community and our families have spoken with a clear and united voice. They have said that these cuts go too fast, go too far, will put us at risk and risk our lives, our livelihoods, our freedom and our very independence. We have taken on our backs as disabled people, once again, the burden of attempting to educate and explain the reality of our lives to people and government who just don't get it—asking again and again to be heard, telling Labor that the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 must not pass: 'Wrong way. Go back.' Yet this Labor government has turned away from disabled people, away from our families, away from the experts and the allied health professionals, and away from those that have fought decade after decade to end violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. Instead, they have turned to the corporations, to the gas exporters and to the billionaires, and the attention which should have been given—which was owed and expected—to the disabled community has instead been given to those powerful vested interests. It is to those people that the government have listened, to those people that they have decided to commit themselves.

Make no mistake, this legislation represents a choice to put the interests of Woodside and its fellow cadre of gas exporters making so much money, selling our gas for their profit, ahead of the interests of disabled people and our families. Make no mistake what is happening here. It has been laid out, clear as day, in the evidence received by this inquiry and so many others, that if there was a need to provide funding for the NDIS all that is required of the Labor Party is to grow a backbone and tax the gas exporters. A basic 25 per cent rate of tax on their exports would raise enough money to make these cuts—even by your own twisted logic that they are needed in the first place—completely irrelevant. So let's have no more statements about the tough choices you are making. You are putting your own future political interests and the interests of your government and their donors ahead of disabled people. That's what you are doing. It is not only a profound act of political cowardice, but it is also a deep and unforgivable political betrayal.

I have looked into the eyes of mums and dads who have shared with me how it felt when people like Bill Shorten and Julia Gillard assured them that they no longer had to worry about what would happen to their kids after they passed away. I've spoken with people who lived the first chapters of their lives within the darkness of institutions. They have shared how it felt to know that they would never again have to worry about having to go back into those spaces, those grouped pits, in which so many of us struggled for so long. They trusted you to keep your word. They trusted you to listen, and in this moment you break that trust and you betray.

In preparation for this debate, I went back and looked at the original intent of the scheme—that thing that you are so keen on telling us all again and again that you are restoring with this monstrous bill. Well, let's have a look at the act. Reasonable and necessary supports are gone. Individualised supports, which is the idea that what you are able to access in a disabled person should align with what your individual needs are—because we're all different; we don't come in neat little boxes or packages, we don't fit into your automated systems and we don't live a life neat and tidy in a way that is communicable and convenient for you—are gone. Choice and control—which is the idea that we should control the services that enable us to live, that we should decide the support workers that enable us to get out of the bed in the morning and that we should have control over our own services that enable control over our own lives—are gone. In this legislation dignity, for God's sake, is gone.

How do you expect a disabled person to live with dignity and confidence if they must first prostrate themselves before their own government to pass a series of randomly decided tests as to whether they've done enough to cure themselves before they can access the NDIS? Where is the dignity in that? And you dare tell us that there is no such thing as a mandate or requirement to undertake these ministerially decreed treatments, as though it is not blatantly clear to us and to you that to put a disabled person in a position to choose between keeping the supports that enable them to work, live and experience happiness and not, because you can't afford the test, because it isn't available where you live, because it is not appropriate for you, because you don't want to undergo electroshock therapy, because it is not advised by your doctor or because it is not something that you are comfortable with—and you dare tell us that that does not in fact end up constituting a choice.

When it comes to national responsibility the NDIS's original intent, as you established it, was about ending the bloody game of pass the buck when it comes to disabled people. The states, the territories and the Commonwealth government all say: 'It's not our problem. It's too expensive and too complicated.' Yet you're presiding in this legislation over the complete return to a siloed postcode lottery, where what people receive in Queensland is different from what they receive in WA, which is different from what they receive in the NT—and that's if you ever decide what a foundational support is in the first place.

I don't think people in this place understand what is on the line for disabled people and our families, despite the 4,500-odd submissions made by the community and despite the six hearings. In the contributions that I have heard so far, the basics were not fully understood. I feel that there is a great act of disconnection happening here from the human impact of what you are doing. Both the government and the Liberals seem to be able to believe that they can deal with disabled people as pieces of data to be added to a spreadsheet for the federal budget. Well, we are not—we are human beings.

I will end with a message from one of disabled human beings that will be impacted by these brutal cuts. Nathan writes: 'I feel like people making these decisions do not truly understand what they will mean for people like me. When you look at a budget, you see numbers on a page. When I look at the proposed cuts, I see pieces of my life being taken away—fewer opportunities to build independence, fewer opportunities to leave my house and participate in my community, fewer opportunities to maintain my health and develop skills and friendships and to continue becoming the best version of myself.'

This is not a joke to the disabled community. This is not a political moment. This is our lives on the line. These cuts are not needed. This parliament and this government can choose in this moment to turn back, to find courage and to tax the gas exporters and the billionaires rather than to cut the supports needed by a disabled family to live. You can choose to do that. The community is looking and watching you in this moment. You can choose to listen and to act. If you do not and you decide to complete your betrayal—if the Australian Labor Party decides to have the backs of the gas industry and the billionaires instead of the backs of disabled people and our families—then shame on you. You will betray not only this community but the national character. You will be condemned by history. The blood and the lives of those who will suffer and die will be on your hands and will live in your consciences forever. And disabled people will not let any of you forget. Come the next election, we will consider what to do with our votes and we will remember who backed us up, who fought our in corner in this moment and who decided to turn away. Between now and then, we will ensure that every single life, every single cooked decision and every single automated nightmare created by this bill is laid directly at your door. You will find no peace from us. You will understand what is being done to us, and you will hear our voices growing louder and louder on the streets and on every platform we can gain. We will not be silent or go back into the dark. I foreshadow the moving of my second reading amendment.

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

The coalition affirms strong bipartisan support for the National Disability Insurance Scheme, as Australians with significant and permanent disability deserve to live with dignity and independence and have greater choice in their own lives. This is an idea worth defending, and it is worth protecting for those who depend on it. In saying that, it is also worth protecting the scheme itself. That is exactly why the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 deserves close scrutiny, as NDIS participants and the taxpayers funding the scheme deserve much better.

The NDIS in front of us today is Labor's mess. It was Labor that designed the scheme with weak controls and no real handbrake on growth, and it is on Labor's watch that the cost has blown out to the point where it now threatens the very sustainability of the scheme itself. When the coalition was in government, we worked to put the scheme on a sustainable footing. Labor in opposition shamefully blocked those reforms. Having spent years blocking sensible changes, Labor now comes to this parliament asking to be trusted with sweeping new powers to fix a problem it had every opportunity to help prevent. That is exactly why this bill requires scrutiny.

The NDIS currently supports close to a million Australians with disability, including tens of thousands of participants in my home state of South Australia. It was estimated to cost $13.6 billion a year. Under Labor, it is now costing more than $50 billion every single year and is projected to reach $70 billion by the end of the decade and $100 billion by the mid-2030s. A scheme growing at that rate needs careful, considered reform.

The coalition wants the NDIS to succeed and be sustainable not just for this budget cycle but for the participant being diagnosed today who will rely on it in 30 years time. This is now the government's third attempt to slow the scheme's growth. In April 2023, it committed to reducing annual growth to eight per cent. We know it's big on announcements. That one wasn't met. In January 2026, the minister for health and disability set a new target of five to six per cent. Guess what? That wasn't met either. Are you noticing a theme here? Growth right now sits at around 10.3 per cent, and this bill asks us to believe that a two per cent target is suddenly achievable and safe.

What concerns the coalition most is not the goal; it's actually the method. The single largest savings measure in this bill resets social, community and civic participation and capacity-building supports from October, stripping more than $13 billion over the forward estimates. We know that economic and social inclusion is so important to people living with disabilities. It helps them to live the best life they can. The minister says that this category has tripled in five years, but neither he nor the department has produced evidence explaining that growth or justifying the cut of this size.

It is not just the process that I'm worried about; it's the people. This bill gives the minister sweeping new powers to reduce funding for entire groups of supports by legislative instrument, not through this parliament, not with the scrutiny of this parliament, not with the opportunity to dig deeper like we do through our parliamentary processes that Labor constantly tries to undermine. That's what helps us: the process to make a bad bill that comes from Labor, perhaps, a little bit better. Or perhaps it's drawing out the issues that haven't been identified and consulting people in an appropriate way. The bill requires the minister to have regard to participant safety, but not to explain how, on what criteria or on what evidence. There is limited scope to review these decisions and limited public accountability. For a scheme touching close to a million Australians, that's an extraordinary concentration of unchecked power.

We heard directly from people that will be affected. Women with Disabilities Australia told the committee that when funded supports are cut the need for care does not disappear, it just shifts to someone else, and it will shift to unpaid carers, who will disproportionately be women. From the other side we hear constantly about how they're always on the lookout for the interests of women. There is no evidence of this in this legislation. The chief executive spoke of a woman in regional Australia with multiple sclerosis locked out of support for an incurable condition because she cannot afford the pathway to prove it. Down Syndrome Australia said that a blanket percentage cut applied without regard to individual circumstances undermines the entire purpose of the scheme. Hannah Diviney, in testimony nobody in that room will forget—I saw it; I heard it—warned this government that, if people die as a result of this bill, that responsibility sits with the decision-makers, not with the people left without support.

Beyond that headline savings measure, several other schedule items will directly touch South Australian participants in my home state. The bill moves eligibility away from diagnosis alone towards a new test based on reduced functional capacity, but the government has not yet said what that assessment will look like. We're supposed to trust them. Existing participants will be progressively reassessed between January 2028 and December 2030. Labor has proven time and time again that it can't be trusted to fix it later. It should have fixed it in this bill, not later. The bill tightens who can request an unscheduled plan reassessment, limits funding to the impairment a person is actually accessing the scheme for, changes how plans are renewed, allows plans to be suspended where a participant cannot be contacted, and clarifies the definition of permanent impairment with sensible carve-outs, so a person with a hearing impairment is not forced to get a cochlear implant to remain eligible.

I acknowledge the coalition secured changes in the House to protect daily living supports and employment supports specifically, and that was the right call. But on eligibility, reassessment and permanence, the detail that will decide a participant's fate still sits in instruments nobody in this chamber has actually seen. State and territory disability ministers, who share funding responsibility for this scheme, say they were not meaningfully consulted, describing a shift away from shared governance inconsistent with commitments made at National Cabinet in January and the National Agreement on Foundational Supports signed only months later.

The broader NDIS issue is particularly acute for South Australia. Our state has thin markets at the best of times. A participant in Port Augusta or Ceduna who loses NDIS support does not have the fallback options of someone in metropolitan Adelaide. There is no queue of alternative providers in the south-east or on the Eyre Peninsula. Disability ministers warned that, without a coordinated approach, people risk ending up in hospitals or other settings that cannot meet their needs, or with no services at all, because states and territories have no agreement to deliver like-for-like services to people exited from the scheme. They've warned what is possible. Again, Labor is not listening.

I turn now to the issues that actually should sit at the centre of this bill: fraud, corruption and maladministration. Time and time again, this Labor government turns away from that, choosing instead not to tackle it. They don't like the tough stuff. They don't like to talk about or tackle fraud, corruption or administration. It's well and truly on record not just in this place but in the media. That's Labor's way.

The minister himself has said that seven in 10 Australians think the NDIS has grown too large and struggles with dodgy providers. Six in 10 say that it's probably broken. Yet, by the government's own modelling, the fraud measures in this bill will reduce an estimated $5 billion in fraudulent and incorrect claims each year by just $300 million, and those savings will not begin until 2027-28. By any measure, that's a fail in addressing fraud and corruption—not participant fraud but provider fraud. This is a program administered by government and managed in this place by a minister. It's their program; they should be able to manage it.

The Australian National Audit Office estimates that between six and 10 per cent of NDIS claim outlays could be noncompliant, fraudulent or incorrect—a figure that John Dardo, co-chair of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce within the NDIA, confirmed as recently as February. The NDIA's own general manager of the Fraud Fusion Taskforce told a Senate inquiry that her team identifies around 50,000 risky claims every single day, and law enforcement has warned that organised crime groups are now deliberately targeting this scheme. The evidence was clear. It's not reflected in the response in this bill. Evidence of fraud, corruption and maladministration was provided over and over again, but it's Labor's way to turn its back on that evidence. It's too hard. It shouldn't be.

South Australians see the sharp end of this. My office regularly hears from participants who were quoted one price for cleaning or gardening, only to watch it quadruple the moment they mention it will be paid through their NDIS plan.

The coalition does welcome parts of this bill. Expanding mandatory registration is overdue. Around 94 per cent of providers are currently unregistered, operating with, essentially, no oversight. New civil penalties, stronger record keeping and cutting the claim period from up to two years down to 90 days will help. But, against a scheme spending $50 billion a year, $300 million in recovered fraud is not a serious answer to a $5 billion problem, nor is it an answer to the evidence that was clearly represented in the inquiry. Valuing taxpayers' money, tackling fraud properly and prioritising vulnerable Australians is not in contention. Every dollar recovered from a dodgy provider is a dollar that stays with a genuine participant and supports not only that participant but also their families and communities. We are all better off when people with disabilities live amongst us, work amongst us and play amongst us.

This bill doesn't seek to tackle the most important things. A scheme with real integrity does not need to punish honest participants to balance its books. With national debt racing towards $1 trillion, it is not hard to see what is really driving this bill. It's a grab, again. Improving Labor's bill has been the focus of this process, and that work continues this week. Slowing NDIS growth and eliminating fraud and waste are the whole point, not optional extras. Bring forward the evidence for these growth targets. Consult properly with the states. Set out transparent criteria for ministerial determinations and put the same urgency into recovering fraudulently claimed taxpayers' money that the government reserves for cutting support to vulnerable Australians. This is bigger than the NDIS alone. The coalition is committed to protecting Australians' way of life, and that means spending has to be brought under control right across the budget not just in this scheme.

I want to finish by acknowledging everyone who made a submission to this inquiry and every witness who shared their story, often at real personal cost. Their evidence should shape this bill. What I say today is this: the NDIS must be made sustainable, and spending and fraud are the biggest issues standing in the way of that. Labor has not been prepared to do that in the interests of the very people—people with disabilities—that the scheme was set up for and should operate for and protect.

Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

The NDIS is one of the greatest acts of collective decency our parliament has ever delivered. It transformed disability support from a fragmented system too often determined by a postcode, personal wealth or sheer luck into a national promise—a promise that Australians with permanent and significant disability have the right to live with dignity, to exercise choice and control over the care they receive, to participate in their communities and to pursue the life that they choose. Labor created the NDIS as that promise of dignity, security and participation. The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 protects that promise by making the scheme sustainable, improving the quality of supports that people with disability receive and ensuring that its funding reaches the people who need it the most. A promise like this is not kept simply by repeating it. It is kept by making sure that the institution that gives effect to it is strong enough to endure.

As chair of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, I've spent recent weeks listening to the concerns of participants, families, carers, advocates, providers, experts and government agencies sharing their views on this bill. I have heard the genuine anxiety surrounding these reforms. We heard from people worried about whether the support that enables them to work, to study, to leave home, to maintain relationships and to remain safe would still be there. We heard important common ground—broad agreement that fraud, overcharging, conflicts of interest and poor-quality services have no place in the NDIS. There was broad agreement that public money shouldn't disappear into a market that cannot demonstrate what is being delivered and that, in many cases, does people harm. There was broad agreement that the NDIS must endure for generations to come and that there are challenges in the growth, in the integrity and in the quality that we must address.

The disagreement is not about whether the NDIS matters. It is about how we best protect it and how we protect the people who rely upon it. The responsible course is not to wave reform through without scrutiny or to retreat from difficult decisions. Our focus through our work on the committee and, indeed, the focus of the government, Minister Butler and Minister McAllister has been to listen, to strengthen the legislation, to explain honestly what we seek to do and to continue the work beyond this week should this bill pass the parliament—and I hope it does—and to continue to work with the disability community on how these reforms come to fruition.

The NDIS operates at an enormous scale. More than $50 billion is paid through the scheme, and that is projected to grow significantly. The NDIA processes around 660,000 claims a day. When Labor came to government, annual growth in the NDIS was around 22 per cent. That was simply not sustainable. Since coming to government, we've brought that down. It was around 10.5 per cent in 25-26. We've worked with state and territory colleagues through National Cabinet, and that group has now agreed to work towards sustainable annual growth of five to six per cent or lower. The NDIS, under these changes, will continue to grow each year, but this bill seeks to slow that growth to bring the scheme to a more sustainable level. This is crucial to making sure the scheme continue, but it doesn't come without tough decisions.

One of the most important considerations of our work on the NDIS has been the challenges that have come from fraud and managing integrity in the scheme because every dollar lost to fraud or rorting is a dollar that is not going to people with disability who need support. The problem has been fraudsters and organised criminals who have treated the NDIS as easy money, aided by a market with inadequate safeguards. Since coming to government, we have invested $1.3 billion in antifraud measures and established the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. That's real progress, but the agency needs stronger powers, and this bill provides them.

It allows the NDIA to investigate suspicious claims, inspect records, issue compliance and infringement notices, and pursue civil penalties. Providers will have to keep proper records to prove that they have provided the services they say, and claims will need to be made within 90 days of a support being delivered. The principle is straightforward: if someone is claiming public money, they must be able to show how it was delivered and that it was delivered. These powers target the wrongdoing that has existed in the scheme. It protects participants' funding. This is an important reform.

Our bill also lifts standards across the provider market. Since 1 July, supported independent living and NDIS digital platform providers have been required to register with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. This bill broadens the definition of an NDIS provider, giving regulators clearer reach across the market and better oversight of who is being paid through the NDIS. It also reforms plan management, who administer around 60 per cent of NDIS funding. Many do this job with great integrity, providing an important and trusted service, but there have been problems across the market: conflicts of interest, raising of false invoices, related-party transactions and payments made without services actually being delivered. That's why we seek to establish a panel of plan managers, required to meet proper quality, governance and integrity standards. We want participants to retain choice in who manages their plan but to be able to choose from genuine, accountable providers who are subject to strong oversight so that plan managers protect a participants plan, not profit from it.

This bill also establishes a clearer pricing system. For agency managed and plan managed supports, the minister will be able to set enforceable maximum prices based on advice from the NDIA. We heard through the Senate inquiry that not everyone agrees that this is the right approach, but I do believe that it is an appropriate mechanism for setting pricing. The minister is accountable, ultimately, to the parliament and to the Australian people. Importantly, the minister must provide that advice to the parliament within five sitting days. If a provider charges above the maximum price, the difference can be recovered from the provider. An NDIS plan must not be treated as a blank cheque by providers, and public funding should provide safe, effective and high-quality support for participants.

This bill makes access to the NDIS fairer and more consistent. The independent NDIS review found that the current approach is too dependent on diagnosis and access lists, which favour some but make it more challenging for people with more complex diagnoses to access support. The system shouldn't favour someone who can obtain the right support or manage a difficult pathway. We heard evidence during the Senate inquiry about varying assessment outcomes, including a particularly stark case where twins with the same diagnosis and the same support needs received very different plans through assessment. It's really important that access to the scheme is consistent. This bill moves towards a more consistent, evidence based assessment of functional capacity. A technical advisory group will advise on the thresholds and assessment methods, and this will be informed by consultation with people with disability and the states and territories. This work is really important, and it is ongoing. Those details are not being rushed, and access changes will not begin before 1 January 2028, giving us time to work through these important technical details. We know how important it is that we get this right for the disability community, for their families and carers and for providers. There's important work with the states and territories to build Thriving Kids and other foundational supports before changes take effect, and this remains a priority.

This bill also introduces more sensible rules for plan reassessments. One in five plans is currently subject to an unscheduled reassessment each year. Some of those requests have been initiated without the participant's knowledge or with very little notice. Under this reform, only a participant or someone legally authorised to act on their behalf will be able to request an unscheduled assessment. Reassessment will remain available where there has been a significant and ongoing change in functional capacity. Emergencies and short-term crises can still be addressed through a plan variation. This protects a participant's right to seek more support when their circumstances change, while preventing providers from pursuing larger plans without participant authority. These plan renewals will also replace the current rollover process.

One of the most difficult parts of this reform concerns our changes to social and community participation. I heard the concerns about these changes from people with disability, their families and their carers through our Senate inquiry. We know that participation is not a luxury. It can mean attending an appointment, seeing friends, getting to work or simply enjoying life out in the community. This is really important. Spending in this category has risen from approximately $4 billion to more than $12 billion in five years. Without reform, it was projected to reach around $20 billion by the end of the decade. That's simply not sustainable.

The government will reset social and community participation budgets as plans are renewed or reassessed. It will not abolish participation support, and it will not reduce funding in a participant's current plan partway through that plan. Supports essential to a participant's health or safety and support for those who require 24-hour care are not the target of this measure. We will also invest $200 million through the Inclusive Communities Fund to rebuild the ability of local and community organisations to offer genuine opportunities for participation.

Following the first round of Senate inquiries into the first draft of this bill, the government, the Greens and the crossbench members put forward amendments in response to feedback. All of those amendments were broadly supported in the evidence given to our inquiry. The bill now confines the minister's power to make a support determination to two categories and ensures employment and disability related health supports are carved out. A determination, as I said, cannot reduce funding partway through a plan. The minister must consider participant safety, and the determination will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

The other amendment that we made was to clarify contact where the agency has not been able to make contact with a participant. It requires that the agency must make at least five attempts to contact a participant, their nominee or another authorised person, that they must occur over a period of three to four months and that, where a participant is in hospital or another institution or experiencing homelessness, the attempts do not count. Importantly, we've also clarified the test for appropriate treatment. There's a lot of fear about this particular measure, but it's important to know that a person will not be required to pay for expensive treatment. The treatment must be regularly undertaken in Australia and publicly funded. Restrictive practices are expressly excluded, and choice will remain at the centre. No-one will be forced to undergo treatment if they do not wish to.

Importantly, these reforms will be subject to an independent statutory review in 2029 that will consider the impact on access, participant outcomes, quality of support, review rights, provider viability, thin markets and foundational supports. Our government will continue working with people with disability as these reforms are implemented. We have two important obligations in this regard: protecting the dignity, independence and safety of people who rely on the NDIS today and preserving that same promise for every Australian who will need the scheme in the decades ahead. That's not to say this change isn't hard or scary for the people who will be impacted, but doing nothing is not the compassionate choice. Labor created the NDIS, and we will always protect it. This bill goes to doing just that and to making sure the scheme is sustainable for generations to come so that people with disability, their families and their carers can always rely on it.

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

The NDIS has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled Australians by providing access to the essential supports, services and equipment that enable people to participate more fully in their communities, education, employment and family life. That was its purpose and it was created by the Gillard government with the support of the Greens in the Senate. What a difference a decade makes. This Labor government would now prefer to work with the Liberals to ram through cuts that will see 241,000 people kicked off the NDIS to save money off the backs of disabled people and their carers rather than raising revenue by making the big corporations pay their fair share of tax, like making the greedy gas corporations pay tax on their gas exports instead of letting them continue to rip Australians off. This government doesn't have the guts to take on the greedy gas corporations, so they're punching down on disabled people instead. It is appalling, and the Liberals and One Nation are lining up to back them because they're all in hock to the same big corporations and the one per cent—for shame.

Months of inquiry and evidence have made it abundantly clear that the changes proposed by Labor risk causing significant harm to disabled people. These cuts are being made too far, too fast, without adequate workforce planning, without proper economic modelling and without genuine consultation with the disability community. These changes will restrict access to the NDIS, will reduce or remove supports and will leave many people with no adequate alternative program or supports. There are no substitute programs in place, not all of the states have committed to even having them in place, and, in particular, 145,000 autistic people will suffer the most. The replacement program for them is only for kids under eight years old, and a mum was telling me on the weekend she is petrified what removing support for her autistic daughter, who's aged nine, will do for her daughter, for her daughter's ability to keep participating at school and for their whole family.

The government has repeatedly insisted that there'll be alternative supports for participants who lose access, but the evidence before the Senate from its inquiry tells a very different story. State and territory disability ministers have made clear that they cannot provide like-for-like services for everyone who may lose NDIS supports. This leaves disabled people in hospitals, in aged care or in other inappropriate settings that cannot meet their needs. The Greens have been crystal clear on the NDIS since budget night that these cruel cuts should not pass parliament. We will always fight for the rights, dignity and autonomy of disabled people. We think that disabled people deserve support, that they are worth it and that they matter. They should not be sacrificed for budget savings; their needs should be met. We strongly oppose the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, and we urge the crossbench and the opposition to do the same. We hear some strong words pointing out all the problems with the bill, but you're going to bloody vote for it. Have some guts, and do the right thing.

I want to talk now about the impact on women, both on disabled women and on the care provided to disabled people, which is often unpaid and generally done by women. This government has made commitments to end violence against women and children within a generation, yet this bill will put women with a disability at greater risk. The Our Watch and Women with Disabilities Victoria report Changing the landscape identified a range of factors that make women with a disability particularly vulnerable to domestic, family and sexual violence. First Nations women with a disability and women from culturally diverse backgrounds are even more vulnerable. The First Nations disability network has found that 26 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have a disability—that's roughly twice the non-Indigenous rate—and that one in five of them report experiencing abuse or neglect.

The disability royal commission found that key factors preventing violence and neglect included reducing isolation, strengthening safeguards and supporting women with a disability to participate in their communities. This bill goes directly against those recommendations. Cutting support for social and community participation will further isolate women with a disability. For many victims-survivors with disability, participating in community programs is visibility. It can create an opportunity for other people to notice their situation and to take action to stop the abuse, the neglect and the exploitation. Capacity building and community connection also help women with a disability to better understand their options, to connect with frontline support services, to report abuse and to plan a safe escape from violent situations. This bill undermines those protections. Cutting women with disability off from social activities will increase the risk that they will experience violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and that the abuse will go unchecked. That's why I foreshadow a second reading amendment addressing this and calling on the government to withdraw this cruel and unnecessary bill.

On gender-responsive budgeting, this government has often spoken about its progress on applying a gender lens to decisions and requiring significant policy proposals to be subject to detailed gender impact analysis. This year's Women's Budget Statement talked up the evolving maturity of gender impact assessment and the importance of intersectional approaches to gender analysis. It included snapshots of gender analysis in practice, including on tax transparency, changes to non-compete clauses, urgent care clinics and Australia's space program. But, for a document at pains to point out the government's intersectional gender analysis, the Women's Budget Statement was strangely silent on the gendered impact of a cornerstone of the budget: these appalling changes to the NDIS. It didn't want to talk about the impact of funding cuts on women, particularly women with a disability, young women, First Nations women or women in aged care. But it's not surprising that the government chose not to highlight those impacts, because they actively undermine the government's stated priorities on gender equality.

These changes will have a huge impact on women's economic equality and security. These changes will exacerbate the risk of family, domestic and sexual violence against already vulnerable women, and these changes will make it harder for young women and older women with disability to live with dignity. The government might not want to talk about these impacts, but it's important that we lay them out. I particularly want to thank Women With Disabilities Australia for their sustained attention to these important issues that the government is ignoring. On economic equality, today is Equal Pay Day, marking the additional number of days since 1 July that women have to work to take home the same yearly earning as men. It's 48 days. The gender pay gap currently sits at 11.3 per cent. That is still far too high. It is better than historic levels, but it's still too high.

But today is also the day that the government and the coalition and One Nation are supporting legislation that could undo this progress. The bill will do this in three key ways. It will increase the demand on families to provide unpaid care when NDIS participants' plans are cut. The NDIS already relies on a huge network of unpaid care work to supplement funded supports, and the value of that unpaid care has been estimated at $78 billion each and every year. Cutting funding for support doesn't reduce the amount of support that people living with a disability need. All it does is shift the responsibility onto already burnt-out families to drastically increase the amount of unpaid care that they already provide. We know that the vast majority of that extra unpaid care work will be done by women, and it will be unvalued and unpaid.

The increasing unpaid care load created by this bill will mean that more women are unable to participate in the workforce as much as they'd like or possibly at all. That has a direct impact on women's long-term economic security. Cuts in this bill to community participation funding will directly impact women with a disability who rely on community programs to develop the skills and the confidence to join the workforce. Again, this has direct consequences for these women's economic security, autonomy and dignity. The government cannot say that it's working to close the gender pay gap on one hand while actively creating the conditions for more women to be forced into unpaid care roles. It cannot and should not ignore the human toll.

Mum Kim Berry talked to the Saturday Paper about her fear that cuts to her adult son Oscar's NDIS plan would mean that he could no longer afford the supports that allow him to live independently. Kim said that Oscar having to move home and her taking the primary care role on again would be fraught for both of them. Kim said:

For me, the idea of it is so oppressive, stripping me of recently found independence and scope to be spontaneous. I'll be back to organising all his programs and transport pick-ups.

The result for Oscar, Kim said, will be 'death through boredom', as the activities that have helped him engage with society will be taken away.

With these cuts to the NDIS, Labor is making the largest cut to a government services program this century. This is a political choice, and it marks the tipping point for the Albanese Labor government. In the UK and the US, we've seen what happens when people are fed up because the politicians back the one per cent. This government is not concerned with inequality. It's concerned with appearances. It pays lip service, and people are fed up. They're fed up because Labor can do something about the problems that they face, but they waste every single opportunity. They're fed up with the tinkering, the cowardice, the weakness and the wasted time. They're fed up with the gas industry getting the gas they're selling for free and not paying their fair share.

Instead of cutting billions of dollars from the NDIS and the 240,000 people who will now be bereft, the government could and should have required gas exporters to pay their fair share. A 25 per cent gas tax would raise an estimated $17 billion a year. That's about $31.8 billion more over the next four years than the total value of these NDIS cuts. Labor have made a choice, and they're choosing to make disabled people bear the cost of their failure to make big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share. They're choosing greedy gas corporations over disabled people—donors over disabled people. They're choosing to kick 241,000 people off the NDIS while handing billions to Donald Trump for nuclear submarines that we'll probably never get anyway. They're choosing, at every turn, to protect the profits of their corporate donors, while the people that they're supposed to represent are left behind.

Quite often when I say that Labor, the Liberals and One Nation are all working for the same vested interests and making the same decisions that benefit big corporations and the one per cent, the people who support Labor get quite upset, but, when a political party shows you, repeatedly, who they are and who they serve, you should believe them. Labor has made its choice, and it seems that the Liberals and One Nation are backing it in. The Greens will always back disabled people in Australia because we think that's what being Australian is about. We're meant to look after each other, and the Greens will always do that. We will oppose this bill with every fibre of our being, and we condemn the parties that vote for it. You don't fix the NDIS by cutting it.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

'Disability can affect any of us, and, therefore, it affects all of us.' Those were the words of prime minister Julia Gillard that captured the fundamental idea behind the NDIS. It's that disability support is not a matter of charity. It is a responsibility of a nation. The NDIS began with a simple promise: Australians with significant disability should not have to rely on luck, charity or the exhaustion of people who love them to live a life of dignity.

Before the NDIS, support depended too often on where you lived, what services happened to be available and how long your family could keep carrying the load. People with disabilities and their families and carers fought for that change, and Labor listened. It was a Labor government that designed and legislated the NDIS. We believe that people with disabilities deserve more than a patchwork of crisis services. They deserve dignity, choice, control and the chance to participate fully in our country. That remains Labor's commitment today. The NDIS has changed hundreds and thousands of lives. It can mean support to enter the community, greater independence or parents knowing their child will be supported into adulthood. These are the simple foundations of a life lived with dignity.

Because Labor created the NDIS, we bear the responsibility for its future. We will not let rising costs, poor services or fraud weaken public confidence. We know reform can sound threatening when your life depends on the NDIS. For families, uncertainty can mean laying awake worrying about someone they love. I understand the fear that comes with changes like that, and I want to acknowledge that here today. We heard this through the inquiry and directly from people with disability and their families, advocates and providers. This bill has changed in response, and safeguards have been strengthened, and provisions have been clarified, but protecting the promise of the NDIS requires us to be honest about the pressures that also threaten it.

Growth in this scheme is not in itself a failure. More Australians receiving the support they need is part of what the NDIS was created to achieve. But, when costs grow because providers inflate prices, services outside the scheme disappear or dishonest operators take money for the support they never delivered, participants do not benefit. Under the former government, the annual NDIS spending growth reached 22 per cent. Labor has brought that down to around 10 per cent. National Cabinet has agreed to work towards a sustainable growth of five to six per cent or lower. This is, in fact, not about spending less because Labor believes it should be done for people with a disability; it is about ensuring that growing investment delivers better support not inflated prices, poor services or profits for people exploiting that scheme.

When the scheme is allowed to become unsustainable, it does not become safer. It becomes vulnerable to the cuts, neglect and political opportunism that Labor created the NDIS to actually overcome. The Albanese Labor government will not allow that to happen, nor will we allow dishonest operators to treat participants' plans as easy money. Imagine discovering money had been taken from your plan for a service that you never ever received. That is theft from a person with disability. Over nine months, more than 4,000 claims worth $19 million were rejected because services had not been delivered. Some plan managers approved invoices from businesses they had financial interests in—in fact, marking their own homework. This bill establishes a commission panel of plan managers. It strengthens the NDIA's ability to require evidence and to act against fraud and extend registration to more high-risk providers. Stopping fraud protects participants' plans. The bill makes eligibility clearer and more consistent, focusing on how permanent disability affects daily life rather than on diagnosis alone.

The NDIS cannot be the only doorway to support, and the $200 million in the Inclusive Communities Fund will create more opportunities for that participation. Through Thriving Kids, governments will invest $4 billion to support children where they live, where they learn and where they play. Services begin in October, but the NDIS access will not change before 2028, and children with high support needs remain eligible.

For Western Australians, sustainability must mean a scheme that works across our vast state, and the Albanese and Cook governments are rolling out the Joint Work Program across the south-west, the Gascoyne, the Great Southern, the Wheatbelt and Goldfields-Esperance, where more than 11,000 NDIS participants live. This is building on the $7.6 million Katanning pilot that will identify local gaps and improve access particularly for First Nations participants. The $5 million assistive technology rental and refurbishment pilot has also expanded to WA, through Ability WA. It allows people to rent, test or exchange equipment as their needs change and is open to all people with disabilities under 65, not only NDIS participants. And Ellie Moir now represents WA on Australia's Disability Strategy Advisory Council, ensuring that grassroots Western Australian voices help shape our national policy. The community affairs committee heard the concerns, examined the bill and recommended that it be passed.

Former prime minister Gillard said:

The NDIS will stand alongside the minimum wage, the age pension, Medicare and universal superannuation as one of the great Labor pillars of social justice and opportunity for all Australians.

Labor created the NDIS, Labor believes in the NDIS and Labor is taking responsibility for ensuring it remains strong. For the people who depend on it today, for the families planning for it tomorrow and for every Australian who may one day need it, I commend this bill to the Senate.

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

I begin by thanking people with disability and their families, carers and loved ones who have emailed, called and pulled me aside on the street here in Canberra to talk about the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 and the concerns they have.

I held a community town hall with Independent MLAs Thomas Emerson and Fiona Carrick, and had over 100 people attend, on a weeknight. We heard stories of people's genuine fears about what will happen if this bill passes in its current form and what it will mean for the most intimate parts of their lives, including who gets them out of bed, who helps them have a shower and who helps them go to the bathroom. Overwhelmingly, people told me that they're not opposed to reform; they want it to happen. But, as press gallery journalist of the year James Massola said, reform should be done with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

The NDIS is one of the largest social programs, and its growth rate must be brought in line with other social programs in Australia. It is appropriate for the government to seek a growth rate of five to six per cent; that's in line with programs like Medicare. And I agree that this is the way we need to go if we want to make sure this program is available for the next generation of people with disability. I also support cracking down on fraudulent providers and exploitation, ensuring funding reaches participants rather than bad actors; more consistent and evidence based decisions; functional capacity assessments, if properly designed with people with disability; clearer boundaries between the NDIS, health and other service systems; and properly funded foundational supports.

While I broadly support the architecture of this bill and the intent to ensure that the scheme is sustainable, maintains its social licence and, critically, supports Australians who need that support, there are two areas of this bill that I have major concerns with. The first is around the cut to people's social and community participation funds—a 50 per cent arbitrary cut made across the board, totally indiscriminately. I don't think this can be done safely. We heard that this will isolate people—people who are already more isolated than the general population. The disability royal commission warned what can happen when people with disability are isolated, when they are segregated. Violence, abuse, exploitation—this funding is a safeguard against all those things. It's what the NDIS was designed to do—ensure that people with disability can be genuinely included in their communities. It's not just there to keep people alive; it's to ensure that they can participate. One Canberran told me that, once this is cut, they won't have the funding to go and check on their ageing father anymore. That's what she uses her funding for. When it's indiscriminate, we don't know what will happen. I agree with the Disability Discrimination Commissioner that we will be leaving people in unsafe situations. Witness after witness to the Senate inquiry into this warned about that.

Clearly, the government has taken what could be seen as much-needed reform and added this immediate budget saving on top. This 50 per cent cut across the board to SCCP is not a policy decision; it's a budget decision. These cuts aren't even necessary to bring the rate of growth down to the government's target. Analysis from the Grattan Institute shows that other reforms in this package do most of the work, but they are slow. Clearly, the government saw a big chunk of money that they could be saving immediately and did not think through the consequences, as became clear during the Senate inquiry. When questions were put to the department about things like the impact this would have on Australians with Down syndrome who use a big chunk of this funding to actually get to work, they didn't seem to have answers. Clearly, this was not something they'd consulted on; this was a decision of government. As is the phrase in estimates and inquiries, it's a decision of government taken around the cabinet table, which then gets put to the department, who are told, 'Build this into your reforms, into your legislation.

The analysis shows that if we don't cut SCCP, if we actually honour existing plans and arrangements, then the NDIS will grow at three per cent per year. That is still a real cut in population adjusted terms, and it sits well below the long-term NDIS rate of five to six per cent per year. Again, these cuts aren't needed to bring the scheme under control. This is purely a budget-saving measure. I have real fears for what this will mean for participants and their families when this goes through.

The other area which should and does concern almost all senators in this place is the unprecedented inclusion of automated decision-making powers in this legislation. Automation has a legitimate role in calculations, routine processing and in detecting fraud, but the bill goes so much further than that. Evidence from the Human Technology Institute was that, subject to a ministerial determination, almost any major NDIS decision could be automated, including decisions involving judgement and discretion. They described this as unprecedented. The explanatory memorandum talks about human oversight, but those protections are not expressed in the bill. It's deeply worrying when you have rhetoric from government saying, 'Well, no, the intent is not to do it this way,' and yet, in the bill, the parliament will be handing extraordinary powers to the executive, the minister and the NDIA when it comes to automated decision-making.

One of the other concerns about the framework is that it could also remove established internal review pathways for some automated decisions. What a perverse outcome of this legislation it will be if participants have fewer rights to challenge a decision, simply because a machine made it. You would think that there would be more accountability if we're handing decision-making to an algorithm. I think that Australians, rightly, have very little trust in algorithms when you look at the havoc that social media algorithms are wreaking on society, the black box nature of these algorithms when it comes to social media companies, and our own government and what they've rolled out with Support at Home assessments. We're told that we couldn't possibly look at the algorithm because it's sensitive and they don't want people to know how to game the system, yet we've had expert after expert saying that this is not the way to treat older Australians and it is not a fit algorithm. Now we're saying, 'When it comes to the NDIS, let's roll that out at scale—let's keep rolling that out, potentially allowing ADM to raise debts and then not having a way to appeal them.' It is astounding, in the wake of the robodebt royal commission, that the parliament is looking at legislation that expands these sorts of powers when it comes to automated decision-making and the use of algorithms without the right of participants to appeal those decisions.

This is a very serious thing for us to be doing as a Senate. ADM means harm can be produced at scale. Robodebt taught us that, and the robodebt royal commission, in recommendation 17.1, recommended an overarching act to deal with automated decision-making and the use of algorithms. Recommendation 17.2 was for a much-needed independent body that can look at these algorithms so we don't have to turn up to these inquiries where the department tell us, 'Don't worry, everything's great—this is a good algorithm,' but every expert that we ask questions of says that this thing stinks and is clearly not providing the level of care that Australians need. I'll be moving a second reading amendment proposing that these provisions not commence until after we have those safeguards in place, the overarching act that deals with ADM algorithms across departments and agencies, and an independent body to evaluate these algorithms.

I also have serious concerns as a senator for the ACT. So much of what I've heard from Canberrans are concerns around the sequencing and foundational supports. Thriving Kids was announced on 20 August 2025, almost a year ago, and is still not operating. It currently only covers children aged zero to eight with developmental delay or autism and low to moderate support needs. Governments have not agreed on the next foundational support cohorts, funding, commencement dates or services. There's no clear arrangement for adults, people with early stage neurological conditions or complex needs, or cross-border communities such as Canberra. Yet access changes are due to begin in 2028. That leaves about 18 months to design, fund, staff and deliver a nationwide range of supports. I'm supportive of these changes, but I'm really concerned about the short runway left to complete this job, given the huge impact that this will have on Australians and their families across this great country. People cannot be denied access to the NDIS on the assumption that another service exists when it remains only a commitment. One of the really worrying submissions to the Senate inquiry was the one from the states and territories, which basically said, 'We don't know what we need to do, how much it's going to cost or who we're providing services for.' None of this has been discussed or agreed, and yet the Commonwealth is charging on with this bill, with huge cuts to people's budgets, and we're told that the states and territories are going to have to pick up the slack. When I asked the department about the $13-odd billion of savings, they pointed to, I think, a $200 million fund for community organisations. Anyone can see that $200 million worth of grants and other supports does not cover a $13 billion cut.

I recognise that this bill will pass this week, and, while I cannot support in its current form, this is clearly not the end of the work for senators in continuing to apply scrutiny to government decision-making, continuing to apply scrutiny to the decisions of the NDIA, continuing to listen to NDIS participants and their families, and committing to listen to Canberrans. I encourage government to be open and willing to change course if things go wrong.

We've seen that in aged care, with the introduction of an algorithm that we're told is going to be a great thing. Again, I give credit to senators Allman-Payne and Ruston, who've done outstanding work in highlighting just what can go wrong when the government doesn't get it right. I would urge the government to keep an open mind with this, to continue to consult and to make changes where appropriate.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens unequivocally, strongly and unapologetically oppose this cruel and heartless bill. Disabled people will suffer, and they will die, if this bill passes. The courageous and brave people that came to give evidence to the Senate inquiry into this bill made that crystal clear.

When actor, speaker, media personality and disability advocate Hannah Diviney gave evidence to the Senate inquiry, she said this:

The number-crunchers around here seem to have deluded themselves into thinking that disabled people daring to live costs too much; that our lives can be reduced to lines on a budget that simply must be balanced, forgetting all those zeros represent actual human beings …

She went on to conclude her powerful testimony with the following warning:

You may cast me as a frightened little girl, but hear this: when disabled people die as a direct result of this bill—and they will—their blood will be on your hands.

Those of us in this place have the absolute privilege of representing the people of this country and our states, and this bill totally and utterly betrays what we were sent here by the Australian people to do. It sells out the marginalised while protecting the powerful. It extinguishes the humanity of the marginalised. Labor, yet again, is blatantly betraying the people who have put them here. Disabled people shouldn't suffer just because Labor wants to prove that they can be just as callous as the Liberals and One Nation.

This government is morally bankrupt—this bill is proof enough of that—but we already knew that. Time and again, the Albanese Labor government has shown that they are more interested in caving to misleading clickbait from right-wing media barons and protecting their corporate donors than looking after people. There's a reason that we're seeing a crackdown—or a so-called crackdown—on the NDIS before we see any meaningful gambling reform pass. There's a reason that this government wants the so-called NDIS reform to pass quickly to save money, but they won't impose a tax on gas imports. There's a reason that the government is more comfortable with pouring an endless stream of money into the war machine than properly funding life-saving disability care. They are working for big business and the billionaire and corporate donors that keep the door revolving. They are not working for people, and disabled people will indeed pay the price.

The media in this country has not helped either, with pages upon pages dedicated to demonising and scapegoating disabled people to serve their own needs. Where is the outrage over the $268 billion that this government is spending with AUKUS on nuclear subs that will never arrive? Where is it when the government forks out billions to subsidise and bail out fossil fuel corporations that are profiting off the destruction of our environment? This bill just shows that the Albanese Labor government fundamentally misunderstands the NDIS and fundamentally misunderstands the reality of living with a disability. This misunderstanding is pretty wilful, from where I sit, because disabled people do not leave any stone unturned to tell you over and over and over what the impacts of this bill will be on their lives. They shouldn't have had to tell you over and over and over again. But they have, and still you completely disregard and ignore them.

Some of the biggest cuts will come from budgets for social participation. The impact of this will be devastating, and it will be costly. Kim Berry, whose son Oscar receives NDIS funding, has said that these cuts will be 'death by boredom' for her son. But the price isn't just boredom for participants and the loss of independence for family carers. There will be a longer term cost borne by our healthcare system and our justice system, because people are no longer able to live the lives that they deserve and that they have a right to live.

Hannah Diviney, in her evidence, pointed out that, in the absence of social and community funding, she won't be able to work and will no longer be a taxpayer. She went on to say:

The mental health crisis will escalate, as will the strain on our healthcare system. You will find the workforce shrink as our support systems have no choice but to leave to ensure our safety and survival. That'll mean more people rely on other government support—Centrelink and the like. But those systems won't be able to handle the load …

The government says this bill is about saving money. The government will throw around words like 'financial sustainability' and even has the audacity to call this bill 'securing the future of the NDIS', but all it does is shuffle those costs onto disabled people, their communities and their supports, and on to other parts of our social services infrastructure—and these costs will be significantly higher. These are costs that people cannot afford, costs that will leave them without support. What is happening here today is utterly, utterly shameful.

This is not only terrible policymaking, but it is also unimaginably cruel. To be honest, we could be here for days outlining the problems and flaws in this bill. My colleague Senator Steele-John has done an excellent job, but I also want to highlight a few flaws. A critical flaw in this bill is the requirement that disabled people show they have tried all publicly available treatments before accessing the NDIS. While this provision has been slightly ameliorated by the work of Senator Steele-John, it is still deeply flawed. People aren't going on the NDIS because they have a broken leg which can be fixed through a few weeks on crutches and some physical therapy. To ask someone to jump through hoops, to exhaust treatment options for disabilities that we know are permanent, is demoralising, dehumanising and downright cruel. This provision ignores long waitlists for public services. It fails to address accessibility issues around availability of specialists and location of services. It also assumes that people have the capacity and/or the support to access these treatments and to care for themselves while they wait for treatments and assessments—and maybe, one day, eventually access the NDIS. There's not only that. This bill is throwing people off the side of a boat into raging waters without a life jacket.

The government has ignored repeated warnings that services for people kicked off the NDIS won't be ready and won't necessarily even make up for the services that will be lost. This is also a completely backwards step for disability care. The NDIS was all about moving away from a 'one size fits all' approach to care and moving to a system where people have the right to choice and control, choosing the services to best support them and controlling how these services were provided. It was about agency. It was about independence. Any Labor, Liberal or One Nation senator supporting the passage of this bill today should be so ashamed of themselves, but I'm not sure if you have the moral conscience left in you anymore to even feel that emotion.

Only three years have passed since the robodebt royal commission found that the automated robodebt scheme was cruel and unlawful, yet this bill grants the government the power to automate key decision-making for people receiving NDIS support, showing how willing they are to gamble with people's lives all over again. The government is trying to sell this bill as a response to the witch-hunt that has gone on in recent years over NDIS fraud, yet the bill barely even addresses fraud, noncompliance and misconduct by mainly corporate providers and other actors within the scheme. The vast majority of this bill is about restricting, or entirely removing, support for disabled people.

To be clear, the Greens do not oppose reforming or changing the NDIS. We support a scheme that delivers the best possible outcomes for disabled people and that is protected from fraud, exploitation and wasteful spending. But this bill ain't it. This bill pretends to address financial sustainability while sacrificing disabled people. In case you haven't seen it already, this Labor government is a wolf dressed in sheep's clothing. They pretend to be progressive and talk a big game on equity and inclusion, but, if you're paying attention, they are just the same—upholding a political system that delivers for the top end, for endless wars, for genocide, for climate-destroying fossil fuel companies, while cutting and culling from the people who need it most.

This bill comes only two years after a round of significant NDIS cuts that have already left people struggling to access support and scared of when the next round of cuts will hit. Disabled people deserve to thrive. They have a right to thrive, to live lives like everybody else, with opportunities for joy, for work, for fun, for participation in community and with fulfilment. We live in a country that is wealthy enough to provide all of that, yet here we are with this bill, which is not about what the government can and cannot afford; it is about where they choose to put those public funds. Your choice, I'm afraid, today, is a completely wrong choice. It is a cruel choice. It is a disgraceful choice.

To once more reference Hannah Diviney's incredible testimony in the bill inquiry, she told the committee that while a lack of social participation funding might leave her unemployed, that would give her 'even more time to be a thorn in the government's side'. Disabled people have been fighting for their rights for centuries, and they will not give up. The Greens will be right alongside them in this fight.

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

I rise to speak to the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026. First of all, I associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues earlier on this bill—they're Senator Waters, Senator Steele-John and Senator Faruqi. I commend Senator Steele-John for the incredible work that he has done representing the disability community in this place. It is clear that this bill was not co-designed and properly consulted on by members of the disability community; if it was, this would not be the bill that we would have before this parliament.

This bill is part of a repeating pattern from this government, and governments before it, where we have a royal commission into an issue, we find out the things that are going wrong, and then, rather than passing legislation that genuinely is co-designed with the people it affects and addresses issues raised in the relevant royal commission, the government instead uses it as cover to make budget savings.

We've seen this in aged care. Under the cover of implementing the recommendations of a royal commission, we've had legislation introduced and, rather than improving aged care for older people, we're seeing people assessed by a tool that cannot be overridden by clinicians and humans. People are sometimes waiting more than a year to access care, and thousands of people are dying while waiting to access care. What we see in this NDIS bill that the government has introduced is a very similar pattern: a royal commission has said we need to address problems with the care and supports for people with a disability, but instead of having a co-designed bill that was properly consulted on and that looks at how to improve the care for people with a disability we have a bill that the government has unashamedly said time and time again is about cutting funding to the NDIS. The word 'sustainable' is code for 'cuts'.

The Labor government egregiously went about a process of manufacturing consent in the community to make these cuts by convincing the community and by engaging consultants—then jumping on this idea that, if we just make everyone think that the NDIS is riddled with fraud, then we'll get consent from the community to cut people's funding. Yet the fraud that exists in the system isn't being committed by the people who need the help and support of the scheme. It's largely being committed by providers who are engaging in fraud, noncompliance and misconduct. Rather than bringing forward a bill that genuinely deals with that, we have a bill before us that's about cutting supports from tens of thousands of people, which they need to live.

I note that I'll be moving a second reading amendment standing in my name which deals in particular with automated assessments. We have seen the damage that automated assessments have done in aged care, which was thousands of people being inadequately and incorrectly assessed by a system that has taken out human overrides so that they cannot get the support that they need. When did we decide that computers and algorithms were the way that we'd determine the care and support that humans with complex conditions and abilities would need? When did we decide that?

I don't want to live in a world where an algorithm or a computer decides what care and support I need when I'm old or if my circumstances change and I acquire a disability. Is there a single person in this chamber who would want to be subjected to that? I don't think there is, yet we're standing here today debating a bill where all of us can potentially make the decision that our fellow human beings, our fellow Australians, with a disability can be subjected to an algorithm or a computer deciding their complex needs. How did we get here? We cannot, and the Greens will not, support a bill that leaves decisions about people's care and supports to an algorithm and a computer. That is immoral.

We have heard a lot from the government saying, 'We need to make these cuts so that the NDIS is sustainable.' As my colleague Senator Faruqi said, only minutes ago, this is about choices. Why do the major parties always make choices that the people who have to pay for budget repair are the most vulnerable people in our communities, the people who require care and support? We've seen it in aged care, where we effectively have an algorithm that is cutting the assessed needs of older people. We've seen it in social services, where people living on welfare, on income support payments, are continually expected to subsist on a payment that is well below the poverty line. And yet the government is really fine with giving $268 billion to AUKUS. We see fossil fuel subsidies going out the door. We see a failure to honour taxing of the gas companies. And because the government doesn't have the courage to do those things, to make big corporations and billionaires and gas companies pay their fair share, it's turning around and saying, 'But, hey, you 160,000 people on the NDIS, we'll just cut your support.' We're a wealthy country; we should not be looking for budget savings from people who need our care and support. And it's a false economy, because those people who have their supports cut are going to end up in our health system. They're going to end up needing mental health care. Some of them are going to die. We know that.

We're also going to see families and friends and volunteers who care for them removed from the labour market because when the government removes support, when the two major parties gang up together to pass this bill and remove those supports, the people who will step in are family members and volunteers in the community. They will be taken out of the labour market or they will be forced to try to keep their jobs and provide support. So many of those will be women. Women already carry a disproportionate care burden in this country. They're filling the gaps in aged care; now they going to be filling the gaps in NDIS. This is not a cost-free decision. It might save money for the NDIS budget bottom line, but we are going to pay for it. The people who get chucked off the NDIS are going to be paying for it in awful ways. That cost is going to flow through to the rest of our community. That's 94 million hours of annual paid care that will need to be replaced by someone else—families, volunteers, friends. That is not cost free.

The government, when it introduced the NDIS, said that it was a scheme that was going to give people the reasonable and necessary supports that they needed to live a good life. That will no longer be the case if this bill passes. The government talked about the fact that it was a scheme that was designed to give people with a disability individualised support so that they could have dignity in living a life well lived. That will not happen for thousands of people if this bill passes. The Labor government talked about people with a disability having choice and control over their lives. That choice and control is going to be taken away from thousands of people with a disability if this bill passes. Not only will they have choice and control taken away, but there'll be computers and algorithms making decisions about the care that they need.

Providing someone with a disability the support that the NDIS provides is not charity. It is what governments are supposed to do for members of our community. If these cuts pass, if this bill passes, we are taking away the agency and dignity of people with a disability. The NDIS was supposed to provide people with lifetime security if they had a disability. If this bill passes, thousands of people with a disability no longer have that security and will live with the fear and uncertainty of what is going to come next for them if they are kicked off the scheme. Looking after people with a disability is the responsibility of national governments. We have a responsibility in this place to make sure that as a community we collectively insure against people with a disability not having the care and support that they need.

I want to return to a point that I made earlier. Every one of us in this place should imagine what it would mean for us if we were the person with a disability or we were caring for someone with a disability and this bill passed. I spoke to a father the other day who said they have an adult son with autism. Right now, they have the care that their son needs. It has allowed both of them to work. It has allowed their adult son to have a fantastic quality of life. They said the difference that it has made to their son's life compared to when the NDIS didn't exist is just incredible. They are nervous and they are worried about what it will mean for their son not to have the level of social and community support that they currently have. They talked about the fact that, for their son, removing that level of social and community support will actually increase the challenges that he will experience and the challenging behaviours that he and others will experience and the impact that that will have on them as a family, on their son and on their ability to work and what other supports that will ultimately potentially mean their son will need that will need to be made up for because the care that they currently receive will be reduced. (Time expired)

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

The Greens strongly oppose the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, a bill that we view as dangerous for so many millions of citizens in our country. I want to start by acknowledging the work of my colleague Senator Steele-John. Thank you for your powerful speech this morning and your persistent and strong advocacy for people across our country, the families and the disability community. You've led the charge against a deeply flawed bill, and the disability community and so many Australians thank you for it.

Labor's NDIS cuts are cruel, and they are unnecessary. They go so far to cut deep across our community into the disability community, and they are too fast. We do not have in place, as we are hearing from so many Australians, all the supports that are absolutely essential if this were to pass. They risk the lives of disabled people and their livelihoods, risk their freedoms and risk their independence. These changes risk undermining the supports that so many disabled people rely on. There's been no economic modelling, no workforce planning and no genuine consultation with the disability community about this change which will reach into people's lives and change them, for the worse.

The NDIS is one of Australia's most significant social reforms in my lifetime. I remember being at the 2020 Summit that then prime minister Rudd led, looking for good ideas for our community—out of which the NDIS arose. There was real excitement about making a difference for people who are caught by disability, whose lives are changed by disability, and their need for the support that they deserve in a civilised community.

The NDIS represents a commitment to uphold the rights and inclusion of disabled people. It was passed by the Gillard government, with support of the Greens, in 2013. The Greens strongly support the NDIS and its foundational principle that disabled people have the right to access the supports they need to live with dignity, independence and choice—three important words, three important aspects of life that make life possible for so many Australians. But for people with disability, they have special meaning. Dignity, independence and choice—they cannot be taken for granted for so many of our citizens, and they must be defended.

The scheme has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians by providing access to essential supports—services, equipment and all the things that enable disabled people to participate fully or more fully in their communities and their education, in having a job and in being active participants in their family and community life. Labor senators stand here in this chamber proclaiming the benefits of this scheme while at the same time backing a bill that will strike a blow to so many people in relation to their support on the NDIS.

These NDIS cuts are the largest cuts to a government services program this century, in the face of all the ways in which, in this civilised and very wealthy country, we could be raising revenue from people who are doing extremely well in our economy—the big gas companies making billions every year who we fail to tax for their exports, and the billionaires who have enormous amounts of personal income, assets and wealth, whom our tax system does not properly tax. The impact is instead placed on the most vulnerable people in our society—disabled people and their families—and the impact will be devastating.

This bill will enable the removal of 241,000 people from the scheme by 2031. There are too many problems with this bill to name, including enormous sweeping ministerial powers and automated decision-making. Haven't we seen enough of that kind of maladministration which visits on people without proper recourse to defence? We should have already learnt the lessons from the failure, by using automation, to properly govern schemes like this. We are an international standout lesson on how not to do things with automation when vulnerable humans in particular are involved.

There's real concern that this bill undermines the rights of disabled people. It clearly does. Just listen to the Labor chaired Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. They said that this bill may constitute 'a significant interference with the rights of persons with disability, the rights of the child and the right to an adequate standard of living, equality and nondiscrimination, health, privacy and social security'. That is a lot of bells ringing, telling us that this is the wrong way to go. Earlier this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission urged the government to delay the bill until 'significant human rights concerns around process, accountability and the impact of the reforms are addressed'. The bill puts thousands of jobs at risk. The Australia Institute estimates that cuts to social and community participation supports could result in the loss of 51,641 full-time equivalent jobs, representing almost 94 million hours of care work. The government cannot cut billions from participation supports and pretend there will be no impact on workers—these workers who give so much to their efforts in the homes of people with disability and who deliver those supports.

This bill will result in really significant job losses for health professionals and support workers—those doing the allied health work that we really desperately need, further reducing the capacity of the disability support workforce at a time when it's already under significant pressure. When funded support disappears, the work does not. We know where it goes: it's pushed onto families, and it's pushed onto the unpaid carers in our communities. That's why I foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name that goes to the heart of these issues in particular and calls on the government to withdraw this cruel and unnecessary bill.

As my amendment points out, this bill will disproportionately affect women in an incredibly unfair way. Cuts to social and community participation funding made through this bill will reduce the capacity of women with disability to access support services. In their inquiry submission, Women with Disabilities Australia warned:

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.

We can't forget that First Nations women with disability are particularly vulnerable to domestic, family and sexual violence. Concerns about this bill are not coming from one organisation or one part of the disability community. I have heard from hundreds of South Australians about the horrific damage they are worried might arise from this bill: the impact on them, their families and their loved ones.

I'll give you some direct quotes: 'If my supports were reduced or delayed, the consequences would be significant. I would experience greater difficulty maintaining my home and personal wellbeing, increased barriers to employment and community participation, greater dependence on family members who are no longer able to provide ongoing care and an increased risk of social isolation and declining psychosocial health.' Here's another: 'If I lose my supports, I'll be confined to my bed or my recliner. My husband and I are at a high risk of mental health issues and relationship breakdown if this bill goes forward.' Another says: 'You're putting me and other participants at high risk of falls; being restricted; housebound; suffering from pressure sores, unnecessary progression in my condition; and much more.' So many South Australians have called my office voicing their concerns about this bill.

One mother in Adelaide, a sole parent of two adult sons and a teenager with significant disabilities and complex support needs, asked: 'What will happen to families like mine? Why is this happening when this bill will cause people to lose their lives?' Chloe, from regional South Australia, is the parent of a child with multiple disabilities, including a rare genetic syndrome, profound autism and epilepsy. She told my office that supports are not optional extras. They're essential to her daughter's dignity, safety, wellbeing and quality of life. She asked, 'What will happen to regional families like mine who are already struggling to access services before these cuts?'

Sarah, an occupational therapist working on the Fleurieu peninsula sees firsthand that the NDIS does not fund the essential healthcare systems for our participants. It funds basic survival and safety. Participants are already going into crisis through the uncertainty that lies ahead. She said that the legislation threatens to dismantle the core principles of the NDIS. 'People will die,' she tell us. The cuts will force primary carers, who are often sacrificing their own health, wellbeing and employment, to absorb an unsustainable burden behind closed doors.

We know disabled people must be at the centre of decisions about the NDIS. The inquiry into Labor's NDIS service cuts has seen the disability community expose just how cruel and dangerous these cuts really are. After months of Senate inquiry and evidence from all kinds of people, one thing is clear: these changes risk significant harm. As my colleague Senator Steele-John said this morning, history will show us what they do, and we will hold the government to account, as will the community and their families, for what these cuts do. The inquiry received over 4,000 submissions, and most of them were incredibly critical. An unprecedented level of opposition really underscores the concerns of our community. Participating in this process and putting forward your words and your experience requires real courage, real preparation and vulnerability—all the emotional work, particularly for disabled people. We've heard their stories over and over again and we have to honour their stories and their account of what this will mean for them. No-one should be removed from the scheme until foundational supports are fully implemented, evaluated and proven to meet the needs of people.

I was at one of the hearings in Perth and the evidence was devastating—Jordan and I heard it together. Hayley, a witness with lived experience, told the committee:

People can and will die if this bill goes through.

We heard firsthand that mothers are giving up paid work in order to support their children already on a day-to-day basis. The inquiry made one thing abundantly clear: support needs do not disappear when funding does. They are pushed onto families, pushed onto households, pushed onto siblings and support workers and pushed onto the broader community. Disabled people have been subjected to months of public debate about the value of their lives and the supports they rely on. They deserve to be listened to, not treated as a budget problem. In that light, this bill needs to be chucked in the bin.

The government has choices. The Labor government is planning to cut $37.8 billion from the NDIS over the next four years. Instead of cutting billions from the NDIS, we could have required gas exporters to pay their fair share. A 25 per cent gas tax would raise an estimated $31.8 billion more over the next four years than the total value of these cuts. Disabled people would not then be forced to bear the cost of failure to properly tax some of the most profitable companies in our country, who are selling our resources. Disabled people have the right to expect a parliament to tax properly to fund the essential services that we need.

The NDIS isn't a cost to cut. Investing in disabled people strengthens the entire economy. Instead of ripping away essential supports, we could make gas exporters pay their fair share, properly tax billionaires and large corporations, and reconsider hundreds of billions of dollars going into AUKUS on the off chance we'll get submarines one day. The Greens believe disabled people should not be forced to carry the burden of balancing the budget. So we are fighting for the rights, dignity and autonomy of disabled people and we will not stop. These are cruel cuts. Today's Labor Party is unrecognisable to me from the one that created the NDIS—shame. Early this morning Senator Steele-John tried to strike this disastrous bill from the Notice Paper. There's no way it should be passed in this form. It needs to go back to the drawing board. (Time expired)

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 is a disgrace and I utterly oppose it. I also want to associate myself with the comments made by my colleagues, in particular Senator Steele-John, who has been the most extraordinary advocate and has fought, and will continue to fight, this disgusting legislation all the way. This is a bill that should bring shame to this parliament, because, behind all of the language about sustainability, reform and safeguarding the NDIS, what this bill actually does is very simple. It takes away support from disabled people. It puts more pressure on them and on their families, and it does so without the alternative services in place to catch the people who'll be pushed out.

Now, in this parliament, Labor and the Liberals—the corporate parties—are teaming up to do a dirty, cowardly deal that will throw disabled people under the bus. That's what it is, and I want to be very clear about what I find so repulsive about this legislation. It does not make disabled people safer. It does not make families safer. It does not make children safer. It does not even guarantee that the supports being removed will be replaced in time. It takes away support and tells people: 'Figure it out somehow. You'll cope.' It is abandonment. The NDIS is one of the most important social reforms this country has ever undertaken. It was built on a simple and important idea: disabled Australians have the same right as everyone else to live with dignity, independence, choice and inclusion. It isn't a line in a spreadsheet, as my colleague Senator Steele-John has articulated. It is not a budget problem. It is not an expense that can be cut whenever Treasury wants to find another few billion dollars.

For hundreds and thousands of Australians, the NDIS is the difference between being trapped at home and being active members of the community. For a child, it can mean getting the communication support, therapy or early intervention they need to participate in school. For a parent, it can mean the difference between coping and completely breaking down. For a young person, it can mean being able to leave the house to see friends, study, volunteer or hold down a job. These are not luxuries; these are lives. This bill puts those lives at direct risk. To be clear, children are directly in the firing line. More than half of NDIS participants are 18 years old or younger. This bill is expected to see 241,000 people removed from the NDIS by 2031. That includes children with developmental delay. That includes children with disability who are expected to transition into this government's new Thriving Kids program, which is the mystery program that no-one seems to know anything about.

The sector has told us, again and again, that the alternative supports are not ready. We don't know whether these services will be available; whether they will be consistent; whether they will be high quality, like these kids deserve; whether a child in Victoria will receive the same support as a child in Western Australia or Queensland; or whether these services will be like-for-like replacements for what children currently receive through the NDIS. Yet the government wants to remove these children from the NDIS and figure out what to do later. That's not good enough. You cannot ignore the hard questions until later. You deal with them. You are a government. You are meant to lead. This is not how you protect children. You do not take away a child's support and then cross your fingers that another service will manifest another solution.

Families deserve and need to know what support their child will receive before their existing support disappears, and the state and territory disability ministers have told this parliament the same thing. They warned that, if the projected exits from the NDIS are not accompanied by clearly defined alternative supports, they'll create a risk of unmet needs and costs being pushed into the health, education and justice systems. They've said plainly that those systems are not equipped to absorb the demand and cannot deliver like-for-like NDIS services. So who is going to pick up the pieces: the hospital system, an already exhausted early childhood education system or, as so often is the case, mums and dads, grandparents or family who are already often at their breaking point? The needs do not disappear because the government stops the funding. The child does not become less disabled because their NDIS plan is cut. The family doesn't become less exhausted because Labor has moved the costs off its books. The need simply moves somewhere else. Thriving Kids cannot and must not be an excuse to cut first and build later.

What happens when parental responsibility just means everything? This legislation wants to fundamentally change what families can expect from the NDIS. It introduces an extraordinarily broad concept of parental responsibility. Labor wants to say that supervision, personal care, transport, emotional support and behavioural support are things that parents should just be able to simply provide themselves. What happens when a child's disability means that those ordinary responsibilities become extraordinary, intensive and relentless? We all know those families who are in this situation already. They're struggling to survive with the NDIS supports in place. Imagine them and their predicament when this cruel bill passes.

In the inquiry, we heard evidence about a parent whose son required constant supervision and that she couldn't safely leave him alone with his sister. She couldn't take both children out by herself. Friends stopped coming over, informal supports disappeared and she became exhausted and isolated. But when this family finally received funding for a support worker, everything changed. The child became more regulated; the family could go to the park, and the parent could cook dinner. That support didn't make this parent any less of a parent. It made it possible for that family to function. This bill takes that away. It's women and mothers who will be disproportionately forced to pay the price—women who already make up the overwhelming majority of primary carers. When the NDIS withdraws support, the need for care isn't taken away. It's given to unpaid carers, and women take it on. That's not a cost saving. That is making women subsidise this Labor government through unpaid labour. Shame on you!

Then there is an attack on the independence of disabled people. The minister has indicated that social and community participation funding could be cut by 50 per cent. Think about what that means. It means that someone may no longer be able to get the support needed to go to work, to volunteer, to visit their friends, to go to the shops, to go to a medical appointment—to participate in society. We heard during the inquiry from a 22-year-old young person with a disability who explained that if their community participation funding was cut, they would probably lose their volunteer role, lose work, become isolated and see their mental health deteriorate. They said simply: 'I deserve to have a normal life. I deserve to have a life.' I cannot think of a more straightforward indictment of this legislation, because that is exactly what this bill is doing—making someone's life smaller and taking away the things that allow them to participate.

They have the gall to say this is about sustainability. It's not sustainability. It is a message to disabled Australians that they do not matter. Who cares if they can get out and enjoy some of what makes life worth living—relationships or time in nature? This bill doesn't even do what Labor says it does. Labor has tried to wrap these cuts in the language of addressing fraud and increasing sustainability. Look at where the savings come from. Only about 13 per cent is attributed to fraud and compliance measures. The overwhelming majority comes from reducing participants' budgets and restricting supports. At least, stop the lies. If Labor wants to crack down on fraud, then listen to disabled people and crack down on fraud. If providers are ripping off disabled people, let's pursue them, absolutely. If there are administrative inefficiencies, fix them. God knows disabled people would like it to be easier to navigate the NDIS, but don't pretend that cutting the support of a disabled child is somehow the same thing as tackling fraud. What a load of garbage! Disabled people didn't create this fraud. They didn't create the administrative problems. They didn't create the budget pressures, and they certainly should not be the people forced to pay for them.

The government wants to decide what treatment disabled people must undertake. It says a person may have to undertake all appropriate measures before their impairment can be considered permanent, but who decides what is appropriate? What happens if the treatment isn't available in your town? What happens if there's a two-year waitlist? What happens if you can't afford the gap fees? What happens if the treatment is harmful? What happens if you don't want it? The disability community has told us that the language in this bill is dangerously subjective, and yet the government wants to give itself the power to decide whether someone has done enough. That is deeply paternalistic and deeply offensive. Disabled people should not have to prove that they have exhausted every possible treatment before they're allowed to access the supports needed to live their lives.

There is another way. The Labor government keeps telling us that it has no choice, that these savings are necessary, that the NDIS has to be made sustainable and that disabled people must be punished to balance the budget, but Australia is a wealthy country, and we have choices. Labor could impose a minimum 25 per cent tax on gas exports. That would raise an estimated $30 billion more over four years than the total value of these NDIS cuts, which is more than enough to invest in support, more than enough to properly build Thriving Kids before kids are pushed off the NDIS and more than enough to guarantee support so that disabled people are not forced to disappear from public life. So, when Labor tells us that there's no alternative, we reject that. The disabled community rejects that. Tax the gas corporations. Make the multibillion dollar multinational corporations profiting from our resources contribute their fair share and what they owe. Choose disabled people over gas profits. Choose children over corporate donors. Choose families over lobbyists.

This is a political choice. Labor has chosen gas companies over disabled people. It is that simple. And the Liberal Party, of course, another corporate party, have backed it right in. These parties can disagree about almost anything. They can fight over tax. They can fight over climate policy. But, when it comes to making disabled people bear the cost of government choices, suddenly they find that beautiful common ground—unity. They've found a way to agree, and the people who will pay for that agreement are disabled Australians, children, young people, parents and carers. This is a disgusting, shameful, dirty deal—a deal that throws disabled people under the bus to protect the profits of just 10 gas export projects, and Australians are furious about it. For those reasons, I utterly oppose and reject this bill, and I foreshadow that I will move the Australian Greens second reading amendment circulated in my name on sheet 3978, calling for this bill to be discharged to the bin.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by acknowledging the work of my colleague Senator Steele-John. I know he hasn't been doing this alone, but in this chamber, in some regards, he's been doing it alone—the person with the lived experience who understands what these cuts will mean for people with disability in this country, who is deeply connected with the millions of Australians who try to get by every day in a system that wants to exclude them and marginalise them. But I've got to tell you this: my colleague Senator Steele-John has done this work with immense courage, immense dignity and immense strength. Our party is grateful for the leadership that he has shown, but imagine if that leadership had been shown by the Prime Minister. Imagine if that leadership could be shown by whoever the hell is leading the coalition today. Imagine if that leadership could be shown by the government.

What would that leadership mean? That leadership might mean that those gas lobbyists, who are wandering through these halls, would get stopped at the door of the Prime Minister's office for once. Maybe they would be turned around and get sent out through the security screens and into the cold of a Canberra winter. Instead of getting a warm cup of tea and a private meeting with the Prime Minister, maybe those gas executives would get an export tax—maybe they would get a 25 per cent gas export tax, like my colleague Senator Hodgins-May has been pushing for. Those gas execs could go out into a cold Canberra winter, sad that their donations didn't get them what they wanted and that they'd be paying a third of what Norway's gas exporters pay in tax. Maybe after those people got shown the door, people with disability could have been brought into the Prime Minister's office, like they go into Senator Steele-John's office and come into my office. Maybe, when they went in, if there'd been that leadership, the Prime Minister would have said to them: 'I made a choice today to tax the obscene fossil fuel profits that are blood soaked from a war in Iran. We're spending that money on the support you and your kids need.'

Imagine if that kind of leadership had been shown. Could you imagine what that would demonstrate to this country right now, at a time when politics is considered to be utterly demeaned by corporate money, running to short-term polls and running to the lowest common denominator? Could you imagine what a different pathway would be open if that's how our politics worked? The gas lobbyists, the fossil fuel lobbyists, the gambling lobbyists, the defence industry lobbyists—imagine if they had the door shut on them and the people who need help in this country had the door opened. Could you imagine how much it would inspire people by what politics could do if they actually saw these decisions being connected? Then, instead of a set of talking points or an endless political fight on 'melongate' or half promises or gaslighting of the disability community, people could say: 'I was really despondent about politics. I was really worried that it was just here for vested interests, but I've watched the government, and they've redirected money from arms manufacturers into Medicare. Bloody hell! My kid got to see a doctor just like that, and it didn't cost me anything. Politics is good.' Or imagine if people with disability suddenly had these cuts removed and were told, 'This is happening because politics finally stood up to these big, vested interests and the donors—the gambling interests and the fossil fuel interests—and we taxed them, we put them in their place and we found the money for you because you need it for your life.' Imagine how different politics would be if there was that kind of leadership.

Instead, this week, millions of people across this country, fearful of what these cuts will mean for them, their families, their loved ones, their neighbours and their work colleagues, are watching a different kind of politics—the politics they're so used to now. They're watching an ugly Canberra deal between these two political parties that keep pretending they're fighting: the coalition and Labor. They keep pretending they're fighting, but they just have the same interests. These two parties—no doubt with the cheering support of their One Nation mates—are coming in here and saying: 'Don't look at the gas companies and the billions and billions and billions of dollars they're stealing from the public by selling our public resources at war time for record profits and paying no tax. Don't look at them. Look at people with disability. They're the people who are attacking our budget. We can't afford to keep supporting people with disability. Did you see how much the NDIS cost the other day? Gee, it almost costs as much as the gifts we're giving the gas lobby.'

Labor and the coalition, cheered on by One Nation, have been meeting in dark rooms in this place to cut the deal to drive 160,000 people off the NDIS, and to take billions and billions of dollars away from support that the people with disability use to go shopping, to a have a weekend break, to get the help from the physio when they need it and to be a part of our society. That's what's being ripped away here. The fact that it's being done in a grubby deal—no doubt they're going to roll in a bit of gambling grubbiness into the deal as well to bundle it together as some kind of sensible, essential financial reform. They're going to try to sell it to the public by saying: 'We needed to do this because we can't afford to help people with disability. The NDIS thing's got out of track. It's got out of whack. It turns out there are more people who need help than we thought, and we're not going to do it.'

This bill, the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, is legislation that, at its core, smashes human rights. It just smashes human rights. That's why I'm going to move a second reading amendment that omits all words after 'That' and instead has the question before this house as follows:

(a) notes that:

(i) there are serious concerns that this bill undermines the rights of disabled people,

(ii) the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights warned that 'the cumulative impact of the measures in the bill may constitute a significant interference with the rights of persons with disability, the rights of the child and the rights to an adequate standard of living, equality and non-discrimination, health, privacy and social security',

(iii) the Australian Human Rights Commission's submission to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquiry expressed that 'this bill is regressive in the protection and realisation of the rights of people with disability, which is contrary to Australia's obligation regarding the principle of non-retrogression' under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and

(iv) this bill also grants sweeping new powers to the Minister, reducing parliamentary oversight of key NDIS changes and limiting the ability of individuals to challenge or change decisions that affect them; and

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

What did the Australian Human Rights Commission say about this bill from a rights perspective? First of all, they pointed out that the government's statement of compatibility—with legislation like this, the government has to put in place a statement about how this legislation is compatible with human rights. There is that statement in this legislation. There's quite a long statement, which has no doubt been drafted by bureaucrats in the department with active ministerial oversight. I'll tell you what that statement is: it's gaslighting. It is absolute gaslighting. This is what the Australian Human Rights Commission says about it:

The Statement of Compatibility with Human Rights … does not adequately assess the human rights impacts of the Bill and fails to capture its regressive effect on the rights of people with disability.

While the Statement identifies relevant rights, including those under the CRPD, it largely frames the Bill as advancing these rights through aims such as sustainability, fraud prevention and consistency in decision-making. This framing is incomplete and misleading, as it does not meaningfully engage with the cumulative impact of the proposed amendments on the rights of people with disability.

In particular, the Statement does not address how the combined measures in the Bill may limit the realisation of rights, including personal autonomy, the right to independent living, participation and inclusion in the community. As a result, there is insufficient evidentiary basis to support the conclusion that the Bill is compatible with human rights. Without an outcomes framework that incorporates human rights indicators, it is and will continue to be difficult to assess whether the NDIS is meeting its human rights objectives, or whether the proposed cost-control measures amount to impermissible retrogressive human rights impacts.

Well, that's a polite way of the Human Rights Commission saying that the government is lying when it says that this supports human rights. This legislation attacks human rights. It attacks some of the most fundamental rights—the right to autonomy, the right to independent living and the right to participation and inclusion in the community. That's what this legislation takes away.

When governments come in here with legislation that savages people's rights and put this tosh in it—this statement that pretends it's consistent with human rights—it degrades faith in government. Have the guts to say it. Show at least a small shred of integrity by not coming in here and saying that you're doing this because you care about people with disability or that you're attacking fraud because you care about people with disability.

If you cared about people with disability, you would attack fraud. When I meet with the community, the strongest advocates for attacking fraud are people with disability, who hate to see money set aside for the NDIS going to any kind of dodgy operators. They are the government's best and most willing supporters in attacking fraud. But you developed this package without even talking with them, without even discussing it with them. If you really wanted to attack fraud, do you know what you'd do? You'd go and meet with people with disability and say: 'Tell me what's happening. Explain to me how the services are being provided. Let's co-design a system so that the money goes to you when you need it.' This was not co-designed. This was imposed on the community because the government knew that it was never about helping people with disability.

We see the fraud thing being trumpeted in the media too. The media are doing the government's dirty work by frontlining fraud claims and trying to avoid the actual discussion about what it means to drive 160,000 people off the scheme. If the government were serious about fraud, they'd be funding the independent commission that's meant to be tracking down and prosecuting fraud. But, no, they don't fund that. There are bugger all prosecutions happening there. You use the fraud argument as a 'watch my hand' scenario: 'Watch the fraud over here while we literally steal support from people with disability over there.'

Politicians come in and gaslight, and they gaslight the community, by saying, 'This is all about fraud and integrity,' when it's not about fraud and integrity at all. This is about a budget bottom line to take money out of the pockets of people with disability and to take away their support services so that this government can find more money to spend on weapons, AUKUS submarines, killing and whatever Donald Trump has asked them to do. They're making that choice between people with disability and Trump's killing toys because they're too scared to take on the gas lobby, the gambling lobby and corporate Australia, which is taking a record share of our country's wealth in the form of corporate profits. We see you, and, increasingly, the community sees you. When they see politics like that, is it any wonder that faith in politics is so low? I want to thank my colleague Senator Steele-John again. We need more of that leadership in this place. That's what we need.

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

At its heart, this debate, this legislation and, in fact, the NDIS itself is about one thing. It is about disabled people and their right to lead a dignified life, just as everyone else has that right. When you cut through the politics, the spin, budget austerity and all the spurious reasons that the government has put up in its arguments that this legislation should be supported, this is about disabled people, and their voices must be heard in this debate. It's not as if there has been an absence of the voice of disabled people. It's not as if disabled people have not been loud and proud and passionate in this debate, because they have. Through the months of the Senate inquiry and through over 4,000 submissions to that Senate inquiry, overwhelmingly from disabled people, their voices are there. I want to say thank you to every single disabled person who showed the courage and the commitment to make a submission to the Senate inquiry and, in some cases, to actually show up and give evidence to that Senate inquiry. It takes guts and courage to do that.

Some of the testimony that we heard was absolutely heart-wrenching. Some of the evidence that the inquiry heard about the impacts of these cuts should have caused the government to pause. It should have caused any non-government member of this chamber to make a decision to vote against this diabolical legislation. I want to acknowledge the work of many people in support of that Senate inquiry and, in particular, my friend and colleague Senator Steele-John, who's quite rightly had a lot of nice things said about him today. What a champion he has been and is and will continue to be for disabled people in this country—an absolutely true leader if ever I've seen one.

At its heart, this debate is about disabled people, but it is also about political choice. This is a government that has chosen to take the easy way out—to punch down on disabled people in order to save themselves a relatively small amount of money albeit the biggest cut to a single program in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. It is a relatively small amount of money compared to, I don't know, tax breaks for wealthy property speculators or the quarter of a trillion-plus dollars that they've committed to AUKUS submarines or the money they could raise from a gas export tax if they were prepared to stand up to their corporate puppeteers in the fossil fuel industry. No, they're not going to rain in the obscene tax breaks that property speculators still enjoy even post the reforms that were announced in the budget. They're not going to walk away from their joined-at-the-hip relationship with the United States, President Trump and those AUKUS submarines that will not only cost a motza but make Australia a more dangerous place. They won't impose a tax on gas exports because they're being instructed not to by the fossil fuel corporations. They won't even end public subsidies for burning fossil fuel while the planet's climate breaks down around us.

They won't do any of those things, but they will introduce diabolical legislation on the basis of the big fat con that it is all about preventing fraud. It is a big con that this is all about fraud, because the overwhelming majority of the savings that the government is banking from this legislation are not coming from responding to fraud. They're coming from removing supports and services that help disabled people to lead dignified lives. That's where.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

( ):  It being 1.30, I shall now proceed to two-minute statements